Easter and Ink

First off, let me say “Happy Easter” to all of you readers out there.

Now for the bad news: most of the Staples stores will be open on Easter Sunday with limited hours of 12noon to 5pm. On average, this is about 4 hours shorter than a normal Sunday.

The keyword here is “most” as I believe that the stores here in Maine will NOT be open as the state has a form of blue laws that would prevent it from opening on that holiday. I may be wrong about that, but I expect to hear from one of my local friends to correct me on that if this is true or not.

My point to all of this is that I believe that this year is the first year that they have tried being open on the holiday. I feel that this is a huge mistake for both religious and non-religious people alike.

When I was employed with the company, they were insistent that I either work one of my regular days off or else I would have to use one of my personal days so that I would maintain my fulltime status. The management would not allow me to just lose the time because I normally worked every Sunday and I preferred to keep my normal days off intact.

Certainly this would be great for me now if I was still employed with the company, but I feel sorry for those who don’t want or for religious reasons refuse to work on that day. I wonder how many employees will be forced that day against their beliefs. Given Staples past record of how to treat employees and how they celebrate the holidays, I bet there will be much friction between employees and managers, including threats of termination that were even used against me.

This is just more proof of a company that is desperate for business.

Speaking of desperation, the dreaded Ink & Toner Savings Pass is back.

The last time I wrote about this card last year, I garnished the most comments of any blog post I had ever written. Some of them were critical, some pointed to the same conflicting information, and a couple of people had decided to insult me.

So here are the details as I know them (from their most current flyer):

· The cost of the card is $20 this year up from the $15 of last year making it even less of a bargain than last year.

· All (yes ALL) brands of ink are included unlike last year that seemed to exclude HP inks, but was eventually included that brand.

· The discount is still 10%. However, that amount is actually less if you consider sales tax that reduces the actual discount offset. Here in Maine that means that the REAL discount is approximately 4.5%.

· The card is good through May 31, 2015.

Overall, this card is NOT a good deal at all especially since the card is now $20. This mean that you must buy at least $200 worth of ink (more if your state has a sales tax) before you break even. I believe that anytime you have to pay for a discount it is a bad deal no matter what.

My advice: stay away from this card.

However, this doesn’t mean that bargains can’t be found at other retailers.

For example, this week Target is offering 5% off HP multipacks on its cartwheel website. While this may not be a huge savings, you don’t need to spend $20 to get the discount. I highly recommend the cartwheel website as they always have specials ranging from 5% up to 50% off certain items every week. I have used the site many times to save quite a bit of money at Target.

At Best Buy, if you buy multiple cartridges at the same time, you can save as much as 15% off the entire purchase of cartridges. Again, no special card is necessary to get the savings, not even their rewards card. Most importantly, you don’t spend $20 unnecessarily.

Overall, better deals than Staples are out there. You just have to look for them.

And for those of you working on Easter, I expect that you will have a boring day since it is a family day.