I discovered yesterday that Kinko’s gives out free colored paper, but I am so used to jumping through hoops to get a freebie that I could scarcely believe the paper’s price tag was $0.
It started when I decided to make flyers for Bargain Babe. I called my local Kinko’s – now called FedEx Office – to check if they were open on MLK day. They were.
“I’d like to make copies on colored paper,” I told the employee who picked up the phone. “Do you sell colored paper?”
“Yes we do,” she said.
“How much is it?”
“If you make the copies here there is no charge.”
“No, I want to make colored copies.”
“There is no charge.”
“What? How much does it cost to make copies onto colored paper?
“If you make the copies here there is no charge.”
“The colored paper is free?”
“Yes.”
Yeah, right, I thought. As I drove over I kept my fingers crossed that I had understood the employee correctly. Free? FREE? FREE!!!! No, wait. Find out if it is true or not before getting excited. What if the paper is only free when you make 9,867,574,321 copies or something?
When I arrived I told the clerk about making colored copies for free and she pulled out a booklet with about a dozen choices. I chose salmon-colored paper.
“How many copies are you making?” she asked.
“About 50,” I said. She left and came back with a stack of colored paper. All mine. Yipee!
Copies are $.10 each, but the paper really is free. Keep this freebie in mind next time you make garage sale flyers, invitations, holiday letters, mass mailings, or your own business flyers.
Welcome to Bargain Babe! I’m Mara, and I’m so glad you’re here. I am an obsessive bargain hunter and penny pincher, and I am determined to live a full life without EVER paying full price. 
wouldn’t it be just as easy to buy a ream of colored paper? for 50 copies you spend $5 and depending on what your printing I would think it isn’t that much of a savings. I don’t do a lot of color copying so I’m no expert just had the thought.
This way I don’t have to pay for the colored paper. If I found a place where copies were considerably cheaper, say $.05 each, it might be cheaper to buy paper myself. But generally you have to make hundreds of copies to get low rates. I usually run off about 100 at a time. ~Julia
On what planet does $0.10 cents PER piece of paper = free?
If you want to be successful with your blog, don’t waste people’s time reading nonesense. I probably won’t ever come back because now I know you are not intelligent enough to know that $0.10 != $0.00
Reality, you’re such a hater. The post made it very clear that the colored paper is free when you use it to make $.10 copies.
~Julia
Just to clarify, when I (most people?) hear “color copies” we think the INK is colored, not the paper. What you’re calling “colored copies,” I call “copies on colored paper.”
My Kinkos charges 49 cents for (what I call) color copies and 11 ccents for regular copies (white or colored paper).
I guess they could charge more for colored paper, so it is worthy of noting, but still it’s just not what I think of as color copies.