timothfarrar
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 p.1 #1 · Help : Epson 7800 Nightmare | |
Quick background, my wife and I are fine art landscape photographers (www.farrarfocus.com) based in the Chicago area with a very short Summer art show season, May to end of August. Shortly after our first show, we found ourselves unable to print our prints from our Epson 7800. Jobs would get into the print queue and then just vanish. However, head alignment, nozzle check, etc worked fine. Printer life of components on print out diagnostic showed that the printer has relatively new components (not much use), test prints from outside photoshop even worked.
So I spent an entire weekend trying just about everything I could think of (from wipe and re-install of photoshop, printer drivers, update of printer firmware, etc), and nothing helped. At this point my wife borrowed another Mac computer to rule out a computer/software problem, and the printer printed fine from the other computer. The other computer was a later version of MacOS X, so thinking it was probably just a software problem, I decided to buy the upgrade for OS X and promptly did a full backup and wiped the harddrive. Then did a full fresh install of everything. To my dismay this work was all a loss, and the printer still wouldn't print.
So back on the phone with Epson support, and they ran us through a bunch of stuff,
which had no result (changing from firewire to usb, etc, etc).
Next they had us test print from a second computer, so my wife brought back in the same borrowed computer, and on the phone with Epson they had her print the same file we tried on our new updated personal computer from photoshop.Turns out the file prints.
So Epson says that it must be that our computer has a hardware problem. According to them, it's our problem, nothing they can do to help us, problem resolved, we just need a new computer.
Ok fine, so we go out and buy a new computer (new Mac). Also had to buy the upgrade to CS3 because we have only the old PowerPC version of CS2. Then get home, install everything, and try printing the same file which wouldn't print before from our older Mac.
Sure enough to our horror the problem is back, the printer still refuses to print.
Call back Espon tech support and instead of trying to help us out in any way, they get all defensive saying that they only implied that it "might" be a problem with our computer, and that actually what we need is to have a multi-hundred dollar service call (just for labor) and that we need a new Epson 7800 main board (a little under $1000). Otherwise there is nothing they can do for us. We reluctanly go out and schedule someone to come in and check out our printer on location. This person says that the main board is on back order, and that we have to wait a while to get one to test.
So we wait, and finally today they come over and do diagnostics and try the new main board. And sure enough it still doesn't print.
The hardware guy said that everything on the printer is fine, there is nothing wrong with it hardware wise, and there is nothing he knows to try or do to fix the problem. However he did narrow the problem down to that printing with a custom print size causes the print job to fail, non-custom sizes apparently print fine. We have been depending on custom sizes since we got the printer (ie for borderless printing etc). So now we are out another few hundred for a useless onsite tech appointment, and still have a Lemon printer.
Called Espon, and again they say they can do nothing other than that we can give them our print settings, and they can somehow try and reproduce the problem. (ie complete BS given that they don't have the lemon hardware we have).
So I'm starting to run out of options.
Now not only had we already spent over the cost of the printer in trying to solve this problem (was still going to wait a while to upgrade our old computer), we've also been unable to do any reprints ourselves or finish any custom orders for 2/5ths of our summer shows. What really gets to me is that in my business we go out of our way to insure every customer is 100% happy. Hell if we didn't, the negative word of mouth alone would insure we would be out of business quickly. I'm just shocked at the F'off additude I'm getting from Epson. Sad thing is that I was intending to sell my 7800 this year and buy a 9800. Add this to the money I've been spending on Espon PLPP 260 paper, and inks, and what I would have been spending as a loyal customer over the life time of my business. And I'm also really sad that I've been recommending Espon products to all the photo enthusiasts we see each year at the shows (shows which get over 100,000 people on a weekend).
Anyone got any ideas what could be wrong with the printer, or what I should do next?
Are there any lemon laws applicable?
We are perhaps only a few months out of warranty, and we are a very small volume shop.
Also looking for another person local to the Chicago area with a 9800 who we could use as a print source (given our strange situation of needing to send a file + 7800/9800 printer profile + photoshop print settings per file in order to get the exact same output we would have gotten prior to our 7800 going lemon), until I can figure out what non-Epson to purchase.
Any advice would be much appreciated!
Edited on Aug 04, 2008 at 10:19 PM
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