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Ouch!! one of those weeks
Everytime I seem to be making headway, something crops up.
Just before I went in to hospital, my second machine went nuts, and stopped printing anywhere near decent. I couldn’t use it for any close work at all.. I had no missing pins, but the overspray on two colours was awful. Both machines were a month off their 6 monthly service, so I rang the techs and asked them to do the services early, and replace one of the heads.
They came out and while they were replacing the head, one of the pumps seized and needed replacing. Then the waste line became blocked and needed unblocking. It couldn’t be unblocked properly, so they replaced the tubing back to the caps. Then they noticed the caps had not been replaced on the last service, so they insisted on replacing all of them. When they had finished, after a fair few hours, the bill was over $3000 😮 ($250 call out and $170 an hour plus parts)
That was bad enough. Then, I went into hospital and was off work for 2 weeks. The day I got back, I turned my other machine on and it came up with a ‘sum error’ and showed it was a ‘jetpro 2’ on the lcd screen. What the?
I rang tech support and they told me the battery backup had probably died. It would be a 2 hr fix. They’d have to change the battery then reload the data back into the motherboard.
It was no good to me as it was, so asked them to get it working.
The tech came out, replaced the battery, even though he didn’t think it needed it, then spent over 2 hours reloading the data. That meant also redoing the service of the heads and calibration of the print and cut etc.
That cost me close to $500 😮
The tech had no sooner driven off, and I got the ‘sum error’ again.
I rang the tech company and they got the guy to come back before he left the area.
After several more hours, he decided the motherboard needed replacing. What! How much is that I asked.
Probably close to $2000 he reckoned. They only had one in stock, and if I wanted to proceed, he’d have to advise his office to hold it for me.
Once again, it was no good to me not working, and my workload was building up, so I approved him to replace the board.
He needed to get the senior technician from head office to make sure his diagnosis was right, so he was called to come and have a look.
Problem was, the data was now corrupt, so he had to log onto a database somewhere and re download virgin data, then update the version, then re calibrate it, and re test it. Then, they realised that the new board was working so well, it seemed to make my print heads work ‘better’ and caused the oldest 4 to start overspraying wildly. I had to replace 2 of them as it was hopeless. I used the last 2 heads in stock. I am trying to work with the other two heads until I can afford to change them.
When the tech left, he gave me a bill for just under $7000. I nearly died.
The motherboard was charged at $3300 – not $2000. He apologised for the misquote, but he would look after me on the heads.
In two bills I’ve been charge over $10,000!!! Not for the faint hearted.
That, combined with not working for 2 weeks, and on light duties for another two weeks, I’ve had better months 🙁
Roland may not make huge profits on their machines, but they make up for it on the spares. Nothing short of a rip off in my opinion. It is such a closed shop for repairs, we are all held to ransom when things fail.
Rant over….. 🙄
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14 Replies
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holy shit! 😮
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Shane I feel your pain, they have us over a barrel when it comes to repairs.
Peter
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Shane you should give my dad a call on the gold coast and ask him for the tech he uses.
$170.00 is alot of money I would expect that they should of been able to tell you all these parts needed changing before you started spending money on it for the price they charge.
The total amount you spent on it you might of been better off buying a new printer and trading this one in. Also I would hold them to the quote you were given for the motherboard. I cant quote a cheap price then charge more after the job is finished because I got my price mixed up.Roland printers are good machines but I would never buy one because of the cost of parts.
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Ouch….that’s painful. Also reads like the ‘tech’ wasn’t particularly good at diagnostics and you’ve suffered both business wise and financially.
That’s tough luck…….
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10K AUD = £6K
What is annoying is the techs not knowing what to do next.
I believe the JV3 battery can also cause similar headache
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quote Luke s Bremner:Shane you should give my dad a call on the gold coast and ask him for the tech he uses.
$170.00 is alot of money I would expect that they should of been able to tell you all these parts needed changing before you started spending money on it for the price they charge.
The total amount you spent on it you might of been better off buying a new printer and trading this one in. Also I would hold them to the quote you were given for the motherboard. I cant quote a cheap price then charge more after the job is finished because I got my price mixed up.Roland printers are good machines but I would never buy one because of the cost of parts.
Thanks guys, yes I think I paid more than I should, but I was over a barrel. I needed the machine to work.
Luke, I’m pretty sure i use the same guy as your dad. One of their techs went out on his own and charges less an hour, but the last time I used him he put in a cheap pump that died after a few months. He doesn’t have access to Roland parts, so if he can’t get cloned parts, he buys them off a Roland agent and puts his markup on.
The techs I use are Roland trained, and are usually very good. I spoke to the senior technician and he said I’m pretty unlucky as they haven’t needed to change a motherboard in 4 years.
I would have got a cheaper price if I’d shopped around, but I doubt I would have got the machine up an running quickly, and whose to say the cheaper companies wouldn’t have taken longer anyway.
My accountant tells me that over the life of the machine so far, its not a lot of money. The hard part is finding it in one lump sum.
The Gold Coast sign show next week, I;ve considered trdaing one in on a new one, but not convinced myself, or my accountant, yet 🙂
Thanks for the comments friends.
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Shane
Sorry to hear of your problems mate, it never rains as they say.
Hope your luck changes.
I know the horse has bolted, but can you not get a maintenance contract over there?
I am paying around £1500 pa which covers all parts and labour, even accidental damage, at least it spreads the cost over the year.
Take carePeter
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hell of a trauma on the wallet is that one, sorry to hear it.
Like Peter says, are contracts not available? I was chatting to someone about this very thread last night and they pay about £1000 (gbp) a year, never costs a penny if / when things go wrong. be worth looking into, you may not use it for two years but this one week would have paid for it 4x over.
anyways, not sure i’d sell em now you’ve spent all that money on them, then again, might make them more valuable on the used market now they’ve been maintained to date and the expensive bits replaced – which will have their own warranty. tough call.
Hugh
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The other thing you could consider is an insurance policy. We have them on our
machines. Not a maintenance contract, but if anything breaks down, we are
covered for parts and labour, with a £250 excess. Costs just over £100 per
month for both machines. We can choose which engineers we use too. -
Hi guys, we don’t have maintenance contracts here as a standard item, I think the bigger sign shops arrange contracts individually if they want to, but its not cheap by any stretch of the imagination. I’ll be looking into it at the sign show coming up anyway. Might be easier to put a couple of hundred dollars aside every month to be safe 🙁
I also tried to get an insurance policy a couple of years ago, but no one was interested… 😕
Worth looking into anyway. Thanks for the advice friends.
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quote Dave Rowland:10K AUD = £6KWhat is annoying is the techs not knowing what to do next.
I believe the JV3 battery can also cause similar headache
so can a Mutoh,
Our rockhopper is never switched off, maybe for a full restart but that’s it, The last snow storm took the electric out and left us with no power for 2 day’s,
when we powered up the printer it had completely forgotten that it even was a printer, It thought it was a penguin or something, but the last thing it knew to do was print!!! (hot)Turns out the battery was dead,
Have to damit my engineer wasn’t as expensive, but it cost me a lot of ink as the first thing it did when it rembered it was a printer was do a tube and head fill of inks, Dumping about 30ml of ink in the process !!!! -
Maaaaaattttttee… What a pisser!
Isn’t that typical of that Murphy git?
I’m surprised you aren’t on a maintenance contract with Roland. I’ve had about 4 heads replaced including the Moboard all under warranty.
I really feel for you mate.
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quote Lee Attewell:Maaaaaattttttee… What a pisser!
Isn’t that typical of that Murphy git?
I’m surprised you aren’t on a maintenance contract with Roland. I’ve had about 4 heads replaced including the Moboard all under warranty.
I really feel for you mate.
Hi Lee, When I started using TechINK bulk inks, Roland told me that they would not service or support my machine(s) anymore. I was the first Roland in Australia to convert to TechINKs at the time, and Roland were trying to make an example out of me. With well over 120 Rolands converted now, I’m not sure Rolands stance has changed any. So I’ve been with non roland supported service centres ever since. The guys I use are affiliated with Roland agents overseas, but it doesn’t help me here in terms on contract repairs here.
My accountant tells me that I’ve had a pretty good run in 7 years, and that over that period, under a contract arrangement, I would probably spent a similar amount. The hard part is actually finding the money in one lump sum. 🙁
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Blimy Shane…
That is a big hit to take…in all ways.
Chin up honnie, dont let it get you down … 😉
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