Thanks to signs101, we have found that the Roland VG2 - VG3 - SG2 - SG3 printers do not have access to service mode any longer with the typical on-menu keypad combination, it's ONLY accessible with the Peck2 tool via a certified Roland credentialed login and a laptop plugged in. This means that you cannot DIY fix your own machine that you paid large amounts of money for, ever again. Only those with the specific software, login credentials (to prove you're Roland trained), and the laptop linking it all together can repair your machine. Based on the post here (linked), this was found to be an issue back in 2019 when Roland had users upgrade from TR to TR2 inks and never let anyone know they were forever being locked out of service mode and locking themselves into a dealer based pay to play repair service forever.
I feel it's our right as sign shop owners to stand up and not purchase Roland printers based on this unfair business practice. Our order placed for our new Roland Vg3 is in the process of being cancelled and we're moving to another printer manufacturer no matter what.
The new Rolands are deeply discounted and have an extra warranty, and we're seeing why; customers like us, are jumping ship to other brands.
I just want to let new users know that a machine is "generally" very problem free for easily 2 years, barring a manufacturer defect, all of our machines have been fine up to this point. The issues arise after this warranty period is up, the 3, 4, 5, 6 year mark. No longer can any service level adjustments can be done by the user itself, which used to be very possible with some VERY basic instruction. Head crash and want to adjust the head? I'm sure that'll be $500+ after paying a tech travel time. Basic adjustments? $500. Print head? I don't even want to know. Thousands, easily! Printers are inherently pretty simple to work on, but Roland thinks we're obviously too stupid. Their excuse is "they want to maintain print quality and reliability for our users" - RIIIIIIIIIIIGHT. We know the deal Roland, it's all about money and user control plus planned obsolesce. Roland can now say in 4, 5 years (exactly like the TR to TR2 ink forced firmware upgrade by Roland situation) that your printer is no longer relevant and Roland "isn't offering repairs any longer on this model". Guess what, your investment is now worth nothing because your printer is broken with no way to fix it and you're forced into what - oh, BUYING ANOTHER PRINTER! It's amazing how that works! We aren't falling for it, this is an old model that doesn't work for consumers that truly care about their business.
After years of working with Roland and using one dealer for our machines, it was news to us that new dealers existed in our area. This information would have been really helpful, as we had been using dealers that were 4 hours away, so we made it over to Rolands website to find a dealer, most sites have dealer finder tools with a list of dealers, should be simple, right? Wrong. Roland also doesn't even want you to know who your roland dealer is without them telling you is OK for you to know. Check out their "dealer finder tool" shown here, which is a form that we as users fill out, that then goes to a Roland employee who then decides whether you should or shouldn't know who your dealer is based on who you are. Not only does roland not trust you to fix your own machine, finding someone to fix your own machine is now out of your businesses control.
We wanted to skip the dealer finder form, so we live chatted Roland on their site, asked for a dealer nicely, than asked for another dealer, simple, right? Wrong. Roland over live chat was extremely aggressive with us, asking why "we need to know so many dealers" (we asked for 2 just to be safe to get a quote for the Vg3). She replied with "why would you even need more than 1 dealer, every dealer is going to have the same price anyways". Very unprofessional, and also very very uninformed. We received 2 very different quotes, but couldn't get three quotes, it seemed the exchange was too heated for Roland to handle giving us the information of a third dealer, since of course, that's not our right any longer. Hopefully this exchange is saved in our browser, we would love to post it.
After this exchange, the person on live chat gave us the explanation why this is happening; they want managers inside Roland headquarters to have "credit for the sales referral and also the tracking abilities to know internally where the referral came from (they want to basically track when a referral comes from the roland website to one of their dealers)". So not only does roland not want you to fix your machine because you're uninformed and not smart enough (all in the name of print quality!), they want to tell you WHO can fix your machine (all in the name of print quality!), all so someone inside roland can get credit on a company-wide excel spreadsheet, get a bonus, and then make Roland look like they are doing their part with dealers (all while failing their users, but at least we have good print quality!). The funny part is, we could have been supporting these local dealers for 5, 10, 15 years if we even knew they existed or had a list somewhere to show us instead of it being essentially behind a pay to play wall of filling a form out or taking the time to live chat an aggressive roland rep.
We love roland, we've used rolands forever, but unfortunately, our relationship has now come to an end based on these findings. We aren't a huge fan of other brands, but other brands also don't treat customers like this.
We wish everyone the best on their new printer purchase, but for us, Roland will be fading off into the sunset.
Edit: After thinking about this a little bit more and discussing with others, it's obvious that Roland has put these printers into a subscription model without even telling you you're subscribed. Most customers (like the comment below) can easily be talked into a service contract at the end of year #3 then users will feel they have to subscribe to these service contracts "all in the name of print quality", exactly like scott says in the 2019 post (how ironic how that sales pitch is already starting back then under the disguise of benefitting users).
Little did they know that the cheap, on sale, extra year warranty sales pitch that got them into spending $10k+ 3 years prior on a printer, now has a new monthly payment for a service contract, because, that's right, we forgot to tell you, we locked regular users out of service mode and no one can fix this but techs here at Roland, at whatever cost, by whatever dealer we say is OK at the time we say we'll arrive. Did we mention that this printer is obsolete in 1 year? You'll want to maybe upgrade, we'll be glad to help you with that. If this is how you want to run your business, you do you.
I feel it's our right as sign shop owners to stand up and not purchase Roland printers based on this unfair business practice. Our order placed for our new Roland Vg3 is in the process of being cancelled and we're moving to another printer manufacturer no matter what.
The new Rolands are deeply discounted and have an extra warranty, and we're seeing why; customers like us, are jumping ship to other brands.
I just want to let new users know that a machine is "generally" very problem free for easily 2 years, barring a manufacturer defect, all of our machines have been fine up to this point. The issues arise after this warranty period is up, the 3, 4, 5, 6 year mark. No longer can any service level adjustments can be done by the user itself, which used to be very possible with some VERY basic instruction. Head crash and want to adjust the head? I'm sure that'll be $500+ after paying a tech travel time. Basic adjustments? $500. Print head? I don't even want to know. Thousands, easily! Printers are inherently pretty simple to work on, but Roland thinks we're obviously too stupid. Their excuse is "they want to maintain print quality and reliability for our users" - RIIIIIIIIIIIGHT. We know the deal Roland, it's all about money and user control plus planned obsolesce. Roland can now say in 4, 5 years (exactly like the TR to TR2 ink forced firmware upgrade by Roland situation) that your printer is no longer relevant and Roland "isn't offering repairs any longer on this model". Guess what, your investment is now worth nothing because your printer is broken with no way to fix it and you're forced into what - oh, BUYING ANOTHER PRINTER! It's amazing how that works! We aren't falling for it, this is an old model that doesn't work for consumers that truly care about their business.
After years of working with Roland and using one dealer for our machines, it was news to us that new dealers existed in our area. This information would have been really helpful, as we had been using dealers that were 4 hours away, so we made it over to Rolands website to find a dealer, most sites have dealer finder tools with a list of dealers, should be simple, right? Wrong. Roland also doesn't even want you to know who your roland dealer is without them telling you is OK for you to know. Check out their "dealer finder tool" shown here, which is a form that we as users fill out, that then goes to a Roland employee who then decides whether you should or shouldn't know who your dealer is based on who you are. Not only does roland not trust you to fix your own machine, finding someone to fix your own machine is now out of your businesses control.
We wanted to skip the dealer finder form, so we live chatted Roland on their site, asked for a dealer nicely, than asked for another dealer, simple, right? Wrong. Roland over live chat was extremely aggressive with us, asking why "we need to know so many dealers" (we asked for 2 just to be safe to get a quote for the Vg3). She replied with "why would you even need more than 1 dealer, every dealer is going to have the same price anyways". Very unprofessional, and also very very uninformed. We received 2 very different quotes, but couldn't get three quotes, it seemed the exchange was too heated for Roland to handle giving us the information of a third dealer, since of course, that's not our right any longer. Hopefully this exchange is saved in our browser, we would love to post it.
After this exchange, the person on live chat gave us the explanation why this is happening; they want managers inside Roland headquarters to have "credit for the sales referral and also the tracking abilities to know internally where the referral came from (they want to basically track when a referral comes from the roland website to one of their dealers)". So not only does roland not want you to fix your machine because you're uninformed and not smart enough (all in the name of print quality!), they want to tell you WHO can fix your machine (all in the name of print quality!), all so someone inside roland can get credit on a company-wide excel spreadsheet, get a bonus, and then make Roland look like they are doing their part with dealers (all while failing their users, but at least we have good print quality!). The funny part is, we could have been supporting these local dealers for 5, 10, 15 years if we even knew they existed or had a list somewhere to show us instead of it being essentially behind a pay to play wall of filling a form out or taking the time to live chat an aggressive roland rep.
We love roland, we've used rolands forever, but unfortunately, our relationship has now come to an end based on these findings. We aren't a huge fan of other brands, but other brands also don't treat customers like this.
We wish everyone the best on their new printer purchase, but for us, Roland will be fading off into the sunset.
Edit: After thinking about this a little bit more and discussing with others, it's obvious that Roland has put these printers into a subscription model without even telling you you're subscribed. Most customers (like the comment below) can easily be talked into a service contract at the end of year #3 then users will feel they have to subscribe to these service contracts "all in the name of print quality", exactly like scott says in the 2019 post (how ironic how that sales pitch is already starting back then under the disguise of benefitting users).
Little did they know that the cheap, on sale, extra year warranty sales pitch that got them into spending $10k+ 3 years prior on a printer, now has a new monthly payment for a service contract, because, that's right, we forgot to tell you, we locked regular users out of service mode and no one can fix this but techs here at Roland, at whatever cost, by whatever dealer we say is OK at the time we say we'll arrive. Did we mention that this printer is obsolete in 1 year? You'll want to maybe upgrade, we'll be glad to help you with that. If this is how you want to run your business, you do you.
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