Poor customer service from Epson and Auckland Office Products

Advisory: Posting while angry.

Last week, my Epson Photo 230R inkjet, which I've been using to print CDs for my hypnotherapy clients, started getting horizontal banding from the black print head.

I bought it last October, so it was still under warranty. So I called the store I bought it from, and they directed me to Epson, who directed me to Auckland Office Products, their local repair agents.

I dropped it in on Wednesday and was told I should hear the next day. I didn't.

I didn't hear on Friday either.

I rang on Monday and was told I'd hear "tomorrow".

I rang on Tuesday, having not heard, and was told "tomorrow". I said, tomorrow never comes. You told me "tomorrow" on Wednesday, you told me "tomorrow" yesterday. It's been nearly a week, what's the holdup?

They were waiting to hear back from Epson about the warranty claim. You see, Epson, in its attempt at the Gillette business model (sell the tool cheap and the consumables dear), says not to use refilled cartridges or you void the warranty. This is total environmental nonsense and, I have been told, illegal in New Zealand, though they probably gamble on people not being bothered to fight it if they just refuse to honour their warranty. The printer service guy who I talked to before I contacted Epson suggested that I get non-refilled cartridges, even empty ones, from Cartridge World, where I get my refills done, and put them in before I put the printer in for a warranty claim to avoid trouble. I probably should have listened to him, but I didn't do that, both because it seemed like too much bother and because it seemed slightly dishonest.

Anyway, I asked the guy at Auckland Office Products to call Epson for me and chase them along, which he agreed to do. He displayed no reaction to my statement that I was very unhappy and it was impacting my business. (I have had to let my CD auctions on TradeMe lapse because I can't fulfill orders at the moment - I work on a "make to order" rather than "make to stock" model for the CDs.)

I don't know whether he kept his promise or not (though you can probably guess what I think), because when I rang back yesterday, Wednesday, he was on another call and the person I spoke to asked if he could ring me back. I said yes. He didn't ring me back.

Today he's up north all day. The other guy I talked to seemed equally unconcerned at how unhappy I was, even when I told him that I would now need to buy a new printer and it wouldn't be an Epson, even when I told him that I had had only promises from them and no delivery, and even when I told him, when he said that they sold printers, that given the lack of service I'd had from them that buying from them wasn't even an option.

I mean, these people have my phone number and my email address, but they haven't contacted me once, even when they've promised to do so.

So just now I have bought an HP Photosmart C5280 online, which is a multifunction (printer/copier) and also prints on CDs. It looks like a better piece of gear, is cheaper (especially since HP are doing a cashback promotion at the moment), and hopefully will be couriered here in time for me to print a CD for my client tomorrow evening or at least for the one on Sunday.

I feel better for having ranted about that. Hopefully I'll be able to get store credit or something for the printer cartridges in the old printer (I've given up hope of it being fixed), since some of them were nearly new and they aren't all that cheap, even refilled.

So, learning experience. Don't buy Epson; if you're going to use refilled cartridges (which you should), don't let on when making a warranty claim; and definitely don't rely on Auckland Office Products to do anything.

UPDATE: Auckland Office Products finally called me on Friday to say that Epson had refused the warranty claim on the grounds that the refilled cartridges had caused damage to the print head. They promised to send me an estimate for the repairs.

This finally arrived on Monday, with some boilerplate on it that said if I decided not to proceed I owed them $65, which I instantly emailed them about saying that I didn't accept it - it was the first I'd heard about it. (No reply to this yet.)

I talked to Cartridge World, who were very helpful and said that if AOP would state in writing that the cartridges had caused the issue, they would meet their guarantee on their product. Apparently this often calls Epson's bluff and they honour their warranty after all. I emailed AOP asking for this. No reply as yet.

It's two weeks tomorrow, and in the meantime I have bought another printer, a Hewlett Packard. I'll be going back to Cartridge World for the cartridges for it, because they stand by their product whereas Epson, apparently, doesn't.

UPDATED UPDATE: AOP have just sent me a revised version of the quote, still with the $65 charge mentioned, but now they say "This printhead is unable to be covered under warranty as non-original/refilled ink cartridges have been used". Which is weaselly, because they're not actually saying that's the cause of the fault.

UPDATED UPDATED UPDATE: I talked to Cartridge World again, they said sorry, they have to say that the refilled cartridges were the cause of the fault. So I emailed back to AOP asking for that. They have never replied, and it's now several weeks later. I suppose I should chase them up but there doesn't seem to be much point.

Suckful, suckful customer service.

HOPEFULLY FINAL UPDATE, 30 September: AOP finally called me last week. According to them, they had sent a revised email, but I never received it, so they were waiting for me and I was waiting for them. Once we got that sorted out, I passed it on to Cartridge World. They are buying me a new printer, a Canon IP4500, since that's cheaper than getting the Epson fixed, that Epson model is no longer made, and I now wouldn't touch Epson with a long pole anyway.

Their opinion (and mine) is that Epson are hiding behind the refilled-cartridge issue as a way of getting out of a legitimate warranty claim that has nothing to do with refilled cartridges. But anyway, I'll now get a replacement printer, two months after my Epson broke down.

I think I'll keep the HP since it works as a photocopier as well and it's a backup in case the Canon ever breaks down, but unlike the Canon it has one cartridge for black and one for colour - expensive to run, in other words, compared with one cartridge for each colour, since if one colour runs out you have to replace the whole colour cartridge. (I should have researched it more carefully before buying.)

Technology Disappointment

I've been waiting nearly three weeks for my Griffin iMic to arrive - I thought from Australia, since I bought it on eBay Australia, but it turns out that the company is American and it shipped from Germany.

It finally got here yesterday, and I plugged it in today to try it out - and was bitterly disappointed. The iMic is basically an analog-to-digital converter, meaning that it takes the analog input of a microphone (or tape deck, record player etc.) and converts it to a digital signal which goes into the computer via a USB port.

The idea is that this gives a cleaner input signal with less noise. If you plug your microphone into the microphone port on your computer, it's going through an analog to digital converter in your soundcard, which is sitting there among all the other computer components picking up noise from them. Having an external ADC is supposed to remove that problem, meaning nice clean sound input.

Not in this case, though. Anything I run through the iMic sounds like there's a jackhammer working in the background. It's far, far noisier than when I just go through the sound card.

There's nothing in the FAQ on Griffin's site. I've emailed the company I bought it from to see if they can suggest anything, but I very much fear I've got a faulty unit and will have to ship it back to them, probably at my cost, and wait weeks for a replacement.

I've been waiting for this gear so that I could start making good professional recordings to sell on my website. I may just start recording anyway, since I have a better microphone now (an Audio Technica ATR35s, which is about the cheapest mic AudioTechnica make but still a very good one).

The iMic came with a trial version of GoldWave recording software, which has several features I've been missing in Audacity (parametric EQ and the ability to chain effects together in a kind of macro, plus removal of long silences - since I pause a lot when I'm recording, that's useful). So I'm going to give that a whirl and see if the relatively small amount of noise I get off the ATR35s can be adequately dealt with in software. If so, I may just ask for a refund on the iMic.

UPDATE: Yes, I can pretty much cut all the noise out using GoldWave. But I just tried the iMic again and the guy with the pneumatic drill is gone as mysteriously as he appeared. (Probably noise from the hard drive being picked up by the USB port for some reason.) However, the input is very quiet and the output keeps muting itself for some reason - so we're not out of the woods yet. The input is clean, no noise, but not very much signal either.

UPDATE 2 (15/11): I've been emailing back and forth today with Griffin tech support, and they've offered to ship me a new unit, which is very good after-sales support (and I told them so). They've taken a lot of time to understand the issue and suggested some sensible tests. It appears that they think the unit is faulty.

Further bulletins as events warrant - but even if it turns out that my microphone and the iMic just aren't meant to work together, I'm a happy customer in a service sense.

UPDATE 3 (20/11): The new unit arrived this morning, but, sadly, is no better. Actually it's a little worse, it introduces an annoying high-pitched hum into the audio, but you can really only hear that when you amplify the sound - it's just as quiet as the old unit. I made a demo of the sound through the sound card, the old unit, and the new unit. (The old one is silver; the new one is their version 2 product, which is white, smaller, and has a label on the "mic/line" switch.)

I tested with three different microphones in four different USB ports on two different laptops; the only thing which makes a difference is whether I record via the laptop's built-in soundcard (normal volume) or the iMic (unacceptably quiet volume).

My plan at the moment is to pay them for it and sell them both on TradeMe, since it seems they're not defective units as such, they're just no good for what I wanted them for. (Update: They refused my offer of payment.)

Back to recording through the soundcard and filtering out the hiss in software. (When I amplify the sound recorded through the iMic, I can hear just as much hiss as when I record directly through the soundcard.)

Technology problems like this are my least favourite thing to deal with. At least their customer service was good, though.

I has a technologeez!

Now what I do with it?

Say hello to my little friend. Quiz keeps me (or, more likely, my heater) company in the office when I work at home.

The printer was a bit of a score. When my work moved offices, they sold off the old laser printers, so I got a LaserJet 5M with a trolley and a spare toner cartridge for $50.

I'm using it to print flyers and the like. I've had a few problems with paper jams, but the installation - which I had expected to take an hour of frustrated swearing - couldn't have been simpler. I plugged it into my computer and switched it on. Quoth Windows:

New hardware detected. [Pause]
HP LaserJet 5M. [Pause]
Your new hardware is installed and ready to use.

It took about 20 seconds. I was gobsmacked.

Oh, and the caption? Inspired by this: