Greetings,
You might recognize me from the iPF5000 wiki (Thanks so much to John Hollenberg and the rest of the guys there) posting as DV/DT.
I am a long time fan of LL, and a supporter via the video journal since 2004. I have lurked in the forums here in the past, preferring to learn and listen and never really feeling compelled to contribute until now.
The thread I started at the iPF5000 wiki featuring the banded print examples has been up for just under a week. During that week I have heard nothing from my contact at Canon customer relations. This was after promising to give me a status report the week before. This lack of response speaks quite clearly to me. The last straw was when he failed to return my voice message that I left for him on Thursday morning, March 29th.
Since Canon customer relations *did* care enough to send me a link to a web based survey I took advantage of it. Unfortunately the web form has a 2000 word limit, so I had to edit it down. Here is my answer to the survey in its entirety, remember these words are addressed to Canon customer relations:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I hope this feedback your organization has requested will be put to good use. To this day I believe Canon has few peers in its ability to place advanced technology in the hands of consumers at fair prices. That ability means nothing, however, if the people running the company forget who ultimately funds those R&D labs.
I invite you to read on, and to ask yourselves if any of YOU would be happy with the response from your service organization if YOU were the customer. When the field tech representing your company agrees with me that there is a print quality issue with your "professional" photo printer I don't think it is unreasonable to expect your team to resolve the problem to my satisfaction.
I gave your service organization over two months to repair my printer. When the problem remained unresolved I fully expected a new printer. Instead I was informed that an anonymous engineer at Canon had decreed my printer was delivering "acceptable" results. Acceptable? For whom? So banding in my prints is now a feature? Can you all grasp what an insult that answer was after two months of working on this printer?
I was then handed off to this department, Canon customer relations. After relating my story to my assigned rep I waited two additional weeks for some sort of resolution, culminating in a non-productive phone conversation and a promise from the rep to follow up on the matter. On March 25th I began scanning and photographing the output of my printer, having decided it was time to allow the user community to judge if the printer's output was indeed "acceptable".
I invite you to see for yourself, and do note that prints 5,6 and 7 are on Canon Photo Paper Plus, an exact match for the driver and printer paper setting.
http://canonipf5000.wikispaces.com/message/view/FAQ/407614After another week of silence from your rep I left him a message and again asked for some kind of status report. That was on March 29th. As of March 31st there has been no reply. Congratulations. You have discovered the absolute limit of my patience. I have sadly decided to cut my losses with this printer AND with your organization. Your competitor in this market, Hewlett Packard, while not perfect, is more than willing to stand behind its product. HP covers both the printer and the "consumables" with clearly stated written warranties, not relying on ad hoc coverage for crucial elements like print heads.
It was never my intent to bash Canon. Indeed, this is the first time in my 43 years that I have been treated so poorly by an organization that I felt compelled to sound a warning in a public forum. I would much prefer to be printing and displaying beautiful, artifact free prints worthy of the excellent files captured by my Canon DSLRs. Your organization's unwillingness to properly address the reality of a DOA printer that could not be repaired in the field has permanently damaged your reputation both for me and, I trust, for anyone contemplating an investment in one of your products.
Every manufacturer, no matter how competent, occasionally produces a lemon; I accept that as a reality of mass production. This is not a story about a faulty printer, this is a story about corporate arrogance.
Regards,
Tim
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thus ends my relationship with Canon for my printing needs. I am not interested in lawsuits or any other life draining exercises, I'll let the court of public opinion take care of justice. I do think it is positively zen-like how I am posting this message at LL, since it was Mr. Reichmann's upbeat six month followup that led me to get out the credit card in the first place. I have no doubt it's a great printer if you get a good copy, but my experiences with a defective one should be an embarrassment to all involved.
Currently I am in the serious research phase of what will likely culminate in the purchase of a 24 inch z3100. I am in the hole $1612 with the Canon, and it appears I have the option to either take a $1000 rebate and keep the Canon or take the $1200 trade in allowance and surrender the printer. Either option plus the sale of my remaining ink might allow me to break even in a screwed up kind of way, if I don't count the small forest worth of photo paper and the time wasted on this exercise. At this point that looks like a victory.
If there is one lesson I am taking away from this it is the importance of buying from a dealer who is willing to take up the slack should the manufacturer's idea of support turn out to be a disappointment. Any suggestions? I already have a short list but more data is appreciated.
Regards,
Tim