We are a dual line dealer; been a Kyocera house for years and Ricoh for over three years now. We seem to be having nothing but problems with all the color boxes Kyocera came out with and more problems with the recent monochrome equipment Kyocera released.A lot (if not most)of the equipment gets replaced with Ricoh since it seems to be a much more reliable machine especially the color box.The Ricoh box requires to be PM'd more often the Kyocera but the parts/supplies seem to be really inexpensive. Is it just us or are other dual dealership leaning towards other line?

yes we are a kyocera dealer that has had to move to another colour line to provide something that actually works. kyocera, in my humble opinion has never produced a good colour machine, unfortunate but true.

I can only say from my perspective that the Kyocera line (Color and B/W) has actually been pretty solid. We've had a minor hiccup or two along the way just like any other line, but we have yet to experience a failing line of equipment were the reps are scared to sell the equipment into the field, and we've had to ditch it for something else.

Usually when you have to cross lines, it's because one machine offers something another doesn't. Such as Kyocera for us is definitely not an option unfortunately when a customer requests a 1200x1200 DPI solution. Just like in the past when they didn't offer a 12x18 solution. Other than cases like that, I have no fears about putting it up against anyone else's equipment line. Most lines have some small thing that another line does not. For customers who want/need a 3 Tiered Color Meter Reading option, that then limits the choices of equipment pretty quickly.

As you said, it's your opinion though and that doesn't make it necessarily the "truth". Just as much as I can say I have an ex-Ricoh tech on my service staff, who says he likes and prefers the Kyocera equipment to the Ricoh equipment he used to service. It's purely his preference at this point.

I agree, we have had nothing but trouble
with the new kyocera colors machine.

quote:

Originally posted by the gaffa:
yes we are a kyocera dealer that has had to move to another colour line to provide something that actually works. kyocera, in my humble opinion has never produced a good colour machine, unfortunate but true.

Are there issues with the KM color line, of course there are, makes them NO different to ANY other manufacturer out there. My company sells Ricoh, Canon , HP, and mostly KM.
Look, the only machines that seem to work best are HP's, but they will EAT you alive with consumable costs.
The majority of KM problems out there are caused by poor/lack of training. I will work on a KM color machine over any other brand simply due to the ease of maintenece. I have multiple accounts with Saturn machines getting ready to turn the big 1 million mark, and other than the known updated issues, they run well.
I like them most of all because I know exactly what is going on at any time during the copy process, with canons, there is Sooo much happening during the copy process, it can be a bear to tshoot weird problems. I can't speak for Minolta, but have heard they also have issues.
Things are really going KM's way in the last 2 years, they are THE new low cost choice for majority of customers out there, I just wish they were tested a bit longer in the factory before being set loose in the wild, but lets face it, all OEM's rush the boxes out now, they have to keep up with the Jones's.

quote:

Originally posted by drewsup:
The majority of KM problems out there are caused by poor/lack of training.

In my opinion this sums it up pretty well.

Years ago they did a much better job of field testing their equipment before fully releasing it, but as you said later on in your post, unfortunately they are under pressure to rush their boxes into the field to keep up with competitive pressures. The 12x18 issue and the SSL issue are two examples of where Kyocera had fallen behind on that were becoming major issues.

they are low cost for a reason and that reason is they dont work. you sell a longstanding customer a km colour box and tell them they are the best thing since sliced bread because thats why you bought it, long life units, you will never see an engineer for 300k. dont make me laugh very rarely have we ever had a fuser,transfer belt, dev unit,drum unit go even half their life. you have to think of the customers perception and when you sell them a badly designed machine and you are never away then im sorry but at the end of the contract they are not going to come knocking on your door for another one.like i said unfortunate but true.

1.) Kyocera warranties their parts. I have zero issues for consumables that don't meet life expectancy in getting a replacement part. If it's supposed to go 300,000 and makes 290,000, they replace it no questions asked. Of the other lines we rep or have reped, that does not happen. Don't even get me started with Konica Minolta on that issue, where their drums/IUs get 10% of life and you have an issue and they start to push back about any refunds or replacements.

2.) You can say don't make me laugh all you want about the consumables on your Kyoceras not making half their life. All I can say is we are not a small dealer or a large dealer, but I can tell you that every 9 out of 10 machines in our field easily make their yields. I have to wonder what you guys are doing differently that is preventing you from getting yields.

3.) Our customers have no issue buying another Kyocera. I am intimately involved in the day to day running of a dealership, I know what is happening with our customer base from a sales and service base. I routinely make sales calls with reps or managers. I routinely meet my service techs and service managers in the field at customer accounts to see how they are doing and how the customer is doing. I am fortunate to know what our customer perception is.

Your thoughts and comments are from your experiences, but again don't make them facts for all Kyocera dealers. It sounds like unfortunately you have had a bad experience with Kyoceras. One thing Kyocera is great about is actually giving you access to executives at the corporate level. Take your concerns to them, especially if you have evidence of consumables not making yields,etc.

Is Kyocera perfect, absolutely not. I prefer the days when they took a little longer to put equipment into the field because they actually trialed them in the field, before mass pushing them to everyone. But as was stated by someone above, unfortunately competitive pressures these days as fast as all manufacturers are turning and burning their lines, simply does not allow that any longer. That said of the 4 lines we have repped over the years, in my opinion, they are one of the stronger lines in terms of value versus quality.

Xerox for us was a very strong line in terms of quality they put out. However their equipment margins were significantly higher than most of the market. Also their access to tech support was less than ideal. They had strong resources for the techs, but when problems had to be escalated it got ugly in terms of turn around time.

This all boils down to personal preference, experience with bad copiers/printers.

Guys will always compare their equipment, as its in our nature to do so. When Ricoh releases a machine, its the best thing since sliced bread, in the right environment, but then it starts giving trouble and it starts becoming a hassle of a machine. ( im not disrespecting Ricoh, I have no malice feelings towards any competitor, besides HP with their consumables ) But hey, if you want to pay an arm and a left nut for something like HP, then by all means go for it.

The same with Kyocera, as mentioned before it aint the perfecct machine, and as a matter of fact, there is no such thing.

If you have had a bad experience with a kyocera, it saddens me to say that im sorry to hear about your bad experience, as i have had my issues with Minoltas, Canons, Panasonics, Brother, they all come down to personal preference, ease of use and reliability.

Where some cases i have a Kyocera printer that lasts for 100000 prints and then caves in, but nobody tells you that the machiine was in the wrong environment, where its actually working in a mine shaft 2 miles underground, crammed into a corner with no air circulation, then yes it aint gonna last long, and quiet frankly no machine would. but then again, on the other hand i have other printers that are in a warehouse, dusty, dirty and covered in bird crap and full of gecko eggs and roaches, but it still works 100%.

As mentioned in previous posts, you have had a bad experience with a machine, does not mean its a crappy machine, its just your preference and experience to continue using that brand or not. ( I bought a Samsung LED TV the other day, it lasted 8 days and then there was no TV no more. I didnt go get another brand, apparently it had a faulty component and they replaced the part and now its working fine. I didnt say it was an unreliable TV or anyhting, i just knew that things like this happens and sometimes you need to grow a pair and deal with it. )

For me (once again... personal preference)i would never use another brand, other than Kyocera. Yes, you might hear that the colour is not that great, but it all boils down to its working environment. Dont expect a workgroup colour machine to produce continuos toned images on a production line. Also, they just started in the colour field a while ago and quiet frankly i deal with the issues at hand, and being a graphic designer i manage to help to educate the un-educated about colour management and so forth and whether Kyocera can produce the colour you require or not. i never tell a client to go with another competitor, unless i know my machines cant do the job, or were sold into the wrong environment, then in that case i bow my head and i tell the client straight that we cant do what you need it to do with regards to functionality and then i recommend him to either go with Canon, or Ricoh or who ever i think has the better machine for the job, unlike the other dealers who approach a client and offer him a free TV, microwave or xbox and crap for free, just to buy the product. I pity such sales companies.

Thank you for reading my preferences and experiences and God speed in your choices of office solutions.

Kind Regards

This message has been edited. Last edited by: IQ-Clueless,

personal preference is the name of the game. BUT lets look at the facts.
1 we are and have been a kyocera dealer for over 20 years and on the whole they have produced good boxes.

2 kyocera are not new to colour and i have to say having worked on them from the beginning from c830 and c2630 days to voyagers and present day kit they are in my opinion rubbish.

3 mono kit superb falcon 1 and 2 fantastic best ever made.

4 i am personally delighted that you seem to get life out of the units unfortunately we dont and never have.

5 we set up the ta250 to ta552 out of the box following all instructions etc and to be honest go that little bit further in lining them up etc.we load the latest firmware and carry out any mods that need doing.

6 from new we get fuser failures, dev units,drum units, transfer belts, dev motor failures and generally lots of copy quality issues and this is before we take them to bits.

7 we get our parts pro rata which means if a fuser does a fifth of its life we get four fifths back, now thats fine but my time would be best spent servicing a 8030 that has done 5 million copies rather than having to sit and fill out a returns form for a badly designed fuser thats done 40k.

8 i have spoken to other dealers who also have major issues and i have personally seen the warehouse the parts are returned to, its vast.

9 i would love to just run one dealer line it is so much easier than having to train on two lines.

10 we have many clients and very rarely lose any however we have lost longstanding clients not thru service or what features are on the machines as they are all quite alike but due to the fact that kyocera colour has let them down.

11 having been in this game for 30 years i like to think i am honest and kind of call a spade a spade and i wish that kyocera would get the colour right which for us they havent.

12 we get excellent backup from kyocera and always have and to be honest i personally should get them involved more but we fix 99.9% of all problems inhouse. my point is we should not be having to do this on new boxes not in this day and age. if you bought a car and it was in the garage every other day or week you wouldnt be happy. we have been kyocera loyal for the last 20 years and have taken on another line reluctantly but feel we have to and to be brutally honest the new line copy quality is superb as well as build quality.

lastly i must apologise to anyone who feels i have gone too far but as i said i am speaking with perfect honesty and frankness.and also forums like these are the lifeblood of our industry and i like to think we can be frank with one another.

Tired, I really gotta wonder what is happening in your shop, I'm not disbelieving you, but you either got every Friday machine produced delivered to your shop alone, or something else is going on.
Believe me, I'm no shill for KM, but after 24 years in the industry, I have never worked on such easy machines.
The leaps and bounds that KM have taken from the POS 830, then the 2630, then the Voyager, then the Saturn and finally to Alphard are truly massive advances each time. The top color machines have always been Canon, then Minolta and Ricoh came on real strong and made the market competitive. Now everyone makes a pretty descent color box, the only real difference is who is servicing it, and more importantly, was the machine put into the right environment.

Just a couple of opions and as they say Opions are like (fill in the blank here)
KM3035,4035,5035 are a dream to work on , other then that I have run into so much stuff with there color boxes I could scream...

About 5 months since the original post.... what do you think about the new color line?

They like to Jam and blow toner

quote:

Originally posted by supertech68:
About 5 months since the original post.... what do you think about the new color line?

We have had a few small problems with the new color machines but I would take them all day long over our Ricoh colors. I have no idea how Ricoh dealers make any money, having replace a whole drum unit because you can't just buy a charge roller to take care of the constant line problems. Once cleaned they don't last long till lines come back and they never make rated life unless want be out cleaning constantly. Almost $400 to replace a color drum unit on there mid speed colors just because of stupid charge roller they won't sell us. Be lucky get 80-100k out of them, unless want visit monthly to clean charge roller. So yes Kyocera has problems but will take there set of problems over lack of warranty coverage or availibilty of needed parts of the Ricoh's any day.

The new taskalfa units are a nightmare. We recently became Toshiba authorized for a few reasons:

1) Support from KMA has gone down hill the past 3yrs.
2) Their new TA series machine are having continual issues both mono and color. You know its bad when tech support calls your dealership asking if our techs have "found a fix" for certain issues.
3) 34% of the TA series machine sold the last 12 months have been upgraded due to continual issues. We would've lost these accounts if we didn't have another line to offer.
4) Parts that should be covered under warranty are coming back "denied" 64% of the time the past 12 months. Even with all the correct paperwork and examples they seem to deny claims regularly.
5) There's no other Toshiba dealer in Portland selling up and down the streets. Well there's one other, Pacific Office Automation but they sell EVERY other major brand out there and only Toshiba on 200+ machine deals.

This is just my 2 cents...

muleyman

Curious why you are being denied on your warranties if you supply all the correct paperwork. We've literally seen less than 2 denials in the last 3 years or so, and both were because of preventable issues on our side (late return and incorrect paperwork).

For us 6 months later, the line is performing well for us. We've had a couple minor issues along the way, but we've learned a few things and put a couple of preventive safeguards in on our side, but overall happy with the product at this point.

I agree with everything you said,
Jamming , toner dusting, going through fuser like water

quote:

Originally posted by muleyman:
The new taskalfa units are a nightmare. We recently became Toshiba authorized for a few reasons:

1) Support from KMA has gone down hill the past 3yrs.
2) Their new TA series machine are having continual issues both mono and color. You know its bad when tech support calls your dealership asking if our techs have "found a fix" for certain issues.
3) 34% of the TA series machine sold the last 12 months have been upgraded due to continual issues. We would've lost these accounts if we didn't have another line to offer.
4) Parts that should be covered under warranty are coming back "denied" 64% of the time the past 12 months. Even with all the correct paperwork and examples they seem to deny claims regularly.
5) There's no other Toshiba dealer in Portland selling up and down the streets. Well there's one other, Pacific Office Automation but they sell EVERY other major brand out there and only Toshiba on 200+ machine deals.

This is just my 2 cents...

muleyman