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rongwam wrote:
I plan on buying a large format printer such as Epson P9000 or Canon Pro-4000, but I wonder if I should buy additional protection plan such as Square Trade for the printer. For those currently have such printers, did you buy protection plan/extended warranty for your printers?
I also have a thought that I would buy the extended warranty on Epson printer due to that fact that it is prone to having clogged heads. However, with Canon IPF Pro series that seem not to have problem with clogging, I am not so sure if it is necessary to buy the protection plan. What do you guys think and suggest? Thanks
Henry
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The latest Epson Px000 printers clog far less than the previous generation x900 printers. I owned a 7900 for 7.5 years before getting a P7000 on July 5, 2016. Both printers are left turned off for a period of 3-5 weeks three or four times each year when I'm away. The 7900 clogged frequently, especially in summer, but a normal cleaning or two would always clear it. Sometimes in winter it could go a couple of months with no clogged nozzles, but sometimes it would go just a few days. In summer clogged nozzles were a more or less weekly occurrence. It should be noted that these "clogs" are often not dried ink in the nozzles, but rather lack of ink (air) in the nozzles.
I have not seen a single clogged nozzle on the P7000 since I initialized it in early July, and it sat idle (powered off) for a three week period in October.
Against lots of advice to the contrary I had no extended warranty on either printer. I have until July 2017 to get an Epson warranty on the P7000 and fortunately did not need any extended warranty on the 7900. If I were to get an extended warranty it would definitely be from the manufacturer. For Epson that costs $700 for a one year extension (2 years total) and $1375 for a two year extension (3 years total).
A Square Trade warranty for these printers costs just a few hundred dollars. These printers need a house call by a specifically trained technician, and probably some parts, if service is required. Depending on what's wrong and how far a technician has to travel, a service call can be hundreds to well over a thousand dollars. From quite a bit of research it seems like Square Trade is great for smaller and less expensive devices, but they often refund the warranty cost rather than spend several times as much to fix a large format printer in your home or place of business.
In my case a new P7000 is only $2600 and extending the warranty by just two years is half the cost of a new printer. If the printer does not break in its second or third year that's $1375 I could put toward a new printer when it finally does break further down the road. The P9000 is more expensive ($4000) so the balance is a little different. Still, I know 5 different people who own X900 printers and none of them needed service in their second or third year. That's not to say no one needs service that soon. The web is full of horror stories, but then no one posts to a forum just to notify everyone that their printer works. In the end it's just a matter of assuming some risk to save some money and hoping you were right. I think the odds of a printer not needing service in its first three years are pretty good, but they certainly are not 100%.
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