Shopping for service on a new press

[jrsc]

So we are shopping for a new press. Looking at all the big guys: Xerox, Konica, Ricoh, Canon, Kodak. I feel like I can do a fairly good job comparing and testing the equipment to determine what best fits us. The problem is service. We all know that the service you get on your machine plays as big if not a bigger role than the equipment itself. The problem is I have no idea how to evaluate the service from companies I've never worked with. During the purchase process we really only deal with the sales staff with an opportunity to meet the service staff but that's about it. Everyone claims their service is the best and they have lots of knowledgeable techs. They can point me to other customers to talk to but there are several problems with that. 1. They send you to talk to people they know haven't had problems. 2. The type of service one place may need may be different than what I need. 3. There aren't a lot of good comparisons because there aren't a ton of other print shops in our area and we have a much higher digital volume than most. Other than buying a machine to test service for several months I have no idea how to properly evaluate each company. How have other people gone about this?

 

[PricelineNegotiator]

If service matters, Xerox is only way to go.

 

[arossetti]

If service matters, Xerox is only way to go.

Unless you go Indigo, then what is service?

 

[Guest]

Don't know first hand about all the players, but speaking from experience, service is great with HP AND Xerox. It is in their best interest to get you back up and running so you can add clicks to your meter. But if you are super concerned about service response, learn as much as you can about your machine so you can self service most items instead of waiting for a tech to arrive.

Where you have to be concerned is with their accounting departments. When they make billing mistakes (and I find that to be often), it is extremely difficult and time consuming to get them rectified. I think they make their mistakes so difficult to challenge, so that you will just say it's not worth it (ESPECIALLY XEROX). Makes me tired just thinking of the bureaucracy they force you to wade through.

Best of luck!

 

[printing656]

In my area, I was snubbed by Xerox even though we were bringing a million + color clicks to the table. The salesman was uninterested in my business.
If you don't get caught with bundled leases with service, you will have more flexibility if there are issues. Corporate philosophy here is to purchase instead of leasing, which ultimately gives you the most freedom in the event something does go wrong with a dealer.

Ask to see mean times between failures for the different machines from the different reps. They should be able to provide you with a nice chart that spans the entire service department and gives you a better idea of how good their service is and the machines they sell. If they only have 1 or 2 of those machines in the field, then move onto another vendor.

 

[wonderings]

I think it depends on your area, heard bad and good about some of the different players. In our area of Ontario Xerox support is great. Usually have service same day and latest morning next day. I think you can have some guarantees about service in a contract, maybe specify an expected response time for any issues before pulling the trigger.

 

[jrsc]

Thanks for the comments. I understand that it's different in every area as well as talking with them and asking for commitments. But does anyone have any better way to actually evaluate them before buying a machine from them. BS from the sales guys means almost nothing. Service guarantees with no real penalty for not hitting the commitments are also worthless in my opinion. Being able to back out of a service contract isn't usually useful either because you are either stuck paying for a machine you can't use or paying a very high click rate from someone else because you didn't buy the machine from them. Has any one ever had any luck getting a company to put a machine in for 3-6 months so you can test their service? Even if it is just a small machine just so service can be tested.

 

[Shawnd]

That was our worry about switching from Xerox (great local service) to Ricoh (unknown) so Ricoh introduced us to the local service manager and gave us 2 months to try them out, if the Service or machine isn't up to par we go back to Xerox. So far Ricoh has been bending over backwards to keep us running and happy. They have 2 local techs trained on our machine and a 3rd going to training for backup.