Canon v900 - Anyone with experience

[tngcas]

Canon has officially given up trying to fix our v1000 and we are exploring replacement options.
Right now our techs have recommended a pair of v900s as they have a bunch in the field in our area and say that they don't see many issues. Bonus: because there's so many in the field all the techs are well versed on them and the parts are available much easier than the v1000. The techs say that when there is a repair job on the v1000 it's more like our c810s and 910 where it's just a couple hours to fix. On the v1000 we routinely experience days of downtime for even simple things and it's been down for 3 weeks this time and they still don't have a fix.

Is anyone running Canon v900s? What has your experience been like?
Honestly, this is Canon's last shot with us and if we don't get it right, the boss isn't likely to give them another chance. If we didn't have another three years on the v1000 lease we would probably be shopping around right now.

 

[DJenkins]

We do have a V800 and it is the same engine as the V700 V800 and V900. Only thing different between them is the speed of them. We only use our V800 for envelopes and i have to say it has been good for the year or so we have had it. Only have had techs in maybe twice after install but then again we dont run high volumes either.

 

[AC Prepress]

We've had a v900 for about a year and a half and have had very few issues. It's a pretty reliable machine. A lot fewer service calls than with our previous machines (KM and Ricoh)

 

[Isellequipment]

I am in production equipment sales offering Canon, Konica and Xerox. We are one of the largest Canon Dealers in the country <- just in case you need a future contact .

To answer your question it sounds like the technicians are just not familiar with the V1000. As long as you don't need the 400gsm paper handling having 2 V900's to replace 1 V1000 is a great option and they are easier to work on. They are a much more common machine as another poster pointed out the V700, V800 and V900 are all the exact same minus speed and the reliability has been very good on those devices. Sorry you are having issues but don't let this experience make you anti Canon. New machines come out all the time and some are better than others. If you don't work with me I recommend finding a multi manufacture dealer with some history. This way they have more alternatives if something doesn't work the way you need it to.

 

[namelessentity]

We had a lot of growing pains with our C10000 when it was new and almost gave up as well. Are you with Canon direct, or is it a third party? There should be a specialist that they can escalate your issues to. I don't think the v900 would be bad, but the v1000 and the v1350 are a lot more robust production machines. your techs are likely more used to office equipment, and not the production lines.
You've said you were pretty happy with your 810, so I'd guess the v900 would be suitable, but I would hate giving up the dual fusers and the significantly higher duty cycle of the 1000.

 

[Snowhugger]

I've been running a Canon V900 now for almost two years (Jan 2023). It has been a nightmare experience. This has been due largely to the sales and training personnel we had initially. Very little training and poor support. This summer our Fiery crashed and burned. Ended up replacing the server and multiple interface components, boards etc. We were down on and off for 2 months. I learned a lot about printing without a fiery front end as a result. Buyer beware ;-)

 

[tngcas]

We had a lot of growing pains with our C10000 when it was new and almost gave up as well. Are you with Canon direct, or is it a third party? There should be a specialist that they can escalate your issues to. I don't think the v900 would be bad, but the v1000 and the v1350 are a lot more robust production machines. your techs are likely more used to office equipment, and not the production lines.
You've said you were pretty happy with your 810, so I'd guess the v900 would be suitable, but I would hate giving up the dual fusers and the significantly higher duty cycle of the 1000.

We love the speed of the v1000 (we are with canon direct) but if the techs can't support it then it's not a good solution. As I've told canon. A running machine is faster than a non-running machine. They already replaced the print engine once and are currently proposing replacing the print engine again but I'm not sure how that solves the problem. Unless they plan to replace the print engine every year.

The only truly trained techs are all based a nearly 1.5hour drive away from us. The local ones don't truly know how to fix it. When the v1000 goes down, by the time a tech arrives it's halfway through the day. By the time they troubleshoot it and decide what parts are needed they've missed the part ordering cutoff time so we lose the first day, the second day, the third day is when parts arrive and about 50% of the time they find that that wasn't the problem. At a minimum it's always 3 days of downtime. This is the third or fourth time the repairs have escalated to "specialists" level and right now it's been four weeks and we still don't have a solution. The techs have worked hard to try to solve it but even they don't know what the issue is.