Canon Limiting Toner Under Contracts

Discussion in 'Canon imagePRESS Digital Presses' started by hotflyers, Apr 12, 2010.

  1. hotflyers

    hotflyers New Member

    Joined:
    Apr 2010
    Messages:
    1
    Location:
    Ft Lauderdale FL
    I am currently looking for other companies that are experiencing problems as I have with my service & supplies contract with Canon. I have 2 - C7000VP digital presses, an investment of nearly 1 million dollars, and after 2 years under contract, they are telling me that my toner consumption is too high when it is actually gone down. They are forcing me to buy supplies outside of contract which will inevitably put me out of business. I am looking for other companies like mine with the same problem and legal council that would be willing to go after Canon under a class action status.

    Is their anyone else having problems with Canon service and supplies and is having to buy supplies out of contract even though they should be included?

    I am a print for pay company that is about to be forced out of business by their practices.

    Miik Martorell
    HotFlyers.com
    786-229-6055
    miik@msn.com
     
  2. cbelcher2005

    cbelcher2005 Member

    Joined:
    Nov 2007
    Messages:
    10
    Location:
    Central Florida
    Suprised

    I have had Canon machines for about 10 years they are not the best or worst. The only time I have heard of a problem like yours is when the meter readings don't match toner usage. That particular time an employee was stealing supplies and selling them on Ebay. Sounds like breach of contract, Good luck.
     
  3. Canonpress

    Canonpress New Member

    Joined:
    May 2010
    Messages:
    3
    Location:
    Dallas
    The problem Canon is experiencing is the total loss of any (service) profit from the imagepress 7000. They sold the machine with a pricing structure of ten percent fill with 11/17 media.. Now, when was the last time you ran a 11/17 document with ten percent coverage ? NEVER ! So, Canon is trying to save the program by increasing contract prices and doing the toner thing...

    As a service technician I personally love the imagepress 6000/7000 .. Of course we had release bugs with the starter depleting and a few fixing problems, but for the money the image quality is almost press quality .

    I see a few customers making massive amount of money from the IP7000 , one customer makes enough to cover his monthly expenses in the first week of the month..

    So, I guess you could spend a ton of money suing Canon OR figure out how to cover the cost of the increased toner price. Or discontinue your service with Canon and find a reputable service company nearby and see how they price the CPC . Or service the machine in house ?
     
  4. archipelago

    archipelago Senior Member

    Joined:
    Apr 2010
    Messages:
    60
    Location:
    Midwest USA
    I think this is an industry problem with digital printers right now. There seem to be several unhealthy conditions which are not only common but across the board.

    A monopoly on consumables makes the retail price for toner, drums, etc. very very high for the small percentage who don't have a service contract on larger machines. Can you imagine if you had to fill up your chevy at a chevy-owned gas station only each time? I can see why techs wouldn't want to have a service contract on a machine running some unknown toner fouling developer and such. But the price for consumables seems fixed right now for all practical purposes.

    Maybe it simply is not humanly possible to manufacture toner at a reasonable price. The lack of competition in the market may give weight to this. But it's hard to fathom that the cheapest we can produce toner is for $150 per pound for this fine colored plastic powder. The extremely limited to no competition in the market makes the sparse to lone non-oem suppliers like katun price theirs only slightly under the oem price rather than a fair price being set it seems. It sure would be a game changer if consumers had a choice of 3 or 4 different toner manufacturers.

    In addition to the monopoly on toner and parts for all practical purposes, we have machines that seem to lose 75% of their value within 5 years which is extremely short.

    It seems that contracts across the board have language in them that does not represent what salesman assure customers to sell the machine leases. As you say, some customers can in fact make a much higher profit per print, but I'd bet a very large percentage of printers are sold on the basis of salesman and past experience on fulfillment assuring customers that these printers can be much more cost competitive than the letter of the contract insures. What is the real cost of toner to canon or other oems is the big question?

    It's tricky too because it seems sometimes the machine lease is thought of separately from the service. But with only one real source of supplies, this doesn't cut it for me. The machine's value, as wonderful as each new machine is, is only valuable if the supplies and service can be provided at the promised competitive rate. Is a digital printer really worth $50k to $250k if it turns out it can't deliver the click rate it's leased under but instead will cost the printshop $50 to $250k more than running the same jobs on a DI press? So then (with the service rates including toner rates set by the oem practical monopoly on manufacturing the toner) we may have the real-world situation where the service may not be profitable, but without the service the oem would not have leased or continue to lease the machines and made that profit at all.

    To make things even more complicated, I do believe a number of customers probably can make a great deal more profit per print and would be happy to pay more. But probably a lot of the cost of the machine itself is R&D to perfect the design. So if you knock out all the shops who use the machines for longer runs based on the current click rates, and they no longer buy the oem's current or future printers, what does that do to the cost of the equipment itself if the sales volume is cut by half or two thirds to those who can afford to run it for the jobs with a much higher price per print?
     
  5. qednick

    qednick New Member

    Joined:
    Nov 2010
    Messages:
    2
    Location:
    San Antonio, TX
    In the same boat as hotflyers. I'm on the verge of getting lawyers involved. Only had the Canon machine for 4 months. After 2 months we started getting harassed every time we ordered any toner. Yesterday, I had to pay separately for a toner shipment on top of the monthly click charges. We have NEVER had any such issues with Xerox!

    I would be very interested in looking at a class action. I am no stranger to lawsuits, know how they work and successfully sued a public company back in 2004. Any such lawsuit won't go beyond discovery where it will be easy to prove that Canon expecting 5% coverage on 8.5x11 for a 13x19 color machine is totally unrealistic!!

    Nick Trout
    arroprint.com
    210-858-7386
     
  6. jorrya

    jorrya New Member

    Joined:
    Apr 2011
    Messages:
    1
    Location:
    Colorado
    I'm in the same boat (kinda). Canon has filed suit against me because I refused to pay the lease any longer on the C1 when Canon Business Solutions cancelled my service contract. I bought the C1 in May 2007. By November of 2010 I had better than 1 million clicks and they couldn't keep it running, so they cancelled the service contract. I spent better than $14K in 3 1/2 months trying to get it fixed with Canon and they couldn't fix it. Finally I told Canon to come get the machine, I can't afford it anymore...instead they filed a lawsuit against me in New Jersey. New Jersey wouldn't recognize my attorney here and they wouldn't allow me to represent myself. Consequently they entered a default judgement against me. I'm a print for pay as well and they are basically forcing me into filing bankruptcy.

    THanes
     
  7. qednick

    qednick New Member

    Joined:
    Nov 2010
    Messages:
    2
    Location:
    San Antonio, TX
    It's been almost a year since my last post on this subject. You can read the entire story on my new web site whycanonsucks.com
     

  8. JPR

    JPR New Member

    Joined:
    Jan 2019
    Messages:
    3
    Location:
    Texas
    Can you forward your info, the website is down
     
Loading...