About eight years ago, I was the consulting engineer on a large electrical project.

In my opinion, the contractor who had been appointed was not up to the job. As a consequence, I requested from him drawings which I would approve. I told him that he must submit three copies of each drawing and I would keep one copy and either approve or mark up or reject a copy, and the third copy would be kept on site.

He agreed to this and told me he would email me the drawings. I told him, no, he would not email me the drawings – he would give me three copies as in paper copies of the drawings. I told him this in a meeting and he looked around at all the other people there, pretending to be in shock. In a quivering voice, he asked why I would not accept the drawings as email. I told him because, then, if you do not submit a drawing in time, you can always pretend that you emailed it but my email did not get it. Also, I said, I cannot see why I must waste my staff’s time and the ink in my printer to do what he should be paying for.

The matter of the ink got the biggest laugh. Everybody understood the concept of staff time. But the cost of ink was trivial, wasn’t it? Well, yes, at the time it was. But now things have changed. I asked our admin lady to get some cartridges for our Hewlett-Packard printer. It is a laser printer and has worked well.

She did not get the cartridges; more sensibly, she got a quote for the cartridges. There is an English phrase, to be gobsmacked. Which is what I was. The cost of the cartridges was nearly R17 000. This is way more than the original cost of the printer. This is double the cost of a replacement printer. And there is absolutely no justification for this cost. We have a number of options: we can buy another printer, which, the suppliers assure me, can print out 14 000 pages before the ink runs out. The printer rate is higher than the printer we have and the cost is the same as we paid for the printer we have (about R8 000).

Our next option is to fly one of the staff to England, where they can buy suitable printer cartridges and fly back. It is cheaper than R17 000. Or we can just get humped by the Hewlett-Packard agents and suppliers. A definite option is that we are going to have to throw our Hewlett-Packard printer onto the tip. A finely wrought piece of machinery which, like a World War II fighter plane, nobody wants because it is too costly to run.

This is ridiculous. But I know all of you people are going to dial in and point out to me that the exchange rate is changed or something like that. It is not the point. The simple point is that the cartridges cost more than the printer. The simple point is that this is a complete rip-off. I have often wondered about Hewlett-Packard. The company started when the founders produced a very stable audio oscillator (it was not as stable as they claimed) but they did produce the first scientific handheld calculator, which was a winner. All the electronic lab equipment that the company produced was absolutely fabulous.

Then Hewlett-Packard got into computers and printers. The first printer I had was an inkjet printer, an HP 690 C. It was complete rubbish. But then I thought the clouds had parted: our two Hewlett-Packard laser printers which we have in the office have been fabulous. But now we cannot afford the cartridges. I would have thought that Hewlett-Packard, in fact, I would have thought that anybody would understand the concept of brand loyalty. Our office manager does not know any bleach but Jik. Handy Andy is her choice for surface cleaner. Mr Min for finishes. And as an ex-owner of a Hewlett-Packard 35 calculator I would love to keep my brand loyalty where it was. But I cannot compete with sheer greed.