This printer will love you. You'll return the favor.

There comes a time in every business when space, simplicity and cost collide to bring the need for a multifunction printer into the office.  No longer does the non-business worthy ink jet machine suffice.  Aside from the expensive ink, obnoxious driver and low quality prints your productivity is creating a professional work environment that needs a professional printer.

You go through your checklist and come up with the basics you need:

Color?  Of course.

Duplexing? It would be nice.

Network connectivity? Absolutely.

Faxing?  People still use that?

Scanning?  More and more every day.

After you have this list you are brought to look at the Xerox WorkCentre 6505 and the Xerox Phaser 6180MFP.  With similar pricing you may wonder what the extra $150 will get you.  In a word or seven, you get less cost per page and a more durable printer with the 6180MFP.

Let’s look at cost per page.  The main idea with printers has always been a pay now or pay later model.  Cheap printers equal expensive ink or toner.  Expensive printers equal less expensive consumables.  To make all of this easy to measure, Xerox includes a simple cost per page calculator for their machines.  The WorkCentre 6505 offers 5% black pages at $0.0035, while the 6180MFP is at a penny less.  That means at black and white printing alone after you print 15,000 sheets, the 6180MFP is now a better bargain.  That print count goes down when comparing color costs.  At 20% coverage the WorkCentre 6505 jumps in at $0.167 per page, while the Phaser 6180MFP is 3 ½ cents less.  So if you print a lot of color documents you may realize the savings in as little as 4000 or so pages.

But I mentioned durability, so let’s hit that up.  The Xerox Phaser 6180MFP has the world open when you open the front door.  All of the toner cartridges have the drums and developers built in.  What this means to you is that you can swap out the toner.  No mess, no technician needed and it is a quick and simple operation.  The Xerox WorkCentre 6505 has similar easy to swap toner cartridges without the aid of drums and developers.  Those items are part of a larger unit that may or not ever need replacing, dependent on usage.  I like the idea of simple and effective.  Downtime means losing money.

What advantages does the WorkCentre 6505 have over the Phaser 6180MFP?  Price.  Initial price to be specific.  If you find that you do not print more than 4000 sheets in a few years it may be worth considering the 6505.

But for my money, I would jump on the Xerox Phaser 6180MFP.  Fast, durable, cheap to run.

All this for only $672? What a deal!

It seems that we may be tumbling towards a world filled with mediocre customer service.  I don’t know when exactly it happened, but I am experiencing it almost daily now.  Oddly enough, it took a 10 year old kid to point it out to me.  Even more odd is that I was on the wrong side of the counter to receive this young gentleman’s complaint.

It started a couple decades ago.  I was working at a movie theatre.  Everyone knows that attending the movies is a relatively expensive affair.  Between overpriced tickets and beyond obnoxiously priced concessions you can lay a quick wad of cash down for 2 hours of entertainment.  The main reason movie theatres can do this is because they are selling great entertainment.  Beyond the adventure the movie itself presents you have the majesty of the theatre.  Walking into the box office and being greeted as if you were the only person this great complex was built for.  Smelling the popcorn and hearing it pop making you yearn for just a few small kernels, if not a jumbo sized barrel full of it.

But after paying for your tickets and proceeding what if you did not hear the popcorn popper?  What if the crowd was sparse?  What if the prices did not change but the economics of scale forced the theatre to adjust practices on slow days.  That is what can lead to any companies customer service issues, and this case was no different.

You see, I worked at a theatre and loved the fast paced action of Friday and Saturday nights.  The team behind the concession counter worked in unison to make sure everyone was happy, fed and entertained.  But when a Tuesday afternoon rolls around and the theatre is open you find yourself a little less excited.  Part of that has to do with the stale popcorn you saved from yesterday that you place into the giant popcorn bin.  This bin has a heater on it, a heater that is often not started as soon as it should be.

Back to our 10 year old diplomat, he was in need of some popcorn.  He and his mom were on a happy mother and son date of sorts.  This kid likely looked forward to this all week.  Here he was, a half hour past when we opened, mere moments after the popcorn bin heater was turned on and he was ready to get a snack that goes hand in hand with the movies.  My fellow coworker and I served him up with beverages, popcorn and candy.  We even joked with him about the movie and whatever else.  He and his mom proceeded to be entertained by their movie.  10 minutes or so later, frustration struck.  Frustration hit this kid so hard that he got up from his seat in a dark theatre, walked over to the concession stand and asked a simple question.

“Your sign says, Hot Buttered Popcorn, but we did not receive hot, buttered popcorn.  We received cold and stale popcorn.  Why is that?”  Ouch.  This action by this kid took guts and we were completely at fault.  So my coworker and I proceeded to make a new batch of the finest popcorn we could muster and brought it to him and his mom in the theatre.  We saved face for a moment, but that is hardly the point.

The point is that it took a 10 year old kid to leave a movie and tell us we were messing up.  We likely messed up countless times before that.  It likely cost us countless customers.  But we had the perception that we were bigger than our customers.  We didn’t need this 10 year old kid.  Because we had thousands of other 10 year old kids to take his place.  But the reality is that not everyone that does not complain is happy.  So it is best to consider the advice of the people that do.

Since Doc Jams is not in the movie business, and our customers have no one to walk to when they are unhappy, Doc Jams Printer Repair has implemented a simple feedback form.  We send it to our customers shortly after they receive our service.  They send it back and get entered for a drawing.  We change what needs to be changed and get commended for the things that do not.

Some of our recent feedback includes:  “You know your printers!  Thank you for keeping us working!”

“Depend 100% on Doc Jams for our Xerox Phasers and Epson 7800/9800.  Fast and reliable…one less thing I need to do.”

“Easy to work with and had printer running within 24 hours.”

“Highly recommend!!”

“Thanks for all you do to keep my business running!!”

“Everyone that we have worked with at Doc Jams has been very helpful.  Friendly + efficient.  We really appreciate the onsite service.”

So lucky for us, we do not need to change too much.  Though if you think that we do, please let us know.

This guy really needs light bulbs but he doesn't know how many.

Soon it will be Thanksgiving, and that can only mean one thing– you finally get a few days off.  With those days off you are likely planning on eating too much while meeting with people you see on rare occasions and maybe watching some football.  But the real point of this whole weekend is Black Friday.

You want to be fueled on turkey and ready to go when the stores open at midnight or 2am, or for those that sleep in, 5am.  You want to rush into the mad chaos of the stores to push and pull and drag and scream to save a few bucks on some gift for some friend or relative that may or may not deserve it.  I understand, I do the same thing almost on a regrettable scale.

But I am writing this to give you a tip.  You may be attracted to the siren song of a cheap printer.  Maybe you want to get the up and coming student something to bang out their assignments with, maybe your grandma likes printing thousands of pictures of her grandchildren for you to one day have to go through.  You may even want to sneak a printer as a ‘present to yourself’ to help you with taxes.  These cheap printers will be hiding in the multitude of ads that you will enjoy paging through and circling with so much care and planning it’ll seem like an airstrike is being prepared.  Unfortunately through all of this you will end up with a cheap piece of plastic with complicated drivers, and the need for expensive ink.  Merry insert your holiday here, I just got you the gift of endless hatred for all things printed.  You might as well give them the first payment on a timeshare in Delaware.  Your gift just cost your beloved recipient big money.

My suggestion?  Call a reputable printer dealer and ask for a used or refurbished printer.  Sure it may not be in a cute and colorful box.  The printer will likely be an ugly beige color.  But what this printing beast lacks in aesthetic appeal it more than makes up for in practical document printing.  Besides, any gift you need to plug in should be glowing with practicality.

These reputable printer dealers may have something available for similar pricing to the cheap machine, but you won’t need to get ink for the holidays every year.  Instead you’ll be the highlight of a new tradition that starts with your happy gift receiver saying something like, “That printer is still working and I haven’t had to touch it!  You are the best ever!”  This will be followed by big hugs and you receiving a great gift every year for years to come.  An investment in the future could not give a better return.

Is there any better gift?

This graph clearly illustrates the actual uses for surge protectors.

Look under just about any office desk and you will see a mess.  Aside from the scraps from lunch two weeks ago and a few cookie crumbs I am talking about the surge protector.  We see these abused surge protectors all the time.

They remind us of the scene in Christmas Vacation that shows the brutal wire mess that Chevy Chase utilized to light every bulb in his house via one outlet.  It may surprise you that most offices are the same.  We as printer technicians often end up under the desk of many an office worker.  Aside from our charm sometimes we need to plug in a vacuum cleaner or unplug a printer.  What we see under that desk is just this side of amazing.

It is amazing in the fact that we see this everywhere.  This is not saved only for the offices that are in reused warehouses from 200 years ago, this happens even in newly constructed offices that look as if no expense was spared.  No expense except for the electricians.  They skimped there with the assumption that the mighty $10 surge protector would offer all the power needed.

What is in these lonely surge protectors?  This list would include a computer or two for sure, a monitor, maybe a printer or possibly a space heater or fan.  Let’s not forget a desk lamp, coffee maker or heating pad.  Perhaps the outlets are filled with cell phone chargers.  Certainly these items were not planned for so we can’t blame the architects.

So I’d like to take the time now to pay homage to the great surge protector under your desk.  He works hard, taking all of the electricity from one outlet and splitting it at least 6, if not 8 ways or more.  He holds on to the huge transformers that were squeezed into a place they certainly were not meant to go.  Filled with dust and crumbs he keeps most surges away from your expensive computers and printers.  Aside from a few random accidental kicks all we do to thank this abused victim of the cube is toss some potato chip crumbs on him as an offering.

Thank you, Mr. Surge Protector.  Hopefully someday architects and engineers will soon understand that this is indeed the 21^st century and things need electricity.  More than 2 things per desk, I am afraid.  And though the strong surge protector has offered years of trouble free mindless service, it may be time to install more than one outlet per cubicle.  Next time, simply skimp on the art.

Everybody's working for the weekend.

Doc Jams Printer Repair is five today.  That’s right, we have continued to survive despite the paperless society that is slowly threatening to maybe, someday approach us.  We have seen a lot of changes.  We have seen many great customers close their doors.  We have seen a lot of great contacts switch jobs or even locations.  We have even seen internal change under our own umbrella of business.

I’d like to take this time to thank all of our paying customers, both past, present and future.  You helped shape the Madison area and beyond to the entire country to what it is today.  Without you we at Doc Jams Printer Repair would be a few people with screwdrivers looking for a jam.  Without us you would be a few companies with a few printers that have jams.  It is good that we found each other so that you may continue printing and making this a great place.

We debated what to do for our five year anniversary.  Do we have a party?  Do we send out birthday cards?  Do we keep moving and acknowledge the anniversary with a blog and nothing else?  I guess we’ll just wait and see.

I actually thought this day would mean more to me and everyone else.  It turns out that the expectation for success means that you achieve continued success.  Five is certainly a milestone, but almost more like a mile marker.  We’re still going strong and continuing to be successful.

Doc Jams recently acquired new software to enhance our abilities to get you our customers back to printing.  We’ve updated our website gradually to allow you to get fast access to service.   We even bought a building to maintain stability for you.  All of this, we do for you, our customers.

Finally we are building a phone system to all but eliminate voicemail.  You call, you talk to a live, easy to understand person that has the knowledge to not only say ‘Hello’, but also mean it when they say, ‘How can I help you?’

So here’s to another great five years of Doc Jams Printer repair helping you succeed in your business by keeping you jam free and full of toner.

Thanks!

Oh this hurts. A little.

Recently we have been tied to the whipping post in regards to price increases in office supplies such as ink and toner.  The increases are rarely more than a dollar or three, but they occur often.  Somewhere around 1-3 times a month.  Whether the blame is put on a natural disaster like an earthquake in Japan or issues such as cost of materials causing increases in prices, we end up taking the brunt.  We can’t pass on every increase to our customers, it is not practical.  In a slim margin business such as office machine supplies including ink and toner this hurts.  Especially when we live in a world where a $70K a year head of purchasing will spend a few hours chasing after a $2.50 savings.  That small savings may be realized 6 times a year, for a total cost savings of $15.  At around $33/hour salary that savings just cost the company this purchaser works for about $85 annually.

Ouch.

So every little price increase chews on the bottom line of the vendor.  That makes us as the vendor become choosey about our customers.  Do we want to deal with purchasing departments that are unaware of the error in chasing $2.50 savings?  We have decided against.  Do we want to deal with purchasing departments that understand that if the pricing is close but the service and delivery is better than the opportunity cost far outweighs a meager $2.50 savings?  A resounding yes is heard.

If you prefer the $2.50 savings, perhaps you should ask yourself and your cheap vendor some questions:

1)      What if the ink/toner was ordered wrong?

2)      Restocking fees?

3)      What if the ink/toner fails?

4)      What if this failed ink or toner messes up my machine?

5)      How long is too long for down time?

6)      Who pays for shipping?

7)      How fast is shipping?

8)      I ran out of toner, how soon can you get here?

9)      Can I pay on terms?

10)   I don’t know how to install this toner, can you personally help me?

So if you are the purchaser that understands this blog, feel free to contact us.

Whoever took this likely needs something quickly.

We live in a fast moving world.  Our world is so fast moving that most speedometers go up to at least 140 miles per hour, even on economy cars and SUVs.  This leads me to believe that often our world offers the illusion of speed without the actual cheek stretching action of going quickly.

In our world when a printer jams, we need to be at the customer’s site very quickly.  Though it is rare that our speedometers ever hit 140, we do our best to get to the jammed printer in a jiffy.  When we schedule these zippy repairs we try to get to the printer patient in less than a few hours.  Call, fix, smile.  Easy.

We recently attempted to schedule a service for some equipment of ours through a local company.  In full disclosure it was not office equipment and it certainly wasn’t bringing our business to a halt, but headaches resulted from this service being needed.  We first talked to the company on a Tuesday and were told that if we did not hear from them on Friday to call them.  Red flag number one had been seen and we are on the first conversation with this company.  After not hearing from them Friday we called them the following Tuesday, 1 week after initial contact.  We were told that we would be called ‘in a day or two’ to discuss scheduling.  Really.  In my concerned tone I asked if it actually took 2 days to schedule this service.  I received a chuckle and a ‘sometimes’ answer.

Maybe it is my crude look on the schedules of other people.  We at Doc Jams feel that your time is important, and you called us because you wanted something to get done when you wanted and not when we felt like it.  If you wanted us to take our sweet time and offer you a load of ‘maybe’, ‘kinda’, ‘sorta’, ‘probably’ and ‘I think so’ you would not care enough to have your printer repaired.  So when we call a company for service and they offer the ‘maybe’, ‘kinda’, ‘sorta’, ‘probably’ and ‘I think so’ we feel they need a couple things: a calendar and a clock.

Quickly.

I paid extra for air-conditioning.

Have you ever wondered how some businesses can survive in spite of some of the decisions you see made?  Sometimes this can go on the grand scale like quality at a major auto manufacturer that can kill a great brand name.  Other times it can be a much simpler mixup due to the scale of the decision.

Take for example the choice of printers available to businesses today.  These office machines run the gamut from cheap fifty dollar machines up to grandiose devices that can cost thousands of dollars.  Given the wide cost range you would think that options would be almost endless.  Oddly enough the variables for each machine are pretty narrow.

If the end result is a printed page your options are basically whether the print is in color or black and white and how fast do you want each print to come out.  Beyond that you have connectivity through USB, parallel or network for your current office setup.  All that is left is how you want the machine to get the original document to the printing portion of the office machine.  Then you need to know if you would you like the machine to be able to copy, scan, fax or simply print from your computer.  That’s it.

Color or not, fast or not, multifunction or not and how to connect are the major points to look at when buying an office machine for a business.  So why do businesses bother spending thousands of dollars when hundreds or even tens are available?

I’m sure you know the answer, because that question is mirrored in everything we purchase.  Why buy the best when the cheapest will do?  Businesses often buy the cheapest because they don’t understand the value in the best, or at least something better.  It works just as well with printers as it does with toasters, socks, cars, food and other items we consume everyday.  If we don’t understand the value of great we are happy to settle for cheap.  We may even feel as if we beat the system by spending so little.

Or did we?

Companies that manufacture many of these items bank on the lack of intellect required to make smart buying decisions.  These companies are happy to sell you cheap knowing that you will continue to buy cheap over and over.  This may end up costing you many times what great would have cost.  In addition cheap have corners cut to allow it to reach a certain price point.  Do you think that the quality in a $100 printer is equal to a $1000 printer?

When speaking with business professionals we often are turned off by odd things.  A crooked tie, wrinkled shirt, odd speech pattern, lazy eye or whatever may cause us to pause.  One major thing that stops us in our tracks is the business professional handing out a document or sales literature printed on an inkjet printer.  The text is mottled, horizontal lines cut through the print and images, and it even looks smeared in some areas.  This is the equivalent of walking into a sales meeting with messed up hair and an untucked shirt.  It is clear you simply do not mean business.

So when shopping for printer for your professional business it may be advisable to actually look into professional level machines.

Flat surface equals cup holder.

It is a sure sign an office is the right place for you when you feel that walking over to an office machine with a coffee cup in your hand is considered a normal routine.  This fact is reinforced by the fact that most office machines have a mark on them showing they are used.  This mark is not significant in any way, it doesn’t even appear to be toner or ink or even paperclip related.  Nope, we’re talking about the coffee ring.

The coffee ring is the simple result of a combination of a long hard walk from cubicle to printer, and the limited patience of someone who can’t wait for a document without resting themselves and setting that heavy coffee mug down.  Flat surfaces surrounding office machines are sometimes limited, which is why the manufacturers of these office machines were kind enough to make the top of the office printer flat and readily available for that splashing coffee mug to be set down.

We at Doc Jams understand that the lonely office walks must be long and cruel, resulting in a weary office traveler to land abruptly at the printer with the coffee mug in tow.  The coffee mug being gracefully set on the expensive electronic equipment is not even an option at the end of this perilous journey; it slams into the case of the printer with a just enough care to keep it upright.  The resulting splash of brew is not enough to typically short out the office equipment, but it is just enough to leave a temporary tattoo of sorts on the printer to let other office explorers know that others have made the same journey as them.  You as a well caffeinated office employee are not alone.

Doc Jams recommends that you either move your cubicle closer to your printer to limit the hydration necessary to make a shorter journey, or simply talk to Doc Jams about getting a printer at your desk.

Find out more about these caffeinated circles here: http://www.roaste.com/CafeRoaste/News/2011/02/12/Coffee-Rings-Continue-Buzz-Reseachers-5345

Losing Money Faster Than You Can Say 'Broke'?

Eight dollars a gallon seems like a lot to pay for anything.  It seems like a crazy amount for something as simple as sugar water, or more specifically a cold soda.  But on a hot day when you’ve been sweating hard and you just finished filling up with gas, that big number seems reasonable.  At least when they put it into nice, cold and refreshing liter size bottles.  If you were not at a place that relied on your convenience to mark up prices you may think twice about paying eight dollars for multiple gallons of soda.

This paying extra for convenience is completely understandable, but what if you didn’t need to pay extra for convenience?  What if a simple phone call or email that could be finished in 30 seconds or less could get you the same or better pricing than driving somewhere or using complex online forms?  Would you be interested?

Doc Jams Printer Repair has been around for a while and we have learned a few things about customers.  Mainly they don’t want to be bothered.  They just want to click print and have their documents come out.  Minimal interruption, except for reading a few blogs about printing on the Doc Jams website.  So Doc Jams has created a simple way to order toner or service with a guarantee of the whole order process taking less than 30 seconds for existing customers and less than 1 minute for new clients.  That is less time than it takes for you to remember your account number at some other place.

Turtle Toner is what we call the companies that feel that toner and service orders should not be fast.  They act as if you are but a number and they are bored with your requests.  Through them the initial order should take at least 5 minutes plus you’ll wait a few days for the order to arrive and if you have a problem you’ll be frustrated and on the phone for almost an hour.  This is our competition and we welcome them.  They’re cute and you can put them on their back for a chuckle.

Doc Jams does not think that the turtle will win the race.  Turtle Toner can’t get you your toner quickly like Doc Jams.  Turtle Toner cannot respond to toner failures like Doc Jams can.  Turtle Toner is slow and you are just another number.  Doc Jams counters that by being fast.  Our whole motto is ‘Getting You Back to Printing That Damn Fast’.  We do that by making everything from ordering to shipping to repair fast, convenient and competitive.  Tell us your problem and we will solve it.  How else would you like it?