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Billing and Refund Policy for Prints and Plots

This page explains policies related to how students are charged for the use of color printers, and under what conditions students are entitled to refunds.

• About Printing and Plotting Charges
• Refunds
• Billing

About Printing and Plotting Charges

The GSD Computer Resource Group provides a range of options from color laser printers to large format plotters. The prices for using these facilities are set according to a model of cost recovery.

Charging for plotter output and color prints permits the Computer Resources Group (CRG) to recover costs for the materials used and also to discourage waste. See Printers and Plotters at GSD for details such as the per-page or per-foot costs for plotters and color printers.

Note: If you are a Teaching Assistant for a course, and are asked to print material for that course, then we can add acredit to your term bill that equals the amount we will charge the faculty member's course budget. The faculty member or departmental staff can tell you an amount, and a 33-digit billing code that you'll need to submit to the helpdesk.

Note: You really shouldn't use the printers for multiple copies. Instead, use a copy card obtained from the departmental administrator and use the copy machines. Or even better, send the work out two days before to HPPS, and get the bulk copy discount.

Refunds

Like the printing policy, the policy for refunding plots is designed to promote efficient use of the color printing resources. Helpdesk will be able to refund plots under a limited number of circumstances:

• If the refund is requested no more than 1 week after the plots are made.
• The request should be made in person, with a list of the filenames and dates for each refund.
• Each request should be accompanied by an explanation.
• CRG will always refund plots where the problem is a result of mechanical malfunctions or insufficient supplies (paper or ink)
• We do not take responsibility for third party technology, so we don not provide refunds for undesirable output.
• Help Desk personnel will work with the user to resolve configuration issues (i.e. color, clipping, line weight).

Billing

Term Billable

Most of the print billing for students is handled through the term-billing office. For those students who are term billable, your charges are tallied up and sent to the term billing office each month.

Non Term-Billable

The Harvard Term Billing Office has restrictions on who is eligible for the privilege of term billing their printing. Non term-billable students include:

• students cross registered from other universities.
• harvard students who are graduating are not term-billable after their last final exams or thesis review.

If you have an account, but are not term-billable, you are permitted to use the printers and plotters, but you will have to pay a nonrefundable cash deposit at the Computer Resources office during regular business hours.

Computer Resources is not able to refund unused money in students' plotting accounts, however, in order to make this system as fair for students as possible, each student who has paid something is permitted to incur a deficit of up to $25. Therefore, it is not necessary to estimate in advance the exact amount that will be plotted. Once the $25 limit has been reached, however, the student will need to pay off the deficit (at least bring it up to zero) before plotting can resume.