Hi everyone. We need some rather urgent help. I am re-posting my husband's post from photo.net to give the full story...
Short version, I'm looking for someone in the Chicago Area who has an Epson 9800 a roll of PLPP 260 and would like to take a few custom print orders.
Or someone who can help solve my printer problem.
Medium version, my wife and I are Fine Art Landscape Photographers in the Chicago area (www.farrarfocus.com) I've got a lemoned Epson, it is mostly through my show season and Epson + onsite tech (+ me) cannot find what is wrong with my printer, and I need to get a few orders finished. What I need to do is send out, file + printer profile + exact print settings for CS2/CS3 which enable prints to be made that matched my own prints.
Long version ... ie the Nightmare printer problem, for your enjoyment or amusement, or whatever,
Just a few months past our factory warranty. Problem Started with a mild, add prints to queue, then nothing would print. First weekend, tried everything from different printer cables, wiping out photoshop and re-installing, re-installing printer firmware, installing newer drivers, etc, etc. I have a Mac and I used to be a Unix admin, so I went through all the CUPS (print queue on that version of MacOSX that I had) stuff, and still nothing. Couldn't get printer to work. Ironically, test print, diagnostic output, and head cleaning worked fine from the Epson Control Panel software.
So my wife borrowed another computer, and sure enough could print. So I figured, bound to be something wrong with the operating system, ie like a corrupted system file or something like that. Bought the newest OSX upgrade, did a full system backup, wiped the drive, and re-installed new OSX, and fresh copy of CS2. Had to work, but sure enough it didn't work.
Wife got back to talking with Epson, re-borrowed the other computer, did tests on the other computer like printing from other applications, and lastly printing the image which didn't print on our other machine. Sure enough it started printing, and thus the Epson tech said that it was conclusive that our computer had a hardware problem, we needed a new computer, end of story.
So went and bought a new Mac, had to get CS3 upgrade (because we only had the powerpc CS2, and now had a new intel mac), set the machine up. Figured it had to print fine (new everything), and wow it didn't print the file.
Got back on Epson tech support line, and they seemed to be more concerned about denying any responsibility for our unnecessary purchase of a brand new computer and photoshop upgrade, then they were about helping us solve our problem. The new story from them was that our printer needed a new main board, and that we needed to have a local contracted tech come over (which of course we would get charged a few hundred in hourly rate regardless of if the problem can be solved) and install the board (which was a little under 1/3 the cost of a replacement printer). Never mind that we just spent over the cost of the printer in computer equipment after they told us it was a computer problem. Also never mind that at this point we haven't been able to print new inventory for our business for a while when we only have a very short summer show season (june to late august).
So reluctantly we call up the tech and schedule an on-site appointment. They say that the new main board is on backorder and it will take a while to show up. So we wait some more. Another show goes by. Tech finally gets over, tries the board, and sure enough it still doesn't work.
However tech did manage to track down the problem to that everything but custom print sizes seems to print fine. So this was the crucial thing missed in early testing. We only ever printed from our machine from photoshop with custom print sizes (after all we require border-less printing and have no use for non-custom sizes) so it was obviously broken. Unfortunately that last test print on the borrowed computer might not have been done with a custom print size. Tech concluded that the printer hardware reports 100% good, and has no idea of what to do to solve the problem. Makes sense given that my wife and I are a very low volume printer, and the printer still shows something like almost 80% life left on all major components on diagnostic (only replaced the dump tank once so far).
Somewhat out of options here.
Anyone have any ideas?
Epson wants nothing to do with us. They are now suggesting we send them our print settings so they can try and reproduce the problem on their perfectly non-broken/non-lemon printers (haha). Wow. I can only imagine how quickly I would personally go out of business if treated my customers the way I've been treated by Epson.
Hell if I was Epson I think the conversation would go something like this,
"Mr. Farrar, as a loyal customer who had purchased multiple Epson printers, ink and paper, and especially given that you were planning on purchasing a larger Epson printer this year, continuously recommend Epson products to the tens of thousand enthusiast photographers you see at the art shows each year, and depend on our printers for your business, what can we do to help you out?"
Posted by David Bostedo on August 5, 2008 at 12:48 PM
Unfortunately Kathryn, things like "...planning on purchasing a larger Epson printer this year" and "continuously recommend Epson products to the tens of thousand enthusiast photographers you see at the art shows each year" don't usually factor into the way a large business handles customers, unless you got some kind of contractual deal to represent them. Sounds like they're at least trying to get a handle on what's happening, although I would think they just would have tried your computer on a different printer by now.
I do have one possible suggestion though - try calling West Coast Imaging. They have Epson 9800's they do custom printing on. They do a lot of work with pro photogs, and come highly recommended by many people on here and other forums (myself included, although I'm definitely an amateur). Their contact info can be found on the website.
Alternatively, there are probably some other similar companies who also do equivalent work; Maybe someone here could suggest if you're willing to send the files out to be printed.
Discussion
1 repliesShort version, I'm looking for someone in the Chicago Area who has an Epson 9800 a roll of PLPP 260 and would like to take a few custom print orders.
Or someone who can help solve my printer problem.
Medium version, my wife and I are Fine Art Landscape Photographers in the Chicago area (www.farrarfocus.com) I've got a lemoned Epson, it is mostly through my show season and Epson + onsite tech (+ me) cannot find what is wrong with my printer, and I need to get a few orders finished. What I need to do is send out, file + printer profile + exact print settings for CS2/CS3 which enable prints to be made that matched my own prints.
Long version ... ie the Nightmare printer problem, for your enjoyment or amusement, or whatever,
Just a few months past our factory warranty. Problem Started with a mild, add prints to queue, then nothing would print. First weekend, tried everything from different printer cables, wiping out photoshop and re-installing, re-installing printer firmware, installing newer drivers, etc, etc. I have a Mac and I used to be a Unix admin, so I went through all the CUPS (print queue on that version of MacOSX that I had) stuff, and still nothing. Couldn't get printer to work. Ironically, test print, diagnostic output, and head cleaning worked fine from the Epson Control Panel software.
So my wife borrowed another computer, and sure enough could print. So I figured, bound to be something wrong with the operating system, ie like a corrupted system file or something like that. Bought the newest OSX upgrade, did a full system backup, wiped the drive, and re-installed new OSX, and fresh copy of CS2. Had to work, but sure enough it didn't work.
Wife got back to talking with Epson, re-borrowed the other computer, did tests on the other computer like printing from other applications, and lastly printing the image which didn't print on our other machine. Sure enough it started printing, and thus the Epson tech said that it was conclusive that our computer had a hardware problem, we needed a new computer, end of story.
So went and bought a new Mac, had to get CS3 upgrade (because we only had the powerpc CS2, and now had a new intel mac), set the machine up. Figured it had to print fine (new everything), and wow it didn't print the file.
Got back on Epson tech support line, and they seemed to be more concerned about denying any responsibility for our unnecessary purchase of a brand new computer and photoshop upgrade, then they were about helping us solve our problem. The new story from them was that our printer needed a new main board, and that we needed to have a local contracted tech come over (which of course we would get charged a few hundred in hourly rate regardless of if the problem can be solved) and install the board (which was a little under 1/3 the cost of a replacement printer). Never mind that we just spent over the cost of the printer in computer equipment after they told us it was a computer problem. Also never mind that at this point we haven't been able to print new inventory for our business for a while when we only have a very short summer show season (june to late august).
So reluctantly we call up the tech and schedule an on-site appointment. They say that the new main board is on backorder and it will take a while to show up. So we wait some more. Another show goes by. Tech finally gets over, tries the board, and sure enough it still doesn't work.
However tech did manage to track down the problem to that everything but custom print sizes seems to print fine. So this was the crucial thing missed in early testing. We only ever printed from our machine from photoshop with custom print sizes (after all we require border-less printing and have no use for non-custom sizes) so it was obviously broken. Unfortunately that last test print on the borrowed computer might not have been done with a custom print size. Tech concluded that the printer hardware reports 100% good, and has no idea of what to do to solve the problem. Makes sense given that my wife and I are a very low volume printer, and the printer still shows something like almost 80% life left on all major components on diagnostic (only replaced the dump tank once so far).
Somewhat out of options here.
Anyone have any ideas?
Epson wants nothing to do with us. They are now suggesting we send them our print settings so they can try and reproduce the problem on their perfectly non-broken/non-lemon printers (haha). Wow. I can only imagine how quickly I would personally go out of business if treated my customers the way I've been treated by Epson.
Hell if I was Epson I think the conversation would go something like this,
"Mr. Farrar, as a loyal customer who had purchased multiple Epson printers, ink and paper, and especially given that you were planning on purchasing a larger Epson printer this year, continuously recommend Epson products to the tens of thousand enthusiast photographers you see at the art shows each year, and depend on our printers for your business, what can we do to help you out?"
I do have one possible suggestion though - try calling West Coast Imaging. They have Epson 9800's they do custom printing on. They do a lot of work with pro photogs, and come highly recommended by many people on here and other forums (myself included, although I'm definitely an amateur). Their contact info can be found on the website.
Alternatively, there are probably some other similar companies who also do equivalent work; Maybe someone here could suggest if you're willing to send the files out to be printed.