Need Help HELP: Roland sold me a defective printer and I lost $750,000

[jasonx]

and people laugh at us when we take out a stopwatch in a demo and ask the supplier to run jobs and we specifically time it to verify any proclaimed speeds at the quality modes we require. It's amazing how far off the mark some companies quote figures at or hide little details relating to print quality which makes the machines appear a lot faster than what they are.

 

[MikePatterson]

I have done the same thing. I provide the print file too. I walked around the last show with my file, timing the print speed on the printers we were interested in. When shit didnt line up, the sales guys blamed my image , profiles, etc. Anything but their printer. I was disappointed in most that we looked at.

 

[Jim Hill]

After reading every post in this thread one thing sticks in my head and that is I do not want to do business with any company that does not stand behind their products.

I happen to like the early Roland printers better than many of the newer printers so when Roland decided to designate the older printers as legacy printers I understood why they were doing making this move.
When they told me they would no longer service my printer if I needed a Roland Certified Tech I thought to myself well I service it myself anyway so that fine.

But when the service manager said he would no longer sell me the parts to service it is when I reminded him that my printer has been out of warranty for years.
I like my Roland printer but I do not like many of Roland's recent changes.

Just my opinion. Jim Hill

 

[Brian ONeil]

Brian..... I'm on your side, but when you see posts like squirrel posted and as you said yourself, the Roland people were most helpful and nice..... how do you expect to go up against hard cold facts vs.a salesperson e-mail ?? They might get reprimanded, but it's not gonna help your case, if you ignored the company's written facts and specs ??

So, you get an order for 15,000 double sided signs. Your estimator did the math on it and figure your time, ink, consumables and overhead and quotes the guy. You put it in writing. You get a deposit and signed confirmation sheet. The job is finished and when you put your numbers together with time sheets and whatnot, things don't add up. What're ya gonna do ?? Tell the customer he needs to come up with an extra $90k to pick up his project ?? Your guy missed a whole setup and the whole thing takes you a lot longer than expected and more everything. You had it in writing. Are you gonna let the guy who gave wrong numbers out make up the difference or are you gonna eat it ??

Well, perhaps, this one time you'd eat it. However, it happens again, but with another estimator. Are you gonna let people who don't know what they're doing represent your company...... or put the things in writing yourself and be sure it's all correct ??

According to your theory, the company should be eating anything that comes down the pike, because some nitwit said something wrong.

You had ample time to see it work, but not at what you really wanted to see it do. Did you take your files and use some samples for this specific job ?? You had people calculate who evidently didn't know how to add & subtract correctly and you didn't check their math. This is all I'm saying...... you have a lotta undotted 'I's and non-crossed 'T's. So again..... good luck.

As I mentioned before this was my first digital printer that I ever bough. The only other printers I bough before this were desktop printers from Staples. I did a lot of research and this printer was highly rated from what I could tell and and Roland is one of the biggest names in the business. I have said that the Roland Techs, Central Paper Salesperson, and Roland Head of Sales were all very nice to work with while I was considering buying the Roland. They gave me print speeds and showed me demos but 100% I was not present when the Roland Tech and CP Salesperson ran the production run with my files and product where they gave me the numbers I used to make the decision to purchase. I did not know about how crazy speed times can vary and all the different factors the effect speed times. I was a novice for sure. This is why I leaned heavily on the Central Paper sales person who seemed to have my best interest in mind and if I really was buying a turtle and needed a rabbit I think they had many opportunities to speak up.

To be clear we did not mix up a quote, fumble on a job, or something wrong? We specifically acquired this printer for only 1 product type, almost all the same size 6 " x 6" and printed on only 1 side. We needed to print thousands a day for a very high profile client for at least a year and then we would use this printer for other product down the road. It is easy to see with specs and various articles now that I understand more about it but much of the responsibility must lie on the Central Paper salesperson and Roland sales manager because they all came to my location and saw first hand exactly what I need to do and the volume in which I needed to make them and never said anything other than it would be perfect for the job.

The machine did not come close to what we needed it to do for speed and even worse the print quality was just terrible. In less than 6 weeks of owning it with no head strikes I attached below what a good test print looked like with a tech here, Roland replaced the yellow head and claimed it was because the environment that the printer was in was too dusty. This was the same room that all the Roland and Central Paper people came for the site inspection and said it would be fine. To accommodate them after the head was replaced we put a dust curtain around it and somehow it printed even worse? Roland stuck with the dust issue no matter what because it is all they had even when we removed it 100% from the dust and when this excuse no longer worked I was told I had buyers remorse?

At this point we have several printer owners in the same position, we even have a Roland dealer who say they too were burned by Roland in regards to this printer. I will be speaking to a lawyer next week to see what can be done. Still may be a long shot for sure but if everyone one who bought one of these printers had major problems how does one not come to the conclusion that there was not negligence on behalf of Roland?

We will see.


If you or someone you know also owns this same model please reach out even if you have the one them made that did work?

Thank you

 

[Notarealsignguy]

Good luck with everything, hopefully you can get some sort of resolution with this.

 

[BigfishDM]

Looking for any help out there in case someone has had this same problem!

The situation is I made the decision to jump into UV printing my product in May of 2018. I did a lot of research and came across the Roland VersaUV LEJ-640FT site. From the research I did and after speaking to their local rep Central Paper this by all accounts and the print times they were quoting to print my product this was the perfect machine for me to do the high volume product that I needed it to do.

Roland was so accommodating their sales rep Mark Czerniakowski came to our location to see firsthand the product that we would be printing. He along with several other printer sales people all agreed that the Roland LEJ-640FT was going to be perfect for our product!

We went ahead and leased the unit through Geneva Capital and were told it would arrive in several weeks. Having just landed a huge order we asked if there was any way that we could use the floor model printer at the local Roland facility. Roland said yes and we were very appreciative.

The next week we got trained on the machine by a very helpful Roland Tech and we began to print. Like anything we know it takes time to learn on how to set it up and run but very early on I got the sense that something was not right. At one point I panicked and called my sales person and told him there is no way this printer is printing at the speeds we had been quoted. He explained we needed to build jigs to hold the product as well as some tweaks with the software and we would be doubling our speed in no time.

We finally get our Roland printer delivered and begin to print and to no surprise we have the same exact problems. We built jigs, we changed processes, print speeds and resolutions but no matter what we did it was always either super slows printing or the print quality was terrible. I don't know all the printing terminology but is basically looked like we were printing through a screen door?

We reached out to Roland and Central Paper and after 2 months of use they said one of the heads was no good because of dust? This was replaced and we enclosed the printer from any dust but this did not make any difference? At this point I am struggling to fill orders to the point I am canceling orders and I realized I just leased this printer for $89K only to find out it is a lemon.

When I push Mark at Roland his story is that I had weeks of time using the floor model and should have know what I was getting and that I had a case of buyer’s remorse. This is completely untrue. Had the printer worked the way it was sold to me and printed at the speeds I was quoted I would have been very happy! The remorse is only because as I dug deeper into this I spoke to people in the industry who sold Roland and love Roland, but would not sell this specific printer due to all the problems. I also was told this printer was actually a machine Roland constructed from an older machine? One of the other a common problem was to have a flashing pinch roll error button? But there was no pinch roller on the unit?

After 5 months of constant issues and Roland not willing to help at all I realized that if I did not do something else I would go out of business... So I did my homework and purchased another brand UV printer that I will not reveal so people know I did not post this to drive business to another brand but this printer for almost the same price was much faster and a true work horse unlike the Roland.

So now for almost 2 years I have continued to pay the lease ($2,200 a month) on the Roland even though I stopped using the printer 18 months ago. In this time I have reached out to Roland, Central Paper, and Geneva and no one has done anything to help or even admit this printer has problems? Most likely none of them would help because the word got out about how terrible these printers are and the resale values plummeted. We have been trying to sell this unit for 6 months on eBay for $35K with no takers. Probably because there is so many others also listed but hey we did get a couple of offers at $10-15K so they are worth something!

My only option now it to surrender the printer to Geneva capital where they hope to get $30K for it which will stick me with the remainder of the lease of another $30-40K. If this happens I will have paid over $75K for a printer that did not generate even $10K of profits. Instead of the money generating machine I was promised between all the lost times dealing with issues, the down time on the printer, huge canceled purchase orders, and having to pay $75K for a broken printer that I never used, I will have lost over $750K in 2 years!

I am a small company and having to go through this has nearly bankrupted my business. It is absolutely disgusting that Roland was so eager to sell me this printer but the moment we had a problem they ran away and did nothing to help. They would not even consider taking it in as a trade in for us to buy smaller UV printer? At one point I even tried calling a Roland dealer outside of my area that was confident he could fix the printer and getting run so we could use it to make one item. They were located 5 hours away but I was willing to pay them for his time to come and look at it as I had no other options. On the day he was to driving here to visit he got a call directly from Roland advising he was not to help us? How is this even possible?

Even though we are in a global pandemic most likely I will have to surrender the Roland printer next week as Geneva Capital is pressuring me to do so as I have lost my appetite to keep paying $2,200 for nothing! I had hoped that at some point over the last 2 years someone from Roland or Central Paper would reach out with some type of solution to help us but that has not been the case.


If you have any advice on what I should do or who to talk to please let me know. If you or someone you know has the same Roland UV Printer issues please reach out to me with ideas and solutions. I have seen other posts on here with similar problems but maybe if we can get enough owners together with the same problems there is a bigger collective way to fight Roland. And if you want to buy this printer contact me as well.

Thank you,

Brian
508-431-8906

Is it capable of doing any applications good, besides the one you cant do? I would find an application I could do on it and try and make money off it. Just move forward and try to make money with it.

 

[astro8]

I'm sorry to hear of your situation, but I believe that you are just banging your head against a wall.

Roland will not admit fault for anything and will pony up for nothing.

You couldn't possibly have did proper research, because if you did, you would have soon realised that all these Roland, Mimaki etc flatbeds are toys.

In no way are they classed as production machines by people who need production.

It's the same story for any piece of equipment. The salesman will promise you the world, 50% of it is outright BS. It's all happy talk, inflated capabilities and processing times.

Nothing will become of this, except more cost, lost time and stress for you.

I hope you dump the thing and move on. It's not worth it...

 

[signtism]

Typical from Roland in my experience.
Had a VP540 years ago that would randomly drop the network connection mid print.
Their standard response was "we've never seen this before".
Must be your computer. Or your network components.
All along it was the dodgy network port, but because it's on the motherboard you have to replace the whole board.
That's expensive. They knew that.
Basically they try to ignore it until it's out of warranty. Then you are on your own.

 

[Caw]

My company has the printer in question as well and it has been a ungodly pile since about a year after we installed it. Between the slow speeds, colors dropping mid print, endless tech visits, and shear frustration I will be very happy when my company figures out how much time and money this thing has wasted and junks it. Me and our engineer have spent hours of our lives fixing it trying to print just 1 piece of 36 x 48 plexiglas on display mode...which will take almost 2 hours just to print cmyk double hit and 1 hit of white, if the white will flow at all. I do not recommend. I really hope I can go Office Space on this thing when they do decide to junk it....I have a couple years of rage built up.

 

[Pauly]

Wow, What a sh!tstorm of a post.

My 2c - OP didn't do his research properly and has to eat his own bullet.
The Roland VersaUV LEJ-640FT is a VERY slow printer.

And after reading it all. where did he lose 750k? the printer was ~100k where's the other 650k?

 

[dale911]

Whats bad is when you Google a sign question and it leads you to a post on S101 where you already asked it and got it answered before.

That actually happened to me a couple months ago when I went looking for rip computer specs. Searched the web, saw a link with the exact question I had and sure enough, I was the OP from years ago. At least the answers I saw on there were exactly what I. Ended this time as well. Getting too old to remember all this stuff I guess.


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[dale911]

I own 7 printers as we are a trade printer only. I continue to study the printers as they come out so I’m prepared when we have to buy another machine. Every salesman that lives will tell you what you need to hear in order to put food on the table at home. That’s what they do. I was in the market for a new flatbed cutter a couple years ago and read the specs on all of them. I sent the same file to Kongsberg, Colex and Multicam. Everyone ran my file on their fastest machines. Both Kongsberg and Multicam knew that their fastest machines were out of my price range but I took that into consideration. While Multicam has the fastest advertised speeds, I found that for the work I was doing, they came in over 1 minute slower on a job that that were only about 4 minutes on the other machines that’s 20% slower than the other machines. In an hour, that’ a few more boards and over an 8 hour shift, that’s a significant difference in production speeds. When I did the demos. I had them send me videos of the cutting so I could compare every aspect. What is interesting is that Colex only has one machine and it runs the max speed it can do and was only a couple seconds behind the Kongsberg machine at twice the price. The Kongsberg rep told me the Colex would be a good machine but would fail in a few years and I should consider it “disposable.” Multicam told me that their speeds were accurate if you are doing straight line cuts which is where they “really excel.” In the end, I couldn’t stomach spending all that money on a brand new machine since we tech everything in house. I found a good, used Kongsberg and have been 90% happy with the purchase. There are some oddball things we have to do that I didn’t foresee but it makes me a lot more money.

In my research, and also know sellers of your particular flatbed, I know it to be an extremely slow “toy” printer that can print excellent quality products if you give it the time to do it. Personally, I would feel like I’m watching paint dry to get it printing at quality I feel is acceptable so I would never own one. The “new” flatbed they sell is a Ricoh printer with a Roland badge on it. Pretty common in this industry. The Fuji acuity flatbeds are actually Oce Arizonas with the Fuji badge on them. If you open a Fuji Acuity LED 1600, you will see circuit board with the Mimaki logo and the menus/operation will be extremely familiar if you have ever used a Mimaki. A real “production” printer will cost a few hundred K.

I am very interested in knowing what printer you bought that fits your needs. Not because it makes you a fan of them, but I would like to be able to compare the two machines specs to see how one fit your needs and one didn’t.

I did a bunch of research on the HP R series flatbeds. My analysis of them is that they are way too slow for the price. Many people on this board have bought them and love them, but they are not meant for a production shop like mine. It’s twice the money as any other printer that prints at the same speeds/quality. That’s not to say that people shouldn’t own them but they certainly wouldn’t make me any money.

The company I know locally that has one your Roland printers say the output quality is amazing but it takes too long to get there so they are only able to use it to make samples. I hate to say it but you “got sold.” It happens to all of us at some point and it sucks.

Not knowing your business, I do wonder if this was a launch that would have been better suited to outsourcing the printing or the whole production until it made sense to bring it in-house. All of our machines except our flatbed cutter were bought with cash from business profits. I started a few businesses in the past that would have been better by starting smaller and building rather than going all in. I wish you the best. I have done a lot of homework and have narrowed my next printer down to digitech or vanguard with a hard lean toward digitech based on speed and quality. If you ever have any questions, feel free to send me a message. I have no skin in the game an am happy to give you my opinion and you can take it for what it’s worth. Good luck in this process to move this thing. Definitely reach out to Jake at the Global garage. I have bought several things from him and I know they are a fair and professional company to broker used equipment through.


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[Troy Lesher]

Not trying to Hijack this thread.



I already service everything we own. You don't know me or my skill / knowledge in the industry. If its a lemon you would never see a "will someone help me post" from me. I'll figure it out or shitcan the printer. I'm just not impressed by whats available from the big guys in the US right now. I bet you haven't researched much on how big Wit-Color is around the globe.
I have been on my own with my equipment for many years. I'll be fine. I'm not getting into a Ford Chevy debate over printers either.
You do yours, I'll do mine.

Mike, you haven't looked at the TruFire by Digitech have you. were based in the US, our printer was conceived in San Antonio Texas, Designed in San Antonio Texas from the casters up, Developed in San Antonio Texas, Built by parts made or source in Texas, Oregon , Indiana, Heads are Japanese-Kyocera, Linear Motion Parts are Rexroth from Germany, The software, and interface and all the IP were developed by us, owned by us, and opened ended. Our Frame only is manufactured for us in Canada. and fully assembled in San antonio, Electronics, ink deliver, umbilical, software head carriage, lamps power supply etc etc. so TruFire by Digitech is Born and Bred in the USA! You need parts...its in san Antonio, you need service, Techs from the west coast to east cost, you need inks... ALSO manufactured to our specs in the US. its not half into its shelf life when you get it.

 

[Mattell]

Looking for any help out there in case someone has had this same problem!

The situation is I made the decision to jump into UV printing my product in May of 2018. I did a lot of research and came across the Roland VersaUV LEJ-640FT site. From the research I did and after speaking to their local rep Central Paper this by all accounts and the print times they were quoting to print my product this was the perfect machine for me to do the high volume product that I needed it to do.

Roland was so accommodating their sales rep Mark Czerniakowski came to our location to see firsthand the product that we would be printing. He along with several other printer sales people all agreed that the Roland LEJ-640FT was going to be perfect for our product!

We went ahead and leased the unit through Geneva Capital and were told it would arrive in several weeks. Having just landed a huge order we asked if there was any way that we could use the floor model printer at the local Roland facility. Roland said yes and we were very appreciative.

The next week we got trained on the machine by a very helpful Roland Tech and we began to print. Like anything we know it takes time to learn on how to set it up and run but very early on I got the sense that something was not right. At one point I panicked and called my sales person and told him there is no way this printer is printing at the speeds we had been quoted. He explained we needed to build jigs to hold the product as well as some tweaks with the software and we would be doubling our speed in no time.

We finally get our Roland printer delivered and begin to print and to no surprise we have the same exact problems. We built jigs, we changed processes, print speeds and resolutions but no matter what we did it was always either super slows printing or the print quality was terrible. I don't know all the printing terminology but is basically looked like we were printing through a screen door?

We reached out to Roland and Central Paper and after 2 months of use they said one of the heads was no good because of dust? This was replaced and we enclosed the printer from any dust but this did not make any difference? At this point I am struggling to fill orders to the point I am canceling orders and I realized I just leased this printer for $89K only to find out it is a lemon.

When I push Mark at Roland his story is that I had weeks of time using the floor model and should have know what I was getting and that I had a case of buyer’s remorse. This is completely untrue. Had the printer worked the way it was sold to me and printed at the speeds I was quoted I would have been very happy! The remorse is only because as I dug deeper into this I spoke to people in the industry who sold Roland and love Roland, but would not sell this specific printer due to all the problems. I also was told this printer was actually a machine Roland constructed from an older machine? One of the other a common problem was to have a flashing pinch roll error button? But there was no pinch roller on the unit?

After 5 months of constant issues and Roland not willing to help at all I realized that if I did not do something else I would go out of business... So I did my homework and purchased another brand UV printer that I will not reveal so people know I did not post this to drive business to another brand but this printer for almost the same price was much faster and a true work horse unlike the Roland.

So now for almost 2 years I have continued to pay the lease ($2,200 a month) on the Roland even though I stopped using the printer 18 months ago. In this time I have reached out to Roland, Central Paper, and Geneva and no one has done anything to help or even admit this printer has problems? Most likely none of them would help because the word got out about how terrible these printers are and the resale values plummeted. We have been trying to sell this unit for 6 months on eBay for $35K with no takers. Probably because there is so many others also listed but hey we did get a couple of offers at $10-15K so they are worth something!

My only option now it to surrender the printer to Geneva capital where they hope to get $30K for it which will stick me with the remainder of the lease of another $30-40K. If this happens I will have paid over $75K for a printer that did not generate even $10K of profits. Instead of the money generating machine I was promised between all the lost times dealing with issues, the down time on the printer, huge canceled purchase orders, and having to pay $75K for a broken printer that I never used, I will have lost over $750K in 2 years!

I am a small company and having to go through this has nearly bankrupted my business. It is absolutely disgusting that Roland was so eager to sell me this printer but the moment we had a problem they ran away and did nothing to help. They would not even consider taking it in as a trade in for us to buy smaller UV printer? At one point I even tried calling a Roland dealer outside of my area that was confident he could fix the printer and getting run so we could use it to make one item. They were located 5 hours away but I was willing to pay them for his time to come and look at it as I had no other options. On the day he was to driving here to visit he got a call directly from Roland advising he was not to help us? How is this even possible?

Even though we are in a global pandemic most likely I will have to surrender the Roland printer next week as Geneva Capital is pressuring me to do so as I have lost my appetite to keep paying $2,200 for nothing! I had hoped that at some point over the last 2 years someone from Roland or Central Paper would reach out with some type of solution to help us but that has not been the case.


If you have any advice on what I should do or who to talk to please let me know. If you or someone you know has the same Roland UV Printer issues please reach out to me with ideas and solutions. I have seen other posts on here with similar problems but maybe if we can get enough owners together with the same problems there is a bigger collective way to fight Roland. And if you want to buy this printer contact me as well.

Thank you,

Brian
508-431-8906

Hello Brian, I'm really sorry about this very unpleasant situation. But it happens occasionally; that's business. You need to prove that from Day 1, the product has not worked as advertised and as per the vendor's recommendations including environmental modifications. In many jurisdictions, fraud vitiates all agreements under it's influence/scope. Sort out payments in th meantime (as you've been doing), keep the machine in the best shape as possible and find a really good lawyer.

 

[MIkeyB036]

After reading your tale, it seems like the sales dept. did one heck of a sales job on you, convincing you that the "new" one you would buy and add attachments to would NOT be as bad as the floor model you were using at their place! I think I would have walked away at that point.

Having said all that, which is certainly no help to your situation, let me say that we ran into an almost identical situation with leasing a piece of equipment. It wasn't a bad piece, but circumstances ended up where we couldn't keep the machine and NO ONE wanted it back! We ended up putting it in storage, and the lease went to "Collections" after many back and forths of why I did not feel I had not gotten what I was paying for and refusing to pay any more. Just to let you know, that DID NOT end well for me, and we ended up paying about 3x what the original lease was.

Secondly, if the company is willing to take it back for 30K and you could only get 20K selling it yourself, I think I would send it back to them, take the 30K "credit" toward the lease, and cut your losses. I KNOW it's a lot of "losses," but as I stated above, it could end up way worse.

Sorry to hear your sad tale. I'm very, very shocked to hear such a thing about Roland. I honestly have never heard them being this obstinate about a product. Disclosure, we have a Roland instrument, and it is a workhorse.

 

[Alpha Star]

I don't understand why, if the demo model didn't meet your demands, why in the heck did you accept the leased unit ??

When you tested the machine for speed with your files when looking into this, was it what you wanted ?? You would've had to be seeing the machine you borrowed. Don't tell me you blindly bought a machine without seeing it. That Porsche you compared it to, would you have it delivered or would you go test drive it, first. AND then check it against other models ??

Had Rolands since about 1993 and when I had a problem, Roland and it's reps, stepped right up and fixed everyrhing, usually on their dime.

If you researched it, it seems to me, your research department is lacking in skills, whether newbie or not.

I get it. When I first bought one if these LEC's, the floor model did NOT do what I wanted. I bought it anyway, thinking that if I could tinker with it for a couple months, I'd get better at using it. Turned out to be more like a year, but I got there, and I don't regret it. But I can totally see how someone might not be expecting all the problems, or think that they're going to have their hand held by Roland... To a point, they will, but you better arm yourself with knowledge and source out your own parts and ink if you want to make money. When I see a test print like that yellow head, I just replace the head, flush out the lines, check the capping and continue printing.

 

[JFitzgerald]

Wow, it seems like your dealer and manufacturer didn't take your application and your output needs into consideration at all. That printer is not known in the industry as a speed demon on its best day, not a great choice for production.