At the beginning of February, I happened to go into their store to get a few colour pages printed. I have usually gone to Staples (when I've lived in other cities) for my colour printing but this place was closer (Wasaga Beach). Unlike Staples, where you can serve yourself, I had to give them my USB chip, and they printed from that.
Now, Staples usually costs 40 cents per page for self-serve colour printing from your USB chip. The UPS Store was charging a February Special Price of only 35 cents per page. Great! (So it seemed.)
On Feb. 1st, they printed a 13-page booklet for me. But, I couldn't "self-serve"... the lady took the chip to her computer and printed it for me from the back room. However, the printout was good.... nice paper, very good colour quality. But I didn't realize they were tacking on a $2 "file processing fee" to the bill (and they never mentioned it), which added another average 15.4 cents per page to the cost, making the per-page price just over 50 cents per page.
Later, on Feb 7th, I went in again, and they printed a 19-page booklet; again, the quality was great. Once more (and I hadn't noticed yet), they were tacking on that $2 "file processing fee" to the bill. For 19 pages, the per-page average price was added to by 10.5 cents per page to a total of just over 45 cents per page. I still hadn't noticed this charge; thinking I was only being charged the advertised 35 cents per page, flat fee.
Finally, a week or so later, I had them print another 3 pages, colour document; nice paper, nice colour, the results were great. But this time, when I was expecting about a dollar charge (3 x 35¢), the total $3.35 (taxes in) made me look closer at the bill. When I asked why it was so high, the lady mentioned there was a $2 file processing fee.... and always was.
So, the processing fee averaged over only 3 pages means I was paying 67¢ per page PLUS the 35¢ they advertised... a total of $1.02 per page!!
NOT very competitive compared to Staples' prices.
So the end result is that for small print jobs, it's going to cost LOTS more per page to go to UPS... but, for bigger jobs of, say, 40 pages, that $2 file fee will be divided over more pages, and will represent a smaller per-page increase. (In the case of 40 pages, that $2 only represents a 5¢/page increase in the overall fee.)
Anyway, I felt it was a little sneaky of them to advertise a $35¢-per-page "special" price without mentioning the file handling fee up front.... overall, they were NOT cheaper than going to Staples.
However, it's a bit of a drive to Staples from here, so, the costs equal out in this case, as I saved a few bucks in gas if I'd made a special trip to Collingwood just for the copying.
Know your options, and ask about ALL the charges!
Otherwise, they were nice to deal with.
