problems with bad paper

[Karsten]

I noticed that there is more and more "bad" (low quality) paper showing up in stores. I never used to believe the story about the bad paper until we almost lost a school district because they got their new machines and "new" paper at the same time. They got a different brand the following year and we endet up with maybe 10% of the previous call volume. Another customer had the same thing happening, brand new machine and jamming. As soon as they switched paper - no jams whatsoever.
The "brands" I know are bad are Costco no name - white wrapper with white label and black writing. Office Depot house brand - red wrapper, Fred Meyer Office Works - blue wrapper and maybe Quill house brand - yellow wrapper. I'm not sure yet about the Quill, still testing.
Has anybody else come across this?
Edit: Sorry, I confused Office Depot with Staples. It's the staples paper that's bad.

[schooltech]

I'll add that I'm not a fan of the generic Costco paper. The schools all use it and it dusts like stuff I've never seen before. In 100k, the machines look like they've had 300-400k worth of good paper through them.

The other thing I've noticed with the Costco paper is how the paper is cut inconsistently in some of the reams, and quite a bit of paper that is just not checked very well before they are loaded into the cases. This, of course, creates its own problem when customers just "load without looking" and ends up causing jamming issues, outside of the crappy paper itself.

[copytechman]

I'd like to second the costco paper as well as the red brand staples paper!

Regards!
A.

[Guest]

Cheap paper absolutely causes problems. It can have too much curl and jam, be too dusty and cause all kinds of problems as it builds up on every surface it comes into contact with. I've even seen paper still in the package that had holes torn in it from the factory. Storing paper improperly will also cause service nightmares. I had this one customer, years ago, storing paper unwrapped on a shelf next to an open door. This paper had so much humidity that it caused huge droplets of condensation to form on a metal paper guide coming out of the fuser. This, of course, would cause jamming and all kinds of other problems.

[Karsten]

I didn't mean that there never were problems with cheap paper. It just seems like there is more and more crap paper on the market now. I am slowly starting to first look at which brand paper the customer is using before I check the machine for jamming problems. Sad but true.

[fixthecopier]

The base I work on only uses recycled, because of a government directive. It is all crap. "Great White" is crap, and "Skillcraft" is worse. Xerox recycled is the best of the worst except that is has a " print this side first " arrow on the package that nobody knows about. The recycled cost twice as much and paper that you can get at Sams Club is better. Good thing is the new Bizhubs handle the bad paper very well.

[KenB]

About a week ago I got a call at an account that was having a issue when they printed where an extra blank page was being output at the end of the job, but only intermittently.

They told me that the issue normally came up when printing from Oracle. (That was the reason I got the call, as I'm an analyst these days, and not a tech. However I did spend 17 years being one before being granted my beanie and propeller...)

While I was getting all set to do a data capture and start working with IT, I figured I'd check the basics first. Sure 'nuff, there was some terribly cut, nasty, wavy paper in the cassettes. To make matters worse, a lot of it was already printed on, and they told me that they like to save paper. To add insult to injury, it was in a shipping department in a factory, which had open windows and outside doors. For all intents and purposes, the machine is outside.

Then came the coup de gras, "It worked fine in our old machine. There must be something wrong with yours. Fix it!!"

Turns out that the new Ricoh color MFP we put in replaced an older HP LaserJet printer, which can run basically anything. If they had been copying, they would have seen the problem there as well, but they only print.

Once they put new paper in the machine (I don't know what brand), all worked well.

Arrrgggg......

[schooltech]

Karsten, I see your point, but I think we all do feel the same way.

My experience has been with the Costco generic paper, so it's a bit more one-sided.

Given the competition and because it's such a highly elastic product, the vendors have to be real careful with costs, as anything passed down to the customer will likely not be purchased.

I'm guessing that as time goes on, there will be only a few real manufacturers, as the competition gets eaten up by the real players. In the meantime, the crap will continue to be ran through the machines. Somewhere in the manufacturing process, something might be changing that all paper mills are adopting, and we're seeing the results of those changes.

[Karsten]

The REAL problem is just to convince the customer that the machine isn't the problem, and even if you prove it to them they still either say "our old machine ran this paper fine" or "it should still be able to run it or it's a bad machine" or the best one "we've been using this paper all along with this machine and never had any problems before".
Some customers are really good though, if I tell them the paper is shit they will believe me and switch brands. Unfortunatelly not very many are like that.

[KopyKat]

I have a great paper story...

Customer called for black specks on copies on a very new copier. Four, count em four! techs go out in succession replacing everything from the reg roller (really) to the fuser exit rollers and everything in between. Two separate techs even did full PM's with drums within 20K not knowing that the other had already done that. So the boss tells me to go out and take a look even though it was not in my near area cuz the customer is all about the "L" word (Lemon).

I get there and the machine is so spotless you could eat off it. I run some copies and there ARE spots but some of them don't quite look like toner....kinda brownish. I turn the paper over and there are spots there too.

So I take a stack of paper out of the paper tray and it's got the spots BEFORE passing through the machine. Huh! I show this to the customer and the biach says the copier must be dropping the toner on the paper in the tray. Mind you that all through the stack the spots are there, not just the top sheet. Yeah, she was pretty heated up over this. So I grab an un-opened ream of paper and what do you know...spots. I told her to return the paper NOT the copier.

She is still huffing and puffing about the spots but has no ground to stand on now. She turns and walks out like I had called her some foul name...no thank you...nuthin.

Well....now it's time to write up the workorder. hehehe. If she had not been such a biach I would have let it slide. I charged her, quoting that paper is not covered in her contract. Of course she won't sign the workorder. She takes it to her boss and guess what...he signs it! LOL I wanted to moon the biach on the way out the door!!!

That's my favorite bad paper story! Got more...maybe later.

[Guest]

You should have charged her for the extra drum and PM parts....

[KenB]

Those darn skinny trees...

Years ago, I had a Canon NP200 (Gulp!) customer who called in for jamming.

When I got there, I found that the paper in the cassette had some very nasty curl to it.

I opened a "fresh" ream, and it was no better than what was in the machine.

When I showed the somewhat air-headed bleach blonde office manager the problem, she said, "Oh, that must be because it came from the outside of the tree!"

I had the whole service department rolling when I told the story at the next meeting.

[copymutt]

Paper manufacturing

Just a side note on paper jams. During college I worked in a paper plant @ Mead Papers. The sheets come off slit into six or eight sheets and are then rotary or guillatine cut to length. I've lost count of the number of times we've identified intermitent jam problems by being aware of this fact. Even if your copier does not have svc data output of jam history a quick visual ck of the paper in the drawer will sometimes reveal defective sheets every six or eight in the stack. The cause is dull, misaligned cutters at the mill.

Copymutt

[Vulkor]

Good tip Mutt, thanks!

[KenB]

Just a side note on paper jams. During college I worked in a paper plant @ Mead Papers. The sheets come off slit into six or eight sheets and are then rotary or guillatine cut to length. I've lost count of the number of times we've identified intermitent jam problems by being aware of this fact. Even if your copier does not have svc data output of jam history a quick visual ck of the paper in the drawer will sometimes reveal defective sheets every six or eight in the stack. The cause is dull, misaligned cutters at the mill.

Copymutt

I had this very thing happen many years ago, where every 6th sheet was cut short by about 8 mm or so.

I haven't seen it since, but that's one of those things you never forget.