Which black inks are fade proof and are easy on fountain pens of Fine nib?

[A Smug Dill]

On 4/5/2022 at 12:54 AM, yazeh said:

The price is very clear. 

 

For what it's worth, I agree with @yazeh.

 

On 4/5/2022 at 1:18 AM, RJS said:

Tell us all, what's the price to mail their fountain pen worldwide, then, genius?

 

 

£14.50, including postage & packing. Yes, I've added it to the cart, then taken the cart to checkout, given it my delivery address in Australia (by virtue of what is in my PayPal account details), and only aborted the process after I've landed in PayPal's website on redirection (from making payment for the contents of the cart), and,

 

On 4/5/2022 at 1:18 AM, RJS said:

There's no answer on their webpage, so either you'll have to guess or contact the proprietors.

 

no, no guesswork was required; nor did I have to contact the proprietors.

 

Just to be sure, I tried it again, and gave it a valid Australian delivery address manually through PayPal guest checkout for one fountain pen; the price (including postage and packing) did not change as a result.

 

 

 

If one's fellow forum member is wrong, or has overlooked something, in statements made in the open for all to see, then pointing out their error or oversight is not an insult, irrespective of how they feel and whether they lose face. He or she can feel slighted, and I wouldn't question his or her prerogative to feel that way, but that's not anyone else's problem; it's up to him or her to manage or reconcile with that ‘new’ information which upsets a previously assumed position.

 

On 4/4/2022 at 3:46 AM, RJS said:

Here's a thread from our board with other people they confused with their archaic web page: 

 

Its “archaic web page” is broken in other ways. If you select the “Rest of World Delivery £14.50” option (shown above, in the first image) and take it to checkout, the system wants to charge you £20.50. Oh, and if you add more than two different items to the cart and then take it to checkout, not all your selected items appear.

 

(I've double-checked using two different browsers. The error is not due to the old “Rest of World” price being cached from a year ago in any of the browsers.)

 

Edited April 5, 2022 by A Smug Dill
Somehow the system decided underlining 'not' means replacing it with a CR-NL

[yazeh]

@RJSIt was not my intention to be sarcastic. Like Dill stated I was being factual. I always go to paypal to see how much I'm paying in my currency. The price for the fountain pen, as dill pointed out is 14.50 British pounds. The shipping is included in the price, both for pen and inks.  🙏

 

 

[RJS]

3 hours ago, yazeh said:

@RJSIt was not my intention to be sarcastic. Like Dill stated I was being factual. I always go to paypal to see how much I'm paying in my currency. The price for the fountain pen, as dill pointed out is 14.50 British pounds. The shipping is included in the price, both for pen and inks.  🙏

 

 

"I found it to be clear, but see many people find it unclear" would have been the regular way to phrase it. I'm glad to hear it wasn't intentionally sarcastic, though.

 

In the same way, I could feel hot on a cold day, which isn't to say many would disagree. It's subjective. Though the webpage is junk, and "could" undoubtedly be clearer. 

[yazeh]

4 minutes ago, RJS said:

"I found it to be clear, but see many people find it not to be clear." In the same way I could feel hot on a cold day, which isn't to say many would disagree. It's subjective. Though the webpage is junk, and "could" undoubtedly be clearer. If you need to enter your shopping address to work out what the heck the price is, I'd argue it is evidently unclear.

I need to know the exchange rate to Canadian dollars by paypal, that's why.....

 

 

[RJS]

I edited my previous post, by the way

[RJS]

If I was Australian (for example) and ordered one of those other items in isolation, I'd probably expect to see the order rejected and refunded. That is because it makes little sense to charge the same price to post an item to Aus as London. If they're not making a loss on the international postage then they're overcharging their British customers to compensate....

 

Let's look at that blotting paper, for example. Price with P&P: £3.85. Price to mail a large letter to Australia with Royal Mail: £4.20. Loss: £0.35. Maybe they fold it up and stuff it in a small envelope? They're still not turning a profit. Probably they'll only post it to Australia if someone is also buying their ink?

 

 

[arcfide]

FWIW, the website has been updated to reflect the 20.50 price instead of the 14.50 shown above. 

[A Smug Dill]

2 hours ago, arcfide said:

FWIW, the website has been updated to reflect the 20.50 price instead of the 14.50 shown above. 

 

Not from what I can see, using the URL of http://www.registrarsink.co.uk/registrars_ink.html. I tried it just now in three different browsers (Safari, Chrome, and Firefox) on my Mac, in both normal and private/incognito windows, after clearing cached files in each. I also tried it in Firefox Focus running on my iPad. None of these are going through a web proxy (that I know of) on my end such that it could be serving me cached and outdated web pages. All of them shows the Rest of World price for ESSRI as £14.50 (and, yes, I've personally seen the price of £20.50 on that page on my devices before, several months ago).

[txomsy]

Sorry, didn't want to chime in, but...

 

Just checked. When I select an item it takes me to Paypal with the corrected price for P&P. I can just go back and try other items. In any case, being outside UK, I always get an updated price which, given European laws (not just EU, UK too), should be binding.

 

While it is not Amazon, I fail to see how it can be considered "difficult". I suppose it is a matter of age. Being older, I've seen all through the development of online purchases to not be surprised by it. I can understand someone used to Amazon finding Aliexpress surprising, eBay counterintuitive and this page "difficult", but that someone expects all sites to behave in their preferred way does not make anything any more easier or difficult, nor has anybody any right to impose any specific interface on anyone else.

 

That too, I can understand, that people is used to rely on a given behavior that they feel upset when confronted with something else. Yet, the very foundation of the Internet has always been from the very onset (and I was there then) to respect diversity and to accept that others may have very different ways to view, perceive, express and do things and live their lives how ever they liked. So no one should (though they certainly can) claim that things should be their way, or that others should adapt to their expectations, and much less try to impose any specific master rule.

 

My advice, and it is only advice†, not just for the Internet, is to throw away all your expectations and accept that others are free to do things differently.

 

It was that openness that allowed such horrendous monsters (from a pre-them POV) as Amazon, Google or many others to come into being. Yahoo, and then Google, were originally disruptive w.r.t. Altavista, which was w.rt. plain links and lists of servers/pages, and the WWW was disruptive against the much safer Gopher which was disruptive against FTP, which lacked the distribution and caching of TRICKLE (which wasn't Internet but EARN/BITNet and based around a different paradigm). I could go on for hours, don't tempt me.

 

If anybody wants to take this advice as an insult, I am sorry and fully apologize in advance, I only offer it in the best of intentions. But I can hardly consider that merely pointing out that there may be other ways to do things and that when one adapts to them, these are not difficult, may be an insult except in realities parallel to mine (which I am willing to concede they exist and I do accept at face value).

 

† as La Rochefoucauld said, we can give advice but not inspire the sense to follow it.

 

[RJS]

Everyone is free to make incompetent web pages with inexplicable pricing, and everyone else is free to try to justify that incompetence should they desire. Similarly, retailers are also free to insult people that email them about a purchase, should they wish. Yes, it creates needless ill will towards them and loses at least one sale, but they're free to do it. 

 

Dill: That's interesting you see a different price to the price I see in England. My VPN just expired or I'd check to see if they've rigged the page to show different prices to people in different territories (in the same way airlines do- e.g. set your VPN to spoof that you're not in the country the flight originates and you'll get a better price, unless that county you're choosing is currently at a prime buying time, then that could bump the price the wrong way. It's easy to hate airlines). If they have geographically rigged the prices I'd be surprised, though, considering the page looks like it was created by a 15 year old in an extra curricular activity class in 1999.

 

Edit: I have no interest in buying that ink or the other products on that website, so it the pricing isn't relevant to me. I was curious why a few people found the prices confusing, so I had a look for myself.

 

a) I had a look at the webpage, as it appears to me- evidently different to the page Dill sees, with different prices. The inclusive international delivery fee for the ink is poorly/ineptly worded, the page is badly laid out, and international delivery isn't mentioned at all in regards to the other products. 

 

b) The above facts lead me to believe those other products wouldn't be shipped abroad, at least not unless accompanying the ink, because international shipping adds cost.
 

c) As I bothered to give consideration to the cost of international shipping, it became apparent that 'b' must be correct as they'd probably be losing money.
 

d) I assumed correctly what the total price was for the ink alone to be mailed abroad, despite the inept wording and presentation of the price.

 

e) Were I living abroad, as I have done for most of my adult life, and I wanted products from this page, I'd have emailed them to clarify the total cost of 2/3 products posted together, or whatever it was I would have desired to buy. I wouldn't have just placed the order without gaining clarity first.

 

f) Yes, I'm not so (bleep) stupid that I can't use websites that are less polished than Amazon. If I can order hundreds of items from TaoBao in Mandarin, I can compose an email in English to clarify pricing on a webpage with a handful of items on it.

 

g) For anyone that thought the ESS page I CAN SEE was 100% clear and obvious... you probably should have applied a little more thought, and you'd have realised your pricing assumptions might not make sense, when considering shipping costs to the furthest ends of the earth. If you need to click through to checkout with various combinations of products, or email them, then it could be clearer, surely? They could just say "shipping price will be applied in basket", then you know you need to go to that step for your answer.

 

Honestly, I'll work on the assumption that we're simply seeing different versions of that webpage- no other possibility makes sense.

 

Edit 2: I really shouldn't try to compose long messages on my phone in a rush on my lunch break- I just attempted to squish the bugs.

 

I don't know how I ended up defending people for finding that page confusing, nor how others ended up claiming it wasn't confusing- we really must be looking at different pages, or different versions of the same page. 🤷‍♂️

[A Smug Dill]

3 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

Not from what I can see, using the URL of http://www.registrarsink.co.uk/registrars_ink.html.

 

11 minutes ago, RJS said:

Dill: That's interesting you see a different price to the price I see in England. My VPN just expired or I'd check to see if they've rigged the page to show different prices to people in different territories

 

Actually, it isn't that; I just tried using various VPN exit nodes all over the place.

 

http://www.registrarsink.co.uk/ shows £20.50 for Rest of World Delivery

http://www.registrarsink.co.uk/registrars_ink.html shows £14.50 for Rest of World Delivery (but that gets ‘corrected’ to £20.50 when I go to checkout)

 

I'm sure I got the latter URL from a Google search only very recently, i.e. since participating in this discussion thread.

[txomsy]

Well, that anyone can think the Amazon web site is "easy" is beyond my wits. Specially their search engine. And it is not the worse offender.

 

Compared to 90% of the pages we have to visit nowadays (at least from Europe), which start with nagging privacy notes (because they all try to steal/collect all our data and sell it) and notification pop-ups and opt-out dialogs, and in 50% turn out to be designed in such a way you cannot close the note unless you go full screen, and where the vast majority offer unclear choices to control cookies, try to force the default of accepting everything using as many perceptive / psychological tricks as possible and take a lot of our navigation time, bloated with ads, videos and whatnots, the "simple" page at ESSRI's site is a full blessing, even with all of its shortcomings.

 

You just have one page, a handful of items, a handful of buttons, and when you press any, you get redirected to a check-out page with the calculated price. Plus the assurance that a UK-based operation must by law comply with its commitments.

 

Being blindly partial to one design and decrying all others is a sure way to ignore the past and make worse mistakes in the future.

 

As for the price... please, do remember this seems not to be an "extract maximal profit" operation, but an "Ecclesiastical Stationary Supplies" operation. I would expect it to work at minimal margins or not-for-profit, and in some cases even to work at a loss (as long as it can be compensated by other means). I would expect them to be endorsed as reference ecclesiastical suppliers so far as even people (or at least priests) from less favored regions can afford it.

 

Many commercial (maximal profit) companies are still willing to sell at a loss in specific markets hoping for a long term benefit, a better public perception, marketing, competition or plain charity.

 

It suffices going to a supermarket and noticing about how some prices are below production cost in big surfaces. Many publishers / producers make their products (books, journals, video, CD, DVD, pharmaceuticals, etc...) available at different prices in different regions, and sometimes even below production costs.

 

I'm not claiming this be the case for ESSRI, but blindly saying that selling below production costs is impossible or unrealistic is just... well, not very well informed.

 

So, please, relax, take a break, maybe a walk out in the spring/autumn sunshine (depending on your hemisphere) and listen to music or birds singing. No need to be susceptible, angry at a web page, consider harmless comments offenses to a majority of readers, or taking it hard. We are all friends here, discussing in good faith, and -in my most humble opinion- most people in most places just wants to get along with their lives trying to do what they can the best they can within their specific constrains and abilities... even the people behind ESSRI (again, in my most humble opinion, I may well be wrong and all the usual disclaimers apply).

[RJS]

"blindly saying that selling below production costs is impossible or unrealistic is just... well, not very well informed."

 

It is the more considered, measured and likely option, is it not? Even if they're a charity, it would be a peculiar way to invest their donations. 
 

Anyway, everyone seems to have their unshakeable stance on the matter, so best we drop it and all have those walks.

 

-Rich 

[arcfide]

<<Duplicate information.>>

Edited April 6, 2022 by arcfide
Duplicate information

[Shyahi]

On 4/5/2022 at 4:02 PM, A Smug Dill said:

 

For what it's worth, I agree with @yazeh.

 

 

 

£14.50, including postage & packing. Yes, I've added it to the cart, then taken the cart to checkout, given it my delivery address in Australia (by virtue of what is in my PayPal account details), and only aborted the process after I've landed in PayPal's website on redirection (from making payment for the contents of the cart), and,

 

 

no, no guesswork was required; nor did I have to contact the proprietors.

 

Just to be sure, I tried it again, and gave it a valid Australian delivery address manually through PayPal guest checkout for one fountain pen; the price (including postage and packing) did not change as a result.

 

 

 

If one's fellow forum member is wrong, or has overlooked something, in statements made in the open for all to see, then pointing out their error or oversight is not an insult, irrespective of how they feel and whether they lose face. He or she can feel slighted, and I wouldn't question his or her prerogative to feel that way, but that's not anyone else's problem; it's up to him or her to manage or reconcile with that ‘new’ information which upsets a previously assumed position.

 

 

Its “archaic web page” is broken in other ways. If you select the “Rest of World Delivery £14.50” option (shown above, in the first image) and take it to checkout, the system wants to charge you £20.50. Oh, and if you add more than two different items to the cart and then take it to checkout, not all your selected items appear.

 

(I've double-checked using two different browsers. The error is not due to the old “Rest of World” price being cached from a year ago in any of the browsers.)

 

Very strange you got 14 in pay pal this was the issue which made me doubt it.

 

As for me i kept getting 20 pound's 

[A Smug Dill]

On 4/5/2022 at 8:32 PM, A Smug Dill said:

Its “archaic web page” is broken in other ways. If you select the “Rest of World Delivery £14.50” option (shown above, in the first image) and take it to checkout, the system wants to charge you £20.50.

 

2 minutes ago, Shyahi said:

Very strange you got 14 in pay pal

 

No, I didn't.

[migla9]

One longevity issue I never see discussed here is air pollutants.  I don't know how much it affects these papers/inks, but in the color inkjet printing world, pollutants can be a factor for some papers and inks (dye and pigment).  This would affect papers kept in a dark location over time.

[A Smug Dill]

16 hours ago, RJS said:

If I can order hundreds of items from TaoBao in Mandarin,

 

Kinda ironic, from a champion of clarity in written communication, don't you think? 

 

16 hours ago, RJS said:

g) For anyone that thought the ESS page I CAN SEE was 100% clear and obvious... you probably should have applied a little more thought, and you'd have realised your pricing assumptions might not make sense, when considering shipping costs to the furthest ends of the earth. If you need to click through to checkout with various combinations of products, or email them, then it could be clearer, surely? They could just say "shipping price will be applied in basket", then you know you need to go to that step for your answer.

…‹snip›…

I don't know how I ended up defending people for finding that page confusing, nor how others ended up claiming it wasn't confusing- we really must be looking at different pages, or different versions of the same page. 🤷‍♂️

 

Huh?

 

On 4/5/2022 at 12:54 AM, yazeh said:

The price is very clear.

 

@RJS I'm afraid you're reading way too much into what was written. The price, being what the vendor is asking customers to pay, for a bottle of ESS Registrars Ink is very clear on that page, irrespective of whether the rest of its content is clear or not, and irrespective of whether it tells you all you want to know about what makes up that amount, or how it is calculated or can be broken down into line items to suit some individual shopper's preferred framing. ‘You’ want it separated into line items for product price and shipping charges? Nope, it's not there, and it isn't what ESS wants to communicate from what I can see. How will it work if a shopper wants to buy two, or three, or ten bottles at once, when someone may expect a benefit in the form of reduced (average) shipping cost per bottle? No, it's not there, but it isn't what ESS wants to inform prospective customers, however much the individual shopper may want to know. If you want to buy one bottle, this is how much you have to pay, depending on whether you want it delivered somewhere in the UK or outside. That's the price. That's very clear. You can call it poor customer service if ESS won't cater for particular information requirements that make some particular/individual shopper comfortable and feel fully informed, and that it won't come to the table and restate the pricing information using that customer's preferred terms or framework; I wouldn't argue with that, and I have no interest in defending ESS the company. But, as a passive receiver of the information published on that web page, the shopper does not get to (re)define what ‘price’ means, or counter with what his/her information requirements are for making a proper purchasing decision. The price, as stated, the way ESS wants to communicate it to the market is clear.

 

There is no insult, from either the vendor or fellow forum members, in refusing point-blank to accommodate someone's preferences or ‘needs’. It may be callous, it may be cavalier, it may be tactless, … but it is not an insult to let someone fence themselves in with their requirements (however reasonable they purportedly are) and expectations that those requirements would be satisfied as a matter of course (or of goodwill to which one is entitled). 

[Shyahi]

On 4/4/2022 at 7:14 PM, yazeh said:

https://www.amazon.in/Sailor-Fountain-Kiwaguro-Pigment-13-2002-220/dp/B075ZTVSCS/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3O4FX6Y1MFBA9&keywords=sailor+kiwa+guro+ink&qid=1649079676&sprefix=sailor+ki%2Caps%2C294&sr=8-1

 

Sends from Japan..Price:   ₹2,099.00.

 

I have that shortlisted recently. Only because of the seller unbox japan some have given their shipping as doubtful.

 

Like for some they got bluedart shipping which is only for across India

 whereas dhl is for global shipping.

 

For many shipments were delayed by a month.

 

Some awaited a month and some Cancelled after waiting 3-4 weeks

[yazeh]

1 hour ago, Shyahi said:

I have that shortlisted recently. Only because of the seller unbox japan some have given their shipping as doubtful.

Sorry to hear that. At least you'll have amazon protection. 

1 hour ago, Shyahi said:

 

Like for some they got bluedart shipping which is only for across India

 whereas dhl is for global shipping.

 

For many shipments were delayed by a month.

 

Some awaited a month and some Cancelled after waiting 3-4 weeks

Yeah. I get that. Must be frustrating. You can try ebay or any seller than in US/ Europe/Japan that uses paypal. So that you're protected. 

You can alternatively also test, Krishna's  waterproof Lyrebird Inks. I haven't tested them so I don't know. But they're made locally and should be easily found. 

Otherwise, go with any waterproof ink that you can find locally 🙏