Avalan,
It sucks in Toronto, too. However, I have found a good supplier for emergencies -- "The Drafting Clinic" -- (
www.dccltd.ca) which carries single pack 70 series inks in stock at fair prices. Fair, that is, considering they actually stock it and you can go down there and take some home. They don't stock twin-packs.
You *can* get twin-packs. What you must do is order them from a drop shipper like (ca.buy.com). They may claim they're in stock, but they are lying. Just put the order in anyway and be very, very patient. I had given up hope only to have a couple of twin packs show up on my doorstep. Since the twins are about $100-$110, it's worth ordering in advance of need so you don't pay emergency prices of $70-$90 for a single.
I'm getting low on Red myself so I'll need to pick up a single, but will be placing an order for doubles of GN, B, M and MK as they're down below 40%.
The canadian market sucks, yep, it sure does. If my interest wasn't photography and print-making, I figure I could make a killing as a simple reseller who actually stocked things and sold them at reasonable prices. As it is, we have a bunch of predatory bastards and a small handful of tolerable stocking suppliers. I like the Drafting Clinic, personally -- they mostly sell to large corporations and you must deal with a personal account rep -- but the service is excellent and they treat even little guys like me as if they might someday be putting in huge weekly orders (you never know...).
I got my Z through the local university's supply department, and paid over a thousand dollars less than even the cheapest sketchy online merchant.
-s
