I received a well-worded, thorough explanation of the $10/PDF charge that Kwik Kopy charges from owner Shawn MacKenzie. Although Shawn’s asked me not to publish his candid response to my earlier comments, and a follow-up email, I appreciate the effort he took to respond and I wish all service providers were as willing to discuss the terms of their service.

Here’s what I sent back to Shawn:

Thanks for taking the time to respond, and for explaining your mechanism for your RIP charge.

I think part of the disconnect here is that you’re looking at thinks from the point of view of “print shop management” where you have to (quite rightly) be concerned about the profit on each job, whereas I’m not really looking at you as a print shop, but rather a sort of “remote printer.”

Rather than bothering with the cost and expense of maintaining a local printer here, along with the needed to maintain it, collate and staple jobs, etc., I’m looking to outsource all my office printing, from large $1000 jobs down to small $2.00 jobs.

A $10/job RIP fee for a print shop seems quite reasonable, especially given the technical challenges you’ve outlined. A $10/RIP fee to “print remotely” simply isn’t feasible for me, both because it drives up the per-copy cost on small jobs to upwards of a dollar a page, and also because the charge interferes with my ability to send you jobs easily and without thinking “is it really worth spending that $10/PDF fee.”

A couple of days turnaround for a job sent to a print shop is reasonable. My standard for what I call “remote printing” would be “as close to right away as possible.”

It may be simply that I’m looking for you to be in a business you’re not in, and, what’s more, a business that wouldn’t be feasible. In any case, I do appreciate the fact that you’re willing to talk about it.