Printergy Without A Service Contract?

[StayDry]

Has anyone out there purchased Printergy (or other equivalent pre press system) and NOT gotten the service contract to go with it? If so..."How's that working for ya?"
I'm trying to get information from my rep on whether or not they will sell it that way and if they will I'm thinking about rolling the dice...what could go wrong...right?
Let me know if any of you are 'living on the edge'.

Thanks!
-StayDry

 

[akalaray]

Service Contract

Service Contract

I have a Heidleberg system. I have a month to month contract. Phone support only. The techs are very good.

 

[DCurry]

They will sell it that way, but I would advise you to get the contract for at least the first year while you get used to it and work out the kinks. It is an awesome workflow - I miss mine!

 

[Colorblind]

I have a Agfa ApogeeX workflow prepress system since 2007 and doing quite well without the support contract. Think we had 90 days of free support when we bought it and made one call or two in that period. Other than that, I had the Agfa guy in only once because of something only a tech guy could fix. I didn't have to wait long (maybe I was lucky) and it cost us about 700$ but we still managed to save thousands of $. I think if your workflow is mostly software and it's robust, there is lots of information out there (such as this place) to help you solve most of the problems that can occur. But maybe it's me that enjoys living on the edge

 

[Alex71]

No support contract with Kodak=you pay for every patch.

 

[jetzerm]

I think of a service contract as insurance. If you own a business you buy insurance on the building, equipment, against lawsuits, etc. Not doing so and you would be out of business pretty quick if you don't have the capital to replace a piece of equipment and such. Your workflow is no different. If you can't make plates, proofs or process files you're not feeding your presses and not making money. It's a cost of doing business. Plenty of people will say they do it, I believe it's living on borrowed time.

 

[chevalier]

My personal view is that service contracts in prepress are mainly for those who do not want to learn their software. That said, there are definite strengths in having them. Most of the vendors (especially the large ones) have little to nonexistent interest in being support/repair/service oriented. They are oriented toward big ticket item sales and moving on.

Most of the systems come with 90 days - 1 year of support built-in to the cost of the initial purchase. Kodak has a reputation for being less than customer friendly when outside of their support contract system. If you are going to learn your software inside and out and manage it I say take the base or up to one year and then go as needed.

 

[Kenneth]

Everyone makes some good points. Before deciding you might want to take a look at other forums B4Print.com including Kodaks at GUA Forums - Powered by vBulletin There are many good reasons that you must register and log in to view the printergy and workflow forums - one is the GUA bomb thread. It's interesting that Kodak managers explain on their forum the reasons Kodak cancels service contracts thereby eliminating support but no mention of canceling plate contracts.

Jackie makes a good case for a service contract - since it may take many service calls to get a problem resolved through their response center techs - my experience as well:

http://printplanet.com/forums/kodak-systems/22543-appe-risky-business

Sometimes kodak remote techs don't even acknowledge the problem we are experiencing either - as in this case from november 2009. Kodak has a reputation for being less than customer friendly to customers when problems are not solved by their remote techs. Sometimes kodak will try to go over the prepress managers head to try to discredit the prepress staff. Kodak will defend their 'experts' when they fail to the point of alientating customers. Then customers end up doing all the legwork:

Installed 10.5.8 on G4 and now iKey dongle fails - GUA Forums

Dongle Problem - GUA Forums

Software updates are not free, kodak customers must have a service contract:

http://printplanet.com/forums/kodak-systems/21240-kodak-changing-rules-ecentral-downloads-march-1-a

Expect more downtime than usual with kodak support. I know printers that have been down for days at a time with and without a service contract. You might want to go with the least expensive service contract, which will cover you for the long term unresolved problems.

I miss my Heidelberg system and support. The techs are the best. And customer friendly!

 

[ajr]

Think about the potential problems you may have. For problems regarding ripping of files trapping issues etc, you can get an answer from forums like this. Big problems are when your hard drive fails and you have to re install and reconfigure everything. Also bug fixes and updates, no software is perfect these, would be included in your contract.

Print businesses are funny about service contracts, at my place none of the pre-press macs and pcs are covered, only the pcs on our RIP, but all of the office pcs are covered. They get replaced every 3 years have remote backup, software support etc nothing to worry about. Costs them a fortune!

A

 

[Kenneth]

poor support and extra charges

poor support and extra charges

Recently ran into a situation where Kodak are charging $8,000.00 for a media calibration on a Trensetter VLF. Holy cow!!! This is to go from Kodak Gold to Agfa Energy Elite, I guess it should not come as a surprise as to why the price is $8,000.00. I must say that I have not seen this before, the price used to be $1,500.00 - $3,000.00.

It looks like desperation to keep the consummable business can lead to some very unethical business practices.

Has anyone else seen this happen?

Cheers,

RP

If you have their platesetter a service contract may or may not cover a media calibration for a plate change. Somethng else to consider.

 

[Jackie]

I would recommend getting the service contract for the 1st year at least. Prinergy is a great program but it has almost too much functionality. I'm still figuring out new stuff after 3 years. There will be some bumps in the road for the first little while until you get everything customized to suit your shop and your output devices.

In my initial service contract we had one plate change included but I don't know if that is standard or was added in. We no longer have phone support but our parts our covered which is another option to consider.

I'm particularly lucky in the fact that I'm in Prinergy's back yard in Burnaby BC and I get to try out the Beta versions of the program. As long as I give them a run down of the few bugs I encounter I get to ask any sort of weird and random questions of the developers and even suggest stuff. A good trade off.

This forum is a great resource of information as well but problems with the initial set up means downtime, and for the most part you just can't afford too much of that.

 

[VladCanada]

8K dollars... It looks like a penalty for switching the production from the original vendor consumables to competitor's ones
AGFA and Fuji will do the same things, keeping in mind they both sell Screen machines and some machine parameters are hidden under the service password.