Printing cost sharing

For each student user ID in the INFORMATIK domain, there is a dedicated print account. Each semester, a print quota worth 10 euros (the basic quota) is credited to this account. This basic quota includes an adjustment for any printing errors. Additional credits can be purchased at any time to top up the print account.

Costs incurred by printing are deducted from the personal quota, meaning that, depending on the printer type, paper size, and output mode, a specific amount of cost units is charged for each printed page (see pricing list).

Important: If the quota of a user ID is exhausted, printing is automatically stopped and the print jobs are stored in a special queue for a maximum of 5 working days! After purchasing new quotas, the stored print jobs can be printed upon request.

For your personal user account, you can check your current account balance and a list of billed print jobs through online queries; for this, you need to authenticate with your user credentials. There you will also find the list and status of the available printer queues.

To keep administrative effort as low as possible, the following rules apply for increasing print quotas:

• Only cashless prepayments are permitted; you can deposit whole euro amounts via EC or cash card at a TeleCash terminal in the Informatics Library.
• Upon presenting the deposit receipt at user support (see notice in front of D124), your credit will be added to the print account of your user ID.
• Additionally, you can transfer credit to other user accounts upon request.

Using a form, which is available and to be submitted in the user support office or with the student operators (in D107 in the afternoon), any holder of a user ID can transfer credit from their paid print balance to another user ID. An identity verification of the original holder is required for this process.

In exceptional cases, additional quotas for special tasks, such as for theses or diploma projects, may be granted to students for the current semester upon written confirmation from a responsible staff member in the Computer Science department.

Notes:

An unused basic or special quota cannot be transferred to another user ID. The respective person is responsible for any reimbursement of costs.

The internal billing of the printing cost contribution is carried out in so-called cost units (KE), where 1000 KE = 1 Euro. The base unit is the printed page, regardless of its content (e.g., text, images) and the printing density. The calculation is based on assumptions commonly used in test reports regarding mixed page contents and coverage rates.

The current costs are distributed as follows (as of October 2008):

• A single-sided A4 page on a black-and-white printer (using recycled paper) costs 21 KE (2.1 cents).
• An A4 color page on color laser printers (rz_fa4) costs 50 KE (5 cents) — no pure photo/image pages!
• A page on the A3 printer rz_fa3 costs 500 KE (50 cents).
• A sheet printed in duplex mode is billed as two pages in simplex mode.
• No cost contribution is charged for cover pages.

Example: A 12-page document printed on a black-and-white pool printer costs 12 * 21 KE = 252 KE (equivalent to 25.2 cents), regardless of whether printed in simplex or duplex mode.

Tabellarische Zusammenfassung:

Quality of Output Jobs

The IRZ generally does not guarantee the correct reproduction of prints or the technical quality, readability, or completeness of output jobs.

Loss of Output Jobs

Users are required to pick up their output jobs immediately after they are created. The IRZ is not obligated to ensure or store the generated jobs and is not liable for their loss.

Claims Regarding Billing

Claims about incorrect credit notes must be made immediately when payments are made via the TeleCash procedure.
Claims about incorrect debiting of output jobs can only be addressed by the IRZ if they occur on the central printers within the IRZ. Such claims must be made immediately after the output job is completed by the printers, either at the user support office or with the student operators in Room D107, but no later than one hour afterwards.

Claims regarding incorrect debiting of output jobs on printers located in publicly accessible rooms are not processed. This particularly applies to pool printers.
Claims about incorrect transfers of print credit to another user account must be made immediately after entering the transfer order with an IRZ staff member, but no later than one hour afterwards.
The IRZ does not guarantee against transfer errors caused by incorrect or unintentional information provided by the user.
The IRZ cannot reimburse costs for recognized billing errors. However, a credit in the amount of the recognized sum will be credited to the affected user’s print account.

Expiration of Print Quotas, Validity Period

Print quotas are only valid for the duration of the associated user account and will be deleted along with it. If a user account is renewed in a timely manner, the print quota remains valid for the renewal period.

At the start of each semester (April 1 or October 1), the print quota is reset: any remaining quotas purchased at the TeleCash terminal are transferred, the basic quota is reset, and additional quotas for special tasks expire.

The IRZ cannot refund unused print quotas; they expire. Users are free to transfer their remaining quotas to other INFORMATIK user accounts and have the costs reimbursed by those accounts.