has anyone else used B&P Maintenance call out?

[Brian Hays]

Wouldn’t be surprised if they have to wait 7 days for a part. Often parts from Roland take longer 🙁

[Robert Lambie]

we just paid for extended warranty too… 3 weeks ago now…

i agree, a weeks no use to anyone with £20 grand sitting idle….

[David Rowland]

interesting post John, on our JV3 we haven’t paid for our extended waranty but question the need, I really would have wanted the waranty in the 2nd year and not first.

[southernandy]

Why can’t they pinch the part from the stock machines in their warehouse?

I’d be down there with me toolbox helping myself- full warranty is a full warranty!

[Glenn Sharp]

Just my opinion but I think B&P are one of the least professional companies I deal with

Whenever you ring you get passed from pillar to post & are made to feel like you have no right to any help

one of the pumps went on our Grenadier a couple of months ago & the engineer couldn’t come out for four days – they did however send a new pump on over night carrier which we fitted ourselves the next day – but that is not why we were paying for an extended warranty just so we could get parts on next day

The engineers we have had out although trying to be helpful always seem to come out with the same….”I haven’t been with the company that long so I’m not sure..If you ring & speak to such & such they should be able to help you”

Arghhhhhh..It does my head in (hot)

[Chris Hooper]

edit

[David Rowland]

Shall we gather around B&P HQ and sing this loud so they can hear us?

[Terry Gall]

You should try using Printmax. We’ve been waiting 4 months for an account form!!!!!
(:) (chat.)

[B&P]

Response from David Burton – Group Managing Director, B&P Lightbrigade Group Ltd.

I thought hard about whether I should ask Rob to post a response to the comments about our service on uksignboards, primarily because the forum is clearly an arena for the end user, and provides an environment for users to communicate their grievances and experiences, which if I where a sign maker would be of real use.

It is not my intention to sell anything in this response or argue any particular point, I simply want to make the following comments:

1) My email dburton@bplightbrigade.com is clearly identified on all of our web sites. I know things can go wrong and lines of communications get conflicted. So one of the ways to cut through the crap when you become truly concerned is to email me. I will respond.

2) Second year contracts have terms and conditions, like any other agreement . If we fail to meet them, you have a point and it will be dealt with.

3) Support is not just a visit from an engineer, it really can be just as good over the phone and straight forward parts delivery can also be part of the story. If engineers are already committed to site visits elsewhere, and you have the ability to get your system operational through us issuing parts, then that surely is of value. It’s not perfect I agree, but priority one has to be getting the printer operational and producing print for profit.

4) With all of this in mind I am surprised that some comments on the forum are from non-customers who have no experience of our business. At least give us a chance guys.

5) B&P Light Brigade is not some kind of dark empire with a inaccessible corporate management structure. We are a privately owned business run by its owners. We have been in business 21 years and employ 66 staff. We are a successful British business with a growing export division. If we fail, we do it as rarely as possible. We have over 800 Uniform printer installations and invoice £16 million a year. We have the industries largest and most experienced engineering team, currently 10 full time engineers and support staff. Find me any other dealer in our game with this size of engineering resource.

6) I have been a buyer of hardware for our grand format print business for 14 years and have experienced the very worst in support, usually on machines with 6 figure price tags. I know we are a good supplier of sensibly priced product, with better support than anyone else. That does not mean we don’t cock it up from time to time. If you want to moan about us, that is clearly your right, but at the same time talk to us. You are not dealing with non industry people – B&P are up to our necks in this business.

7) You might also bear in mind, this all works great if the equipment is being looked after correctly by the user.

8) In some cases it also helps if our customers bills are paid on time – after all, signmakers know better than most, that business is business. I know of many instances where we carry on providing service and support to customers whose accounts are well overdue to the tune of many thousands of £s’. We are nothing if not fair.

9) Ultimately, my job is the same as yours. I run and partly own a business that we as a team have grown for many years. This is not a game, it is how we make a living and I take very seriously any comments about our business.

I’m not going to entire into a dialogue on this forum, that is not what it was designed for, and neither is it our right to do so. If you want to disagree with me, please do so. As mentioned previously, my email address is dburton@bplightbrigade.com

[Chris Hooper]

So John has it been fixed yet?

[David Rowland]

Thank you David for your comments, it is a public forum which only requires registration to participate, people do vent their frustration and try and ask other members for their support in matters when they are in need.

I know B&P have grown to quite a large company as our company has purchased a printer from yourselves in the past. My comments above are reference our existing printer which currently is purchased from another company, however I think the frustration comes when you pay such an additional premium for support and it gives you the false sense of security that your product will always be working.

However I welcome B&P’s response and hope they help the members here with their printers and also would welcome input to the forums as many other suppliers do post into this growing sign community message board.

[Peter Normington]

Dave, (b&p)
you have put your case and explained your side.
I have always said that the signboards can be a bit unfair, because they dont always allow a right to reply. if you are a supplier/member then you will be able to view the comments and reply.
But it is easy for some to slag off others without following the usuall route.
first, second and third step should always be with the supplier.
if you dont then get any joy, ask others if they have the same problem.
and then you may be justified in making a public critism There are always 2 sides to a story,
Bellyaching in public should be a last resort, to me it is a form of blackmail.
Peter

[Dave Bayes]

We run a Grenadier which is just about 12months old. We had a few problems a couple of months back and initially tried to get it repaired through the suppliers Printmax, but eventually we by-passed them and went direct to B and P. I have to say I thought they were pretty good, though we did wait 2 or 3 days, which I suppose would be a problem if you are running jobs daily.

I’m in two minds as to whether to take an extended warranty – £2k seems steep to me, but at the back of my mind I’m thinking we’ve already had problems and can I take the chance. Has anyone had trouble free printing on a B&P machine for both 1st and 2nd year?

[Simon Clayton]

But if your printer went down and you were losing thousands of £s in lost work, or even lost one of your major cantracts, what then?, especially when you’ve paid £2 gand for extended warranty, would you not be fed up?

I’ve not had dealings with Bp, but from my experiance of buying very expensive £100k plus equipment from very large suppliers, is they bend over back wards to sell you nice new shinny expensive equipment, but have great difficulty with things go wrong..

And as we all know whoever shouts loudest get seen too first, this forum give people (like me) some sort of idea of what to expect and what quesions to ask… what sort of service will i get.

Also we always hear there side of the story, in the way of sales chat and adverts, its normally the let down customer you don’t hear from, its places like this forum that help keep big companies upto scratch with after sales service.. Word of mouth is a very powerful tool..

Simon

[Peter Normington]

Simon, word of mouth is fine, so long as its true.
Rumours and suposition can lead to all sorts of misunderstanding
Only last week we had a petrol shortage because peeps believed only one side of a story. always consider the facts, not what others tell you.

[John Cornfield]

David,

Welcome the reply, if you look through previous posts you will see that i have always recommended the products and the company.

I spoke with Graham P today and i appologised to Kevin for my rant yesterday which resulted in my post.

Graham brought me up to date with the part issue and i understand the delay, sort of.

Not sure why you dont hold more parts if you have 800 machines out there. If everyone, heck if half of them took a second year warranty that is nice business for you and should allow you to hold substantial stocks of parts to help reduce the down time for your customers.

We are lucky, we have two of your machines a 54″ and the 74″ so we have not totally lost solvent print production. But for someone with only one machine ( for most people) this could have major impact on them.

I have a a very good experience with B&P and look foward to doing so in future. We know a lot of people and get great service from them

Graham, Grant, Jason, Kevin in technical have got us running quickly
Stuart and Kate in consumables keep us up to dat eith prices and news
Andrew W has looked after us on hardware purchases
Shane is flexible on our account when required

So overall i cant really fault the company, we have had one wee issue at the wrong time for my company and so the frustrations boiled over.

Still think the Grenadiers are great printers they make me a good bit of money. Recommend anyone wanting true solvent commercial machine to consider them.

I will read the small print on the agreement.

I think that suppliers should have the right to reply to their critics.

[Simon Clayton]

But what John has said, is that he has had to wait over a week. that is fact, or why would he say it.. What is the other side of the story?? no explanation of why it has taken a week. as southern Andy said why if a part is not available take it off a stock machine.. But we won’t do that coz the part is only worth £200 to us when the whole machine is worth £20k

Now i bet when he was sold the machine, there were all sorts of promises made, as all these companies do.
Take when i first started up, i was sold talking pages advertising, promises of all sorts; only 3 sign companies in my area on the system and they were getting 370 call enquires a month, so by rights you will get a quarter as you are rotated, each time some asks for a sign company in that area,total crap, i got two call in a year. When i complained i was fobbed off, saying but that’s the figures we had when you sigh up, the calls must have dropped off..

I have worked for very big sign companies, and when their machinery broke down it was fixed within a day, and if the part was not available, a complete new machine was sent out, the reason being, this sign company had a £60m turn over and would sued the ar*e off the supplier..

Boards like this give us smaller companies a big voice to be heard, that’s why we get discounts ( that Rob has negotiated) and that’s why Dave at Bp has responded..

As for the petrol, people panic bought because the protesters said they were going to block petrol refineries as they did last time.. Also funny is how one day it was a £1 a litre and two days later it was down to .93p, yet the crude oil price was higher..

Simon

[Phill Fenton]

I recently bought a Cadet and was a bit concerned when I first read this thread.

However, I found David Burtons reply very reassuring.

My only other dealing with B&P was a few years ago when my Casmate Pro software dongle failed. Even though B&P hadn’t sold me the software originally (I bought it from a company called strucom – now long out of business) they sent me a new version and a software fix to re-program the dongle to get it working again. They had no obligation to do this for me but helped me nonetheless. I believe it was David whom I first contacted by email who put me in touch with Andrew Wilson who sorted this out for me. This was a few years ago – but this experience strikes me as being a sure sign of a company run with integrity who do what they can to serve the sign business to the best of their ability.

[Peter Normington]

quote Simon C:

But what John has said, is that he has had to wait over a week. that is fact, or why would he say it.. What is the other side of the story?? no explanation of why it has taken a week. as southern Andy said why if a part is not available take it off a stock machine.. But we won’t do that coz the part is only worth £200 to us when the whole machine is worth £20k

Now i bet when he was sold the machine, there were all sorts of promises made, as all these companies do.
Take when i first started up, i was sold talking pages advertising, promises of all sorts; only 3 sign companies in my area on the system and they were getting 370 call enquires a month, so by rights you will get a quarter as you are rotated, each time some asks for a sign company in that area,total crap, i got two call in a year. When i complained i was fobbed off, saying but that’s the figures we had when you sigh up, the calls must have dropped off..

I have worked for very big sign companies, and when their machinery broke down it was fixed within a day, and if the part was not available, a complete new machine was sent out, the reason being, this sign company had a £60m turn over and would sued the ar*e off the supplier..

Boards like this give us smaller companies a big voice to be heard, that’s why we get discounts ( that Rob has negotiated) and that’s why Dave at Bp has responded..

As for the petrol, people panic bought because the protesters said they were going to block petrol refineries as they did last time.. Also funny is how one day it was a £1 a litre and two days later it was down to .93p, yet the crude oil price was higher..

Simon

as you said Siimon, if you are turning over £60m a year, you will have some clout. but you also said you have no experience with B and P.
so to be fair, you cannot give an opinion.
no disrespect to John Cornfield, but why would you take his story as fact?
there are always 2 sides.
Just because he posts on the boards (as i do) dosnt mean he is perfect.
I take people as they come, in life,
but in this internet world it is easy to trust people you would dismiss if you met face to face
Peter

Edit for a ps
My apologies Simon, Of course you are entitled to give an opinion..

I didnt mean that like it sounds. But in a case like this, perhaps we should all stand back, and only let the client and customers have their say,
only then should we be sufficiently aware of both sides of the coin to comment.

[Rodney Gold]

This thread shows the value of these boards, Johns posting his story here seems to have achieved something , considering a high official of the co responded and will most likely keepp a close eye on the progress of this repair. Sometimes it does pay to be the squeaky wheel.

I have 3 yr warrantees on my lasers , and my agent is 1000 miles away from me , we often have to wait a day or 2 or even 5 for esoteric parts (stuff that doent really fail in any significant quantity) and if I want the tech guys out to do the repair , it costs me airfare and accomodation!!

[Hugh Potter]

i think there are plenty of valid points above, and while i have nothing to do with printers nor have i heard of B+P, i do have plenty of experience as an ex service engineer of over 5 years, so i can sympathise wth both sides,

it can be very frustrating for the customer, as it can for any of us who have to wait around for a plumber, electrician or any other service provider,

however, customers are notriously hard to please, the company i worked for had only 2 dedicated service engineers covering some 2000 machines throughout kent/sussex/hampshire and parts of essex/london, i covered 40,000+ miles in my new van in the 1st year ! they used to send us out same day if we could do it, parts were often stripped from new machines, or even from old machines to enable us get out as soon as possible and repair a machine, and i reckon i had more spares on my an than were left in the service area of the warehouse ! but a customer would still be annoyed that they had to wait til next day for their machine to be fixed !

on that basis i could never understand why when we could do it, that i’d have to wait three days or more for a tv repair man etc,

but on the other hand, some jobs would invariably take longer, either thru distance or time it took to obtain and raely malfunctioning part, for eg. a certain machine had a main circuit board that was over £1500 each, and there were about 20 variables of the said board, they came from the manufacturer in italy and took about a week from diagnosis to fitting, you certainly dont want to be stocking 20 of them to cover every eventuality when maybe only 5 a year would go wrong !

i think at the end of the day it’s down to your own perception of things, i mean, if a customer told you that their illuminated sign had suddenly stopped working, would you drop all other work to go do it immediately ? or that that customer wanted a new one tomorrow, would you carry the stock to be able to make a new 10×2 illuminated sign on the offchance ? i’m sure in a few cases you would/could, but what if it were 50 miles away ? in reality we all have our workload and have to work it as efficiently as possible !

no offence is meant to anyone here, but sometimes i think we all need to be a little patient and remember that ‘service’ is not one to one, however much it frustrates us all !

Hugh.

ps, glad it’s getting sorted for ya john 😀 ,

[Simon Clayton]

Fair comment Peter, i know what your saying, who do you believe?? without actually being there..
(it’s very difficult when trying to put a point across in text, a lot of my post sound totally different than intended, plus it take me ages to type the blooming things)….

I apologise to BP, my comment were in general, not directed at them, but i would have said the same, if no company name was mentioned as this is my experience with many companies that supply the sign-trade..

It seams the general rule for any large supplier over here; is if anything goes wrong, lets start passing the buck,
unless you are also a large company, but the thing is, large companies would properly have more than one machine, therefore it would have a much bigger impact on me, i’ve worked for companies that have gone down because of such things..

These machines have been around long enough for most of the general faults to have been discovered, stock levels should be there.. but i suppose because the technology keeps changing they don’t want loads of stock.

As Rodney has said, Johns posting has achieved something, which inturn will help other small companies be heard….

Simon

[Peter Thompson]

I’ve had problems with mutoh, My little rockhopper has been faulty for just over a month Now!!!! 👿 I’ve been in contact with both mutoh and the supplier i got it from and I’ve been passed from pillar to post for over 5weeks now, One thing for sure, I’ll never touch another rockhopper! the after-sales service & support is crap! i wondered why they haven’t got any mention of their support services on their website, I’ve now found out that they don’t seem to have any! they don’t care that I’m losing money having a printer sitting in my workshop doing nothing!

Pete

[John Simpson]

Pete,
would love to know if you had same supplier as me . as i have posted on here before about my Rockhopper 62″ problems, only my probs lasted for the 1st 3 MONTHS of it’s life.
Brilliant print quality just crap service.

L J

[Kevin Flowers]

Pete
what rockhopper do you have i have Rocky 38 went wrong last month had parts sent straight to me ready for engineer when he came to site. Maximum time for parts & engineer to come out 3 days

Kev

[Peter Thompson]

Hi Jon & Kev, I have a rocky 38, when i send a file to print it goes Through all the motions of printing but no inks coming out, I’ve replaced the cassettes with new ones (even though the ones in use were just put in) I’ve done head washes, and all it can manage is a faint image that prints in black only, I’ve really had enough of it now, I’ve been emailing mutoh’s service manager at their ostende offices and he just really couldn’t care less if the printer works or not! 5 weeks is a joke! the printer only run for 3 weeks from new, now they just pass the buck, the printer is under warranty but they keep telling me to call velmex, and they want to charge me £255 for a call out, £168 for the black head, £188 for the cmy head and £55 per hour whist the engineers on site, and no ones looked at it yet to verify whats wrong with it, I’m beginning to wish I’d bought a 30″ or 54″ cadet instead now, i know they are more expensive but at least the parent company is in the UK. i phoned artsytems today as mutoh told me they were the main importers in the UK, i’m waiting (yet again) for them to phone me back
If i had Hair i’d be pulling it out!!!!

Pete

[John Cornfield]

Update – Part arriving tomorrow direct from Roland and a call from the technical team to confirm the visit tomorrow.

I agree with Rodney something positive MD of major supplier to the industry sticks is head above parrapit post his email address and explains where his company comes from on an issue. Other MD’s of suppliers to our industry need to take a leaf out of his book.

Positive for B&P they have mainly supportive posts.

Machine will be back on tomorrow so i will be a happy bunny

[Kevin Flowers]

Pete
Artsystems are my dealer excellant service, anyway sounds like the capping station isn’t sealing against the heads properly had a similar problem myself the other week after having a new capping station fitted black packed up and couldn’t get it back. needed the printer to run so looked at it myself found that by putting seringe on to the waste pipe for the black pushing the head slightly further & gently applying sucking pressure on the seringe the head cleared & stayed clear until their engineer could get out to re-align the capping station. if you want to give some more details i’ll see if i can help you.

Kev

[Peter Thompson]

Hi Kev, Cheers for that I’ll give a go in the morning, I’ll phone artsystems again in case they have forgotten me, they seemed helpful on the phone, more than i can say for mutoh themselves!
I may well be in touch seeking more of your advice Kev if that’s ok.

Pete

[southernandy]

Deja Vu for me on this one 🙁

We had our digital printer back in 97 and ALL the hassles you are mentioning were apparent then; lack of spares, main dealers in Europe and hard to get hold of, lack of IN DEPTH understanding of the printers- what they will, won’t do and all that.

We had our’s for 9 months when some technical dude in Belgium asked if we were using the ink heater supplied with the machine- errr, no cos we haven’t got one and first we’ve heard- heater box arrives and much, much better.

This was a Fujifilm machine so you’d really expect much better off of one of the largest photographic companies on the planet- but no! (to this day I will not buy anything associated with fuji- even a chuck away camera).

I’m reading this thread with amazement- it’s the best part of a decade since I had my fingers burnt and it seems like it’s business as usual out there- it’s NOT impossible to get a service system setup for digital printers sorted out properly- it justs cost’s a bit of money to do properly and maybe that’s the issue.

One more reason to steer clear of a digital printer- no way on this earth I’d ever waste… whoops… “invest” any of my money in digital print gear ever again.

Good luck everyone who has problems- life would be grand if service was as good as sales- very efficient at taking the pennies when you order the machine I seem to remember 🙁

[Kevin Flowers]

Not a problem Pete,
How do you find the printer in general, what software are you running

Kev

[Peter Thompson]

I like the rocky 38, its ok, I use onyx at the mo, but I’m looking into getting ergosoft as I’ve heard it will work with my summa d120se ok, what do you use Kev?

Big Pete

[Kevin Flowers]

Yeah i like as a printer to, I use flexi at present with my own modified profile on to Doro Tapes D-Jet 75 vinyl, but i have put canvas & coated media through it and different banner materials

Kev

[John Simpson]

that’s the supplier i bought from Pete, plenty of advice on the phone but usually wrong advice but nuf said about them as i could go on all night about them.

Art systems at Nottingham have been brilliant (since i found them). they suggested i take my machine to them and they would fix while i wait.
They did a brilliant job & gave me free advice about my other Mutoh equipment.
They even phoned me a few days later to see if everything was still running OK.

L J

PS I will certainly buy from Art Systems next time.

[David Rowland]

Art Systems are a very good company.

[John Simpson]

forgot to mention, while i was their this chap came up to me and offered me a coffee, then sat with me talking about any other probs i had with my equipment. after half an hour general chit chat he left & i asked the engineer who he was and was told he is the MD !!!!!!!!!

as i said, brilliant firm to deal with.

L J

[Rodney Gold]

One thing I forgot to mention , we have a flatbed printer from Korea , We have a local tech guy here , but hes not that well clued up and the machine had been having intermittent problems
Anyway to cut a long story short , the sales manager flew from Korea to South africa on a visit , he got to my place and listened to some of my problems , and hey presto , whipped out a whole case full of spares and tools and proceeded to fix and upgrade my machine
You could see he knew exactly what he was doing. I was amazed at this. He told me that EVERY salesperson and just about ANY employee that deals with machines they supply HAVE to be able to service and fix them too!!!!
What a wonderfukl notion , perhaps more western co’s supplying machines should do this too.

[Simon Clayton]

That’s the trouble over here Rodney, they only want to sell you the machine… That’s easy money for them..

Now I’m no engineer, but don’t these machines all work on the same principle? can’t be that hard.. can they?
Simon

[David Rowland]

I was on the phone earlier with B&P’s competitor and was talking about an extended waranty on our machine, keeping the post simple…

The price of the waranty seems to be in the 2K region and as we have had a gap in the period, they want to come out and inspect the machine prior to taking it on. Our heads are starting to deflect on one head, the price of the parts seems to be 4x then prices in the states.

Can someone confirm that the heads for the Grenadier/Cadets are near £1000 each? I know a Epson standard head is a third of that price

Trying to keep this post ball park, don’t want to start up a flame war again

[Kevin Flowers]

Dave
beware extended warranties dont normally cover heads

Kev

[David Rowland]

yep i know, and they became cautious after mentioned our deflection issues