Can you tell the age of a model by the serial number?

[bdcrandall13]

I've got a customer that has a Ricoh Aficio MP3351 even though it says Savin on the cover of the machine. We don't sell or service these machines and are trying to get them a machine that we can help them out with. Is there any way to determine the machine's age by looking at the serial number? They've got over 400000 copies on this machine and they say they've only had it a year but the personnel has changed and they aren't for sure how long they've actually had it. That seems like a pretty high volume for a machine this size. We just want to make sure that they've had it as long as they say they have.
Thanks!

[mikedci]

The 4th digit is the last digit of the production year.

V839xxxxxxxx is 2009 V830xxxxxxxx is 2010 etc.

[sandmanmac]

You can also see the original date of installation with SP Mode 5849-001

[mikadonovan]

I've got a customer that has a Ricoh Aficio MP3351 even though it says Savin on the cover of the machine. We don't sell or service these machines and are trying to get them a machine that we can help them out with. Is there any way to determine the machine's age by looking at the serial number? They've got over 400000 copies on this machine and they say they've only had it a year but the personnel has changed and they aren't for sure how long they've actually had it. That seems like a pretty high volume for a machine this size. We just want to make sure that they've had it as long as they say they have.
Thanks!

Average monthly volume is 7-9K, max is 35-45K (totally unrealistic). At 400k we would be replacing the machine if possible.

[slimslob]

You can also see the original date of installation with SP Mode 5849-001

Provided that the installing tech entered it.

[Athlontini]

Whenever I wanted to know the age of a machine, I just looked in the product support guide. It lists the date of release on the very first page.

[David NSW]

Provided that the installing tech entered it.

The machine will automatically set the instal date to the date and time set in the machine once it does more than a certain amount of copies, (20?)

[hossam]

If you want to know date of product check cross reference on ricoh site