I believe Canon has a new service policy about printers that need repeated service calls. Jim Doyle (of Shades of Paper) says Canon has a new & positive attitude about customer service, & he's meeting with them to discuss needs/expectations of the fine-art printing community.
I had an unusual string of parts failures in my iPF5000, & the service technicians had trouble fixing them. In brief: Hardware Error 1 = new carriage spring; roll feeder gear failure; friction/squeaking in carriage, not changed by lubrication; whole new carriage; random failures to recognize cartridges, requiring new sensors; further carriage friction, wearing out some sort of tape that tracks carriage movement. This took five service visits, one of them 2 days' work; & one more part arrived that would've required another service call. In addition, replacing the cartridge sensors involved 2 flushings of the ink lines and filled an extra maintenance tank - quite an expense on my part for ink!
That was the bad news. The good news is that things took a notable turn for the better: I wrote to Jim that I was really frustrated & wanted replacement with a new unit - and with a bit of a push on his part, they did it! And not just another 5000, a 5100! If you have a good dealer, these folks will hear about problems & 'come through.'
I got a call from a Canon rep that a replacement would be forthcoming. I suggested to him that when any particular repair needs more than 1 or 2 visits, Canon should do what Epson does, at least with 17" printers - send another & take the troubled one back to be refurbished. He thought this was a good idea, & I hope it got passed up the chain.
Also I suggested that the service techs have a sort of 5xxx - 6xxx repair kit, with the roll feed gears on hand for replacement whenever they make a call re: a printer with the 'early' gears. And a supply of ink - at least a set of 90ml starter cartridges - & a spare maintenance tank, so that when they have to drain & refill the ink lines, the client won't find - as we did - that there isn't enough ink on hand to start, test, & run the printer after the repair.
The rep seemed receptive to these suggestions, and Jim sent a note that he's meeting with some Canon higher-ups to improve customer service for the fine-arts printing community, particularly those of us who have just one printer & want Canon print quality without long repair delays.
I think these are positive signs of a turn-around in Canon's interest in customer service. I believe they're finally listening to us & hearing dealers like Jim.
Kirk Thompson
www.dryreading.com/kirkthompson/('Scuse me, that was a 'push,' not a 'psuh,' at the beginning - but I it looks like you can't edit the topic titles.)
