Extended Service Contracts

[RJ California]

I currently have a Mutoh Falcon Outdoor 48". I've had it about 20 months and it's definately paid for itself many times. The extended service contract on this Mutoh runs about $1,800 a year. I purchased it and I'm glad I did because I've required in-house service 3 times (replacing heads twice) during the the past 8 months.

I am now considering upgrading to an HP 9000s printer. I was stunned to find out how much more the extended service contract is for this machine. I can buy a 3 year contract at the time of purchase (the 3 years includes the 1 year that you get free anyway with purchase) for $11,000 additional. If you don't buy the contract at purchase and wait till the 1 year free contract is up it will cost you $7,070. per year.

I've certainly found the value of the service contract on my Mutoh, but the HP contract price has me on the fence. Any thoughts?

Any advice from HP 9000 or Seiko ColorPainter owners?

 

[Checkers]

Hiya Rod,
I can't comment about the printer, but I can comment about HP in a very negative way.
After about 10 years of almost exclusively using their products, computers, printers, media, storage devices, etc., I will never buy anything with the HP (or Compaq) label on it ever again. The quality of their products has gone to crap and their tech support, well, putting it nicely, sucks!
After purchasing a back up storage device and having the product fail, in an attempt to fix it, their tech support gave me negligent information. This bad info cost me almost a week of productivity and an indeterminate amount of money and a loss of data that can never be replaced. And, after countless emails calls and letters, all they could say was oops, but have a nice day.
I would not rely on anything HP ever again for anything that could make, or more importantly, cost me money. So, even though the company puts up a great front, do yourself a favor and keep looking. Because, when, not if, you have a problem, you better fasten your seat belt because you’ll be in for the ride of your life.

Checkers

 

[Billct2]

I have an HP5000, for five years. It has been a great machine with little maintenance issues so I dropped the contract after the second year. Any
issues have been handled by their phone techs who are great.
That being said, the 9000 is a whole different animal. I too have been looking at adding a printer and whenI priced that puppy and saw the cost of the maintenance contract I took it off the list. I am leary of buying something that the company feels it needs a quarter of it's cost every year in repairs.