Has anyone ever done a call and made things worse than the original problem???

[jonezy999]

Delivering some toner the other day to a site which has an e-3510c. New office lady asked what to do when the copier says time for main charger cleaning. So I showed her and snapped the pin off the charger end block. Had nice black copies after that. Turned out the whole EPU was due for replacement. Fitted new EPU and and left. Customer sent me an apologetic email about an hour later saying they had labels stuck inside the machine. One was trapped on the belt cleaner, the other 2, yep around the new black drum.

[D_L_P]

I once broke the copyboard glass on a courtesy call. "Just here to check the copier out....OOPS!!"

[Cogz]

Hi, everyone..... One of the many times things got worse.... I can rember one of the best was when I was working in the "FAO" biulding in NY. Me and a another tech were just moving copiers from one floor to another. We could not find a outlet to test the copiers after the move... We found one outlet in a small closest and pluged it in and of coarse we turned the copier "ON", we heard a big spark and a flame from the outlet..... Not knowing what was attached to the outlet..... We took out five floors and two elevator's in one split second..... Needless to say we took the plug out and found another outlet quick.... What makes it funny is my buddy was hiding behind a copier laughing and I was stuck with out a hiding spot.......lol

[MR Bill]

Getting machines ready in the shop to sell.

Took A.D.F off a Mita 2310 and installed it on a Mita 2030. Took a break for a couple of days on working on this machine.

Feeders look the same. Have same connectoers. Etc.

Well they are not the same. Took hours of screwing around before I got that one fixed.

Installed the RIGHT ADF for the machine and fixed. Glad I was working in the shop.

[Masterchief]

A couple of months ago i was sent to a call regarding jamming constantly, Assuming it was the schools main copier a Ricoh MP 5500 i started to service it, Almost finished the School Principal notifies me that it was the small machine with the problem, All units in, optics cleaned etc!! I started on the outside, quick blast of AS foam cleaner and a burst of Glass Cleaner on the platen and Op panel for Shine, I was done or so i taught,

Plug in, red switch clicked to on and sissle noise = no power

So the SM hits the roof as expected, school completely down as the other machine is not fusing properly and ive destoyed the other machine. To this day i never got to the bottom of that problem, we swapped boards etc and never got it running again, so new MC for a very happy principal :-(

But this will make you piss yourself - i still giggle when i hear it.

All techies busy one friday afternoon around 4pm, A youth service for kids 65km away call in desperate for help due to exams, There MP4500 machine wont work due to waste toner full, Our Service manager kindly offers to help :-) He instructs the customer to " pull down the front cover remove the screw, look for a black cap and shake all the powder out". The customer agrees to follow instructions and will call back if any further problems......... :-)

Monday morning:

Customer Rings in complaining of sc 3 codes and is not happy. So our SM sends up our supervisor to fix the problem or so he taught.... Shortly after arriving my supervisor called the SM and asked WTF he told the customer to do, to which the SM replied " i told them nothing just empty the WTB" so my supervisor put the customer on and the customer argued that he had followed the SM's instructions and made matters worse.... The supervisor then got back on the phone and told my SM That the customer had followed his instructions and pulled out all the black caps and emptied out all the developer...

When my supervisor told me this i cried laughing, all four devs cost a small fortune and we joked about it for weeks

[Venom]

How about us old guys that started on typewriters....used my trusty keyboard brush on an Olympia electronic typewriter keyboard once and with one swoop, half the keytops and springs popped off...it was a good thing that I memorized the qwerty keyboard. Once I mixed 2 connectors on a Mita DC 2255 power supply and when I plugged in< the power supply when BOOM...I ended up soldering a wire in place of where the track had exploded off the power supply board. I once set a new drum unit on desk and hand turned to make sure blade wouldn't flip...I forgot my spring hook on the desk and made a nice scratch on drum...I hid drum in the pile of used drum cores afraid that boss would freak. Sometimes it is how you cover your ass that is important,,,lol

[jonezy999]

PM @ eSTUDIO520.
Dropped my screw driver onto freshly rebuilt PCU. This was only a couple of months ago, so I tried a Macguyver I saw here. Clear nail polish over the nick and copies are still nice. You can notice a white dot on a sky shot, but its better than a black dot on every page outta the box.

[ZOOTECH]

I was new to Sharp at the time and working on a SD4085 (POS) that fed ledger paper as portrait. Luckily, the machine was in the shop and not at a customer's site. I was told to pull the Developer unit out (it was on rails) and prep for dv change (a box with plastic liner was to hang under the dv unit). I found out quickly that the handle under the dv unit was not to pull it out but to release developer out the bottom and into that lined box.. DV and toner spilled everywhere inside the right side of machine. I became intimate with that machine taking everything out and cleaning it. I hated that machine!!!!!

[JR2ALTA]

PM @ eSTUDIO520.
Dropped my screw driver onto freshly rebuilt PCU. This was only a couple of months ago, so I tried a Macguyver I saw here. Clear nail polish over the nick and copies are still nice. You can notice a white dot on a sky shot, but its better than a black dot on every page outta the box.

whoa that works? any particle labeling I should look for??

[jmaister]

the worst scenario is...

You got there, went through the routine on tuning the machine the right way. Then the rest of the week you revisit them every day just simply because the machine was WORKING THE WRONG WAY and you had assume wrong...

yeh, why didnt I stay in bed those days lol.

[George J]

I hate the ones where the machine works almost perfectly, but there's this little squeak or noise that's bugging you. The client probably hasn't noticed or isn't too bothered by it, but you feel that you absolutly have to fix it!

Of course the 'quick look' goes horribly wrong and now the machine acts up and you've been listening for noises so long that you can barely tell what is a regular noise and what isn't. In the end the noise is still there and there's a small line on the backside of the copies (or some other annoying little fault)

[D_L_P]

....used my trusty keyboard brush on an Olympia electronic typewriter keyboard once and with one swoop, half the keytops and springs popped off...

LMAO

A bit before my time but I remember my one and only call on a typewriter, since the regular guy was on vacation. I was kinda clueless, but figured out how to take out this wheel thing with all the characters on it. I was cleaning all the ink off it and broke a couple of the arms with letters. I just stood there in shock thinking I just ruined their typewriter! I figured this was a very important part and must be expensive and I was in big trouble. When I got up the courage to tell the secretary about it she just went to the cabinet, pulled open a drawer full of these little boxes, opened one up and said "Is this what you broke?"

[JustManuals]

A better question:

Who hasn't?

[prntrfxr]

I think the best lessons you learn are from your mistakes. I've rarely ever been on a call without a service manual to this day(even if I don't open it, I have it). What really bites is if you don't learn and you go through it again. I'm sure that's happened to me but I can't remember any specific incident. I've blown lamps, broken mirrors, cracked copy glass, dropped waste toner bottles, fried boards, and changed the language on a few machines, but I don't remember any repeats off hand. I'm not embarrassed anymore about taking a manual out in front of a customer, either. If they say anything, I simply say: "You see how thick this book is? Do you know how many different machines this manufacture makes? Now think about how many different manufacturers there are out there. I'm supposed to be able to fix all those machines. Do you really expect me to remember every little thing about every one of them? This thing's (manual) is thicker than the Bible! If you see a tech come out and he's not reading the manual, worry."

[michaelc]

If you have never made the problem or machine worse at least once, than your should be the new messiah. I have done it a few times. Atleast.