Repair Guy Uses Tons of Paper

[copyman]

Re: Repair Guy Uses Tons of Paper

Wow! Holster those pistols partner. I didn't mean anything personally by my post just that you can't blame the customer for dropping clip into machine. After reading my post it could be taken that way. Sorry didn't mean it that way.Tell them that what you are doing is critical and don't want to have to charge more by being distracted. I've been in the business 40+ years and can't recall a situation where I couldn't "rig" something up to prevent a clip, etc from falling into machine. Of course it doesn't work all the time, but still better than doing nothing and have to worry about being distracted by someone asking a question, or a phone ringing, etc. You know these machines are in some crazy places with all kind of distractions and if a clip can fall into the machine you know it will. I won't attempt it until I "rig" something up. Even if I have to take some of the machine apart for "rig" to work. 5 min disassembly better than 30+ mins trying to find it.
Again I'm extra careful because I don't charge by the hour.

If you are that rattled by a post on a forum than I feel sorry for your customers if they make you mad, mad= they pay more $. I have to ask, if no one was around to blame and clip fell into machine do you still charge the customer extra for your mistake? No need to answer I think I know the answer.

FYI, I'm not rich or busy. I've actually slowed down as my choice. Getting close to retirement so just riding it out.

I saw & liked your post about asking the customer if they need anything run instead of wasting paper. I do the same thing ask if they need any forms they use a lot, etc. Back in the fax days customer could always use fax cover sheets, customer never had enough.

Best of luck to you

[JDYAL]

Re: Repair Guy Uses Tons of Paper

This all seems innocuous but having CUSTOMERS use this site to rat on us or shame us is a slippery slope. I advise this thread be removed.

I don't think that this person is ratting on anyone. I know that must of us on this site are on the up and up however you have to remember that there are shady techs out there that give us good techs a bad rap. Arming yourself with a little knowledge to help your business is never a bad thing, I think that's what they're trying to do. I've ran into a couple new customers who had there old techs run them through the ringer replacing the wrong parts to solve problems that didn't exist. I know if a tech in my office was running that many prints I would want to know so I could take him outside and beat him with a full waste container.

[tsbservice]

Re: Repair Guy Uses Tons of Paper

O.K so there's always reasons for people doing things so lets look at a couple things. 1. What type of machine do you have. 2. What type of issues are you having that he comes out once a week. 3. What type of volume are you running on your machine (how many prints per day). With a little info maybe we can help you figure out why he runs this amount of prints. It does seem excessive but there must be a reason.

Exactly what I thought. Like first post by mistake, but can't correct.

...
I know if a tech in my office was running that many prints I would want to know so I could take him outside and beat him with a full waste container.

LOL now THAT deserves second one

[mjunkaged]

Re: Repair Guy Uses Tons of Paper

Wow! Holster those pistols partner. I didn't mean anything personally by my post just that you can't blame the customer for dropping clip into machine. After reading my post it could be taken that way. Sorry didn't mean it that way.Tell them that what you are doing is critical and don't want to have to charge more by being distracted. I've been in the business 40+ years and can't recall a situation where I couldn't "rig" something up to prevent a clip, etc from falling into machine. Of course it doesn't work all the time, but still better than doing nothing and have to worry about being distracted by someone asking a question, or a phone ringing, etc. You know these machines are in some crazy places with all kind of distractions and if a clip can fall into the machine you know it will. I won't attempt it until I "rig" something up. Even if I have to take some of the machine apart for "rig" to work. 5 min disassembly better than 30+ mins trying to find it.
Again I'm extra careful because I don't charge by the hour.

If you are that rattled by a post on a forum than I feel sorry for your customers if they make you mad, mad= they pay more $. I have to ask, if no one was around to blame and clip fell into machine do you still charge the customer extra for your mistake? No need to answer I think I know the answer.

FYI, I'm not rich or busy. I've actually slowed down as my choice. Getting close to retirement so just riding it out.

I saw & liked your post and about asking the customer if they need anything run instead of wasting paper. I do the same thing ask if they need any forms they use a lot, etc. Back in the old days customer could always run fax cover sheets, customer never had enough.

Best of luck to you

Wheres the block button??

[allan]

Re: Repair Guy Uses Tons of Paper

That does seem unusual. Especially having to service the copier once a week! As for running that many pages it tells me he was probably testing for jamming on a high volume machine.
If machine is under contract call company and tell them to bring their own paper next time if they are going to run more than 100 pages to test. If not already store paper away from copier. When tech asks for paper give him 100 sheets no more! 100 sheets is more than enough for 99.9% service calls.

I would think you wouldn't buy a Ricoh again. Look at Konica Minolta next time.

Wanted to add something after reading allan's post. I disagree with what he said about pissing the tech off. Customers piss me off all the time but I don't waste a case of their paper because of it. If you have to worry about something like that than it is time to find a new copier company.

Hehe yea i would not do stuff like that just wondering if this guy is not boosting billable clicks.

[allan]

Re: Repair Guy Uses Tons of Paper

Lost a casio watch inside an old analog.....
Great to work on only contracted machines. Billable calls have a way to bit you in the funny bits.

[Ctl-Alt-Del]

Re: Repair Guy Uses Tons of Paper

This all seems innocuous but having CUSTOMERS use this site to rat on us or shame us is a slippery slope. I advise this thread be removed.

The end-user asked a legitimate question, no names were mentioned, no one was thrown under the bus, they were looking for advice about an ongoing service issue , the real problem is that they had to come here to do it. I've been in the Service/Business Management side of this industry for a long time and this is most likely an issue created by the servicing dealer, I'm not talking about the jamming copier issue I'm talking about the "we're going to lose this customer because" issue. There's always a chance the end-user who posted is completely out of the loop but that's probably not the case.

1. Why isn't the onsite technician communicating with the end-user, it's obviously not a basic jamming issue? The most important thing a technician can do is talk to the customer. Techs should talk to users before they even touch the machine to get the full story of any issues the user is having. I can't tell you how many times an end-user calls in for a jamming document feeder but on the 2nd or 3rd visit the tech figures out that what an end-user calls a document feeder is actually an MP tray and the tech has been fixing the wrong part of the machine for the past three weeks. Talk to the customer BEFORE and AFTER every call, and also ask the people walking by and saying hello to you "hey, how's the machine been working for you". Call-backs will happen but many of them are easily avoided by talking to your customers. If the tech and end-user in this instance had reasonable communication they would know the customer was concerned about paper and service copies and the tech could get with their manager to get some relief to the customer. having your delivery guy or tech drop off a half case of paper makes a customer super happy, makes the tech look like a hero, and is a lot cheaper then acquiring a new customer.

2. Where the fuck is the service manager on this? If there is a machine with any amount of excess service or off the wall issues the service manager should be on the phone making sure everyone is on the same page and making sure the service department knows the whole story. I made two "excessive service" phone calls this morning, the customers are usually happy to hear from me and it reassures them that my service department cares and takes the time to check in and make sure everything is OK. There's no reason it should get so bad that an end-user needs to come find this site. The dealer is probably going to lose this customer when the lease rolls around.

That was my $0.02000 worth, notice the 5 decimal places, if we're lucky we make some money in the 3rd decimal position but usually it's in the 4th & 5th, better communication gets us more of that 3rd decimal money.

[JR2ALTA]

Re: Repair Guy Uses Tons of Paper

The end-user asked a legitimate question, no names were mentioned, no one was thrown under the bus, they were looking for advice about an ongoing service issue , the real problem is that they had to come here to do it. I've been in the Service/Business Management side of this industry for a long time and this is most likely an issue created by the servicing dealer, I'm not talking about the jamming copier issue I'm talking about the "we're going to lose this customer because" issue. There's always a chance the end-user who posted is completely out of the loop but that's probably not the case.

I said it was innocuous but there's a reason we don't encourage non-technicians on this site. We discuss service modes, passwords, we talk openly about manufactures shortcomings, we joke about customers.

Her tech was obviously a buffoon but next customer will say "hey my machine said to replace the drum and I watched my technician just replace a chip" next thing you know a company is getting sued.

[NeoMatrix]

Re: Repair Guy Uses Tons of Paper

sniff...sniff... smells like a net BOT post.........

Okay, I'll bite, I'll help fill up CTN with useless bandwidth.

No Tech would run that amount of copies per week with out further assisting the customer to print out "useful" original content on behalf of the customer. Any Tech worth their salt would ask the customer what do you want multiple printed, eg. blank logs,time sheets,monthly stats,progress sheets, etc,etc..?

The only reason the Tech would need to do a high volume multiple run is to check CQ, otherwise they would run blank copies.


Someone is playing games to peeve someone off...

[fishleg]

Re: Repair Guy Uses Tons of Paper

I bet the guy has been told its jamming and no one has bothered to tell the guy the issue so he's had no choice but to run boat loads off to try and identify the problem.

Or he's been called out over and over so he's trying to prove a point.

I'm a call engineer and the first thing I do is find who put the call in to get the whole story then go straight into the logs to make sure the story fits...

Could be a very poor company thats give the guy no training so he can't electronically troubleshoot so if the customer doesn't really have a good relationship with the engineer you get situations like this.

If I was the customer I'd actually talk to the engineer with out threatening to lose the guy his job and get the real story. Most of the time it's usually service manager trying to save money and the customer won't replace the machine so this poor guy is in the middle trying to do his best to keep it working but defo more to this story please post when you have more info .

[fishleg]

Re: Repair Guy Uses Tons of Paper

We have had customers on very low click litterally call us out constantly for anything as they thought in the end they would get a new machine... They would snap bits off say there's jams but there wasnt any so we had to do exercises like this was very frustrating.

In the end I think they snapped a part out the machine and we cancelled the contract. We took it on from another company half way through the contract we thought initially we where doing them a favour but they burned us.

Engineers are intelligent people mostly treat us with respect and you'll be very well looked after as we are often over looked by everyone.

[copyman]

Re: Repair Guy Uses Tons of Paper

Agree with fish, the most important thing a tech can do is "interview" the customer about the issue when first getting to call.

[Ropariva]

Re: Repair Guy Uses Tons of Paper

Hahaha...I had to run 35k prints through a clients machine once to try and make a tr belt fail that had shredded three times in 10k, but normally would put 10-100 pages thru maximum.

[bbsearchlight]

Re: Repair Guy Uses Tons of Paper

O.K so there's always reasons for people doing things so lets look at a couple things. 1. What type of machine do you have. 2. What type of issues are you having that he comes out once a week. 3. What type of volume are you running on your machine (how many prints per day). With a little info maybe we can help you figure out why he runs this amount of prints. It does seem excessive but there must be a reason.

Okay, so here is a little more insight. The machine is a Ricoh 8120S, yes it is a high volume machine doing stapling and hole punching with copying. The machine is used in a school with about 180 staff members, although there are a number of other smaller copy machines in the school (I am trying to say while this machine is used a lot, it is not the only copy machine). The repair person seems to be there once a week because the machine constantly gets functional errors which can't be fixed by the user. The last 2 times the repair guy has been here it is because the stapler wasn't working properly. The first time he came to fix the stapler, he ran through 1 full case of paper and the second time he ran through 7 reams.

As far as why no one confronts the repair guy about this, because in most people don't care because this is a public school and it is the public's money being wasted. I just wanted to make sure that this is not normal before I make an issue with the school district office on this.

Thank you for all your answers.

[copyman]

Re: Repair Guy Uses Tons of Paper

Thanks for adding that. I do have to start by saying copiers in schools are one of technicians worst calls. Mostly because of the amount of "hands" in the machine. On a production model like you describe there should be a "key operator" that is only one allowed to perform tasks such as removing jams, adding toner & paper, etc.

I'm not familiar with that model but if newer than 3 yrs old, still under lease, etc I would ask for a new machine, if in fact the problems are internal function errors, etc and not caused by end users.

At least tell the technician if he is going to run excessive amounts of paper that you have forms you prefer he uses as test sheets. Much better than him cutting a tree down for nothing every service call.