CANON: DESIGNED TO FAIL by a dishonest company

When I bought my Canon BJ-300, I believed it would be really reliable. It was
an expensive (550$ CAN) hefty piece of equipment and I thought it would last
forever. It's now quite old, but I barely printed more then ten - twelve
thousand pages with it, the equivalent of what some companies print in a week,
and it never worked properly.

First, there was a problem with the purge unit. While it was still on
guarantee, I used non-Canon ink. The problem with Canon ink was that it costed
almost 10c a page. The specs said it should print about 500 pages, but that
must be in continous printing. Because the printer head takes a little ink
bath each time it starts, I ended up printing more like 350 pages.

Each pages amounted to less than ½ ¢ for paper and almost 10 ¢ for ink, a
complete nonsense, unless you don't mind funneling your money to Japan. You
could print with gold at this price!

So... I had to bring the printer on the outskirts of town to have a 5 minute
purge unit job done. The repairman showed me how he knew I hadn't used Canon
ink. He put a little sponge that apparently came out of the said purge unit on
a sheet of paper and put a drop of alcool on it. A yellow streak appeared:
that meant non-Canon ink. The sponge was dead and replaced. What was the use
of this sponge except for blocking non-Canon ink, God knows.

So, I put Ko-Rec-Type ink through the alcool test at a store. The colors
registered just as Canon's. At less than half the price!

A few years later, after the printer hadn't been used for about 3 months, I
encountered the same problem with the purge unit. But the repair hadn't been
done in front of me and I didn't know what was refered to as the purge unit. I
didn't see any little sponge at hand and thought maybe it was some kind of
hard to get to little pump at the bottom of the printer.

After opening the printer casing, I was really impressed by how sturdy the
printer was. It was stainless steel rollers, nylon bearing, huge electronics
components. But there was a problem with that little 3 mm sponge...

I called Canon to ask where the purge unit was exactly.

But, forget it, this time, according to Canon, the print head was really dead.
It was expensive and my best bet was to buy one of those nice new little
printers. I insisted, stayed for hours on their 1-800 line to Toronto up to
the VP's office, wrote to Japan, to no avail.

Then I posted here. The message was entitled "Dammit! Stop buying Canon products!"

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=fr&lr=&threadm=4ic9s8%24ekh%40casper.con nectmmic.net&rnum=2&prev=/groups%3Fas_ugroup%3Dcomp.periphs.printers%26as_ua uthors%3Dgillesp%2540connectmmic.net%26lr%3D%26hl% 3Dfr

Less than 24 hours later, I received an email from a repairman, supposedly
totally unrelated to Canon. He told me the purge unit was what the print head
layed upon while at rest. And the reason I couldn't see the sponge was because
the casing was black and the sponge was full of black ink.

I took a pin, removed the sponge, rinced it in demineralized water, and was
back to printing in about 5 minutes. Canon made me loose -- and lost itself!
-- tenths of hours for no reason whatsoever.

I later explained the solution here and somebody found out the guy who
provided the info was from a Canon autorized repair center in Ottawa. I can't
find those messages on Google groups anymore.

Now I have a problem with the ink/paper LED blinking even though the cartridge
is new and paper is loaded, and I get the same kind of help from Canon.

First, they told me they don't service the BJ-300(1) anymore. If I would
please call a company called Optimal, they would provide information. I said:
"A company that's not Canon will provide information on a Canon product?" Of
course, they would!

(1) It even seems Bureau en Gros (Staples) and major suppliers in Montreal
don't offer cartridges for the BJ-300 anymore!

Of course, they wouldn't. If I wanted to bring or send the printer to the
outskirts of town, they'd be glad to take a look at it for a /minimum/ of $45.
And maybe, once again, in two weeks from now, tell me the print head is really
dead. Gee, that's an easy fix!

So, I called Canon back to say Optima wouldn't provide any info. I was given
an 800 number for service, where I once again was told the print head must be
dead. I explained it couldn't because sometimes the LEDs stops blinking and I
can print about 10 lines before they go on again.

Welll, then... It might be dirty contacts. If I could only send the printer to
an authorized service center, they'd fix the problem.

Instead of loosing two weeks and funneling another $100 to a Canon affiliate
for a 5 minute job, I decided to take a look myself.

Well, guess what. They could have put the contacts in front of the ink
cartridge casing and you could have cleaned the contacts with an eraser or a
nail file in a matter of seconds. But, unfortunately, it so happens that
they're at they end, 4 inches deep into the casing.

Of course, had they been at the bottom of the casing, they wouldn't have been
so hard to get. So... they're at the top. And, of course, even then they could
have been reached. So, they put a little metal door midway that only opens
when a cartridge is pushed in.

But it seems the contacts are available from outside the casing. But the way
to remove the little piece is not evident at all. It's one of those push this
and pull that trick explained in the shop manual.

Oh! I forgot to tell you about the shop manual. In the purge unit case, I
asked how much the shop manual was. It was "only" $90, maybe US, who knows. I
mean, when a comapny asks 30$ for a few ounces of ink, isn't it appropriate
that it asks 90$ for a few sheets of paper? Why not?

In other words, Canon products are designed to fail. It now seems if they ever
fail under guarantee, you bring the printer to the store and they give you a
new printer, no question asked. I suppose, the stores then ship all the crap
back to Canon, who does twelve 5 minutes jobs an hour. If the casing if even
lightly bruised, they change it, refurbish it, whatever, and the printer is
sold as new, which it really is: it's still a piece of crap!

After that? Well, you're on your own. Bring the printer to the outskirts of
town, pay 45$ for a look, an half-hour look, I suppose. Or it's "Your head is
done", why don't you buy this nice little new model.

Well, my head is not done yet and I want ALL my money back. Of course, I did
succeed in printing a few thousand sheets of paper, but it will be far, very
far, from paying me the minimal wage for the time I've lost with this printer.


When you call Canon support these days, they ask for your name, phone number,
address and postal code, before giving any non-information, just in case you'd
be afraid they'd send their lawyers after you.

Canon knows who I am, and I'm not afraid of their lawyers. I called Patricia
Sawyer today to say how disgusted I am about their bunch of thieves. Though
the message I left was more polite, she didn't call back. I suppose she must
be overwhelmed and doing her toe nails instead.

I swear to God, if Canon doesn't clean its act, I'll have them loose millions!

GP

How long do you think an inkjet printer should last? This printer model is
over 15 years old. That's pretty long in the tooth. What do you have it
hooked up to? An old IBM PC/XT? If you are only wanting a printer for b/w
usage, which this one is, get an inexpensive laser. I'm familiar with this
model and its wide carriage version the BJ-330. The IBM ExecJet 4072 is a
BJ-330 with a different cover and I had one of those. These printers used
inkjet technology, although primitive compared to current inkjets, but
handled paper with a tractor feed as if they were a dot matrix printer.
That's why I had an IBM 4072. I needed to print large quantities of
continuous form gummed labels. I agree the ink was expensive and as a result
I went back to using a dot matrix for the labels.

Why not just retire the old beast? This printer is ancient and has nowhere
near the capabilities of current printers which only cost a fraction of what
this one did. Technology marches on.
--
Ron Cohen

"GP" wrote in message
...
When I bought my Canon BJ-300, I believed it would be really reliable. It
was an expensive (550$ CAN) hefty piece of equipment and I thought it
would last forever. It's now quite old, but I barely printed more then
ten - twelve thousand pages with it, the equivalent of what some companies
print in a week, and it never worked properly.

First, there was a problem with the purge unit. While it was still on
guarantee, I used non-Canon ink. The problem with Canon ink was that it
costed almost 10c a page. The specs said it should print about 500 pages,
but that must be in continous printing. Because the printer head takes a
little ink bath each time it starts, I ended up printing more like 350
pages.

Each pages amounted to less than ½ ¢ for paper and almost 10 ¢ for ink, a
complete nonsense, unless you don't mind funneling your money to Japan.
You could print with gold at this price!

So... I had to bring the printer on the outskirts of town to have a 5
minute purge unit job done. The repairman showed me how he knew I hadn't
used Canon ink. He put a little sponge that apparently came out of the
said purge unit on a sheet of paper and put a drop of alcool on it. A
yellow streak appeared: that meant non-Canon ink. The sponge was dead and
replaced. What was the use of this sponge except for blocking non-Canon
ink, God knows.

So, I put Ko-Rec-Type ink through the alcool test at a store. The colors
registered just as Canon's. At less than half the price!

A few years later, after the printer hadn't been used for about 3 months,
I encountered the same problem with the purge unit. But the repair hadn't
been done in front of me and I didn't know what was refered to as the
purge unit. I didn't see any little sponge at hand and thought maybe it
was some kind of hard to get to little pump at the bottom of the printer.

After opening the printer casing, I was really impressed by how sturdy the
printer was. It was stainless steel rollers, nylon bearing, huge
electronics components. But there was a problem with that little 3 mm
sponge...

I called Canon to ask where the purge unit was exactly.

But, forget it, this time, according to Canon, the print head was really
dead. It was expensive and my best bet was to buy one of those nice new
little printers. I insisted, stayed for hours on their 1-800 line to
Toronto up to the VP's office, wrote to Japan, to no avail.

Then I posted here. The message was entitled "Dammit! Stop buying Canon
products!"

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=fr&lr=&threadm=4ic9s8%24ekh%40casper.con nectmmic.net&rnum=2&prev=/groups%3Fas_ugroup%3Dcomp.periphs.printers%26as_ua uthors%3Dgillesp%2540connectmmic.net%26lr%3D%26hl% 3Dfr

Less than 24 hours later, I received an email from a repairman, supposedly
totally unrelated to Canon. He told me the purge unit was what the print
head layed upon while at rest. And the reason I couldn't see the sponge
was because the casing was black and the sponge was full of black ink.

I took a pin, removed the sponge, rinced it in demineralized water, and
was back to printing in about 5 minutes. Canon made me loose -- and lost
itself! -- tenths of hours for no reason whatsoever.

I later explained the solution here and somebody found out the guy who
provided the info was from a Canon autorized repair center in Ottawa. I
can't find those messages on Google groups anymore.

Now I have a problem with the ink/paper LED blinking even though the
cartridge is new and paper is loaded, and I get the same kind of help from
Canon.

First, they told me they don't service the BJ-300(1) anymore. If I would
please call a company called Optimal, they would provide information. I
said: "A company that's not Canon will provide information on a Canon
product?" Of course, they would!

(1) It even seems Bureau en Gros (Staples) and major suppliers in Montreal
don't offer cartridges for the BJ-300 anymore!

Of course, they wouldn't. If I wanted to bring or send the printer to the
outskirts of town, they'd be glad to take a look at it for a /minimum/ of
$45. And maybe, once again, in two weeks from now, tell me the print head
is really dead. Gee, that's an easy fix!

So, I called Canon back to say Optima wouldn't provide any info. I was
given an 800 number for service, where I once again was told the print
head must be dead. I explained it couldn't because sometimes the LEDs
stops blinking and I can print about 10 lines before they go on again.

Welll, then... It might be dirty contacts. If I could only send the
printer to an authorized service center, they'd fix the problem.

Instead of loosing two weeks and funneling another $100 to a Canon
affiliate for a 5 minute job, I decided to take a look myself.

Well, guess what. They could have put the contacts in front of the ink
cartridge casing and you could have cleaned the contacts with an eraser or
a nail file in a matter of seconds. But, unfortunately, it so happens that
they're at they end, 4 inches deep into the casing.

Of course, had they been at the bottom of the casing, they wouldn't have
been so hard to get. So... they're at the top. And, of course, even then
they could have been reached. So, they put a little metal door midway that
only opens when a cartridge is pushed in.

But it seems the contacts are available from outside the casing. But the
way to remove the little piece is not evident at all. It's one of those
push this and pull that trick explained in the shop manual.

Oh! I forgot to tell you about the shop manual. In the purge unit case, I
asked how much the shop manual was. It was "only" $90, maybe US, who
knows. I mean, when a comapny asks 30$ for a few ounces of ink, isn't it
appropriate that it asks 90$ for a few sheets of paper? Why not?

In other words, Canon products are designed to fail. It now seems if they
ever fail under guarantee, you bring the printer to the store and they
give you a new printer, no question asked. I suppose, the stores then ship
all the crap back to Canon, who does twelve 5 minutes jobs an hour. If the
casing if even lightly bruised, they change it, refurbish it, whatever,
and the printer is sold as new, which it really is: it's still a piece of
crap!

After that? Well, you're on your own. Bring the printer to the outskirts
of town, pay 45$ for a look, an half-hour look, I suppose. Or it's "Your
head is done", why don't you buy this nice little new model.

Well, my head is not done yet and I want ALL my money back. Of course, I
did succeed in printing a few thousand sheets of paper, but it will be
far, very far, from paying me the minimal wage for the time I've lost with
this printer.


When you call Canon support these days, they ask for your name, phone
number, address and postal code, before giving any non-information, just
in case you'd be afraid they'd send their lawyers after you.

Canon knows who I am, and I'm not afraid of their lawyers. I called
Patricia Sawyer today to say how disgusted I am about their bunch of
thieves. Though the message I left was more polite, she didn't call back.
I suppose she must be overwhelmed and doing her toe nails instead.

I swear to God, if Canon doesn't clean its act, I'll have them loose
millions!

GP



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BJ-330?!? hAaaaaaaahahaahahahhaha!

ahm. If you really wanted a printer that would last more than a 'few'
years, how about a dot matrix printer from Epson? Gee, we've still got
20 year old Epson MX-80s running just fine!

"If you want a tank, buy a tank, not a sponge!"

--

Besides, almost all inkjet printers made today are not designed to last
long anyways -- how else would they get you to buy their new models?!?
We already know they're charging all of us $$$$$$$$ for the ink
cartridges already (and tacking on the usual 20-40%+ profit margins as
well at the wholesale level! - see CRN magazine ads), so we already know
those $40+ cartridges don't even cost the reseller/store more than
$20-30, and they sure as hell don't cost more than $5 to make in any 3rd
world country (pick the usual places they make these catridges in...).

Not to mention, they put in a 'stupid' chip in some systems to prevent
easy refills -- for sure, it's not becuase they need to 'count' the
amount of ink spent to prevent dryout -- heck, they can already count
that. Nope, just another way to charge more and prevent easy refills to
lock the consumer into their cartridges.

(Here's the free program: Reset Epson cartridges yourself
http://www.ssclg.com/epsone.shtml)

Heck, if they wanted us to be happy, they'd drop in a huge ink tank for
every color just like they have for the high-end professional wide-body
inkjets (and/or CIS continuous ink bottle feed system at
www.inkjetmall.com) and let us run for thousands of prints before
running out of ink (instead of the typical average of about 50 letter
sized photo prints before a typical set of cartridges run out in most
inkjet printers).

---

Anyways, for you, maybe off to www.fatwallet.com/forums/ - hot deals to
pickup one of those $50 inkjet printers instead of worrying about
fixing an old one. Why bother? the cartridges themselves will cost you
the same price as a new printer, so might as well buy a new printer (and
donate/sell the old one!) that comes with new catridges instead.

That way, you'll never have to worry about a broken printer, and there
will always be a fresh sponge pad and inkjet head!

Ron Cohen wrote:

How long do you think an inkjet printer should last?

As long as it's not worn out or outdated.

This printer model is
over 15 years old. That's pretty long in the tooth.

Long in the tooth? Canon already pretended it was long in the tooth in 1996,
when I pressured them into telling me where the purge unit was. The five
minute 0¢ job that ensued got it working for another 8 years, that is, for
longer than it already had.

And it's absolutely the same in the present situation. When the &&?%%$ LED
stops blinking, the printer prints perfectly. Should I throw away a 550
1989-dollars printer, for a 69 2004-dollars piece of crap because Canon once
again refuses to provide the information to fix their designed-to-fail ink system?

If it was one of those 10$ printers everybody was selling a few years ago,
maybe I'd consider this option. But, in this case, your suggestion just
doesn't make any sense. Maybe you should consider getting a job for Canon.
They'd just love you!

What do you have it
hooked up to? An old IBM PC/XT?

Almost An 850 Celeron. When the motherboard of my 486 died 3 years ago, I
thought I'd recuperate whatever I could and build an inexpensive but rather
good quality computer until things settle down a bit. Cost: 500$. (CAN)

Well, with USB 2, SATA drives, 500 MHz FSBs, I figure they've settled down OK
by now, but I have a /problem/: my computer still works perfectly and, with an
ADSL modem, does all I need. (I'm not a gamer.) It now seems to me that I'll
use it until it wears out or until there is a major technological
breakthrough, which I don't foresee at the present time.

Gee, the sun is nice outside and I'd rather be at home than in an office
working my ass out producing more thing to throw away soon. And I'm not even
considering the environmental dammage that I'm preventing, just the part of my
life that I keep for myself.

Same for my bike, same for my shoes, same for everything. I can't afford to
buy cheap AND to thow away. My shoes cost well over 200$. They're all leather,
they last ten years. Now, that's cheap!

If you are only wanting a printer for b/w
usage, which this one is, get an inexpensive laser.

That's probably what I'll have to do if I can't fix my Canon. But it really
****es me off. I'll probably hardly print 50 pages a year for years to come
and my BJ could have done that no problem. I even have some ink in stock.

I'm considering the Brother HL-1435 and the Samsung ML-1740. But it seems the
Brother won't work with Linux. As for the Samsung, a Cnet test says the
graphic quality is only fair and they seem worried that it's an USB 1.1
interface instead of a USB 2. What difference does this make for a printer? I
suppose USB 2 is backward compatible?

Hardly more expensive, there's the Lexmark E232 with PCL6 and Ghostscropt.
Maybe a better choice, but still overkill. I would rather not have gone
through this headache.

One thing is su though I'm still satisfied with my Canon FTB-QL 35 mm
camera, I'll never buy another Canon product. This company has changed for
worst... or is it only that they weren't manufacturing 35 mm film for the camera?

But, hey, it's Christmas, let's keep the spirit up! I'll soon be distributing
my little /factsheet/ at Staples

GP

On 2004-12-15, GP wrote:

I'm considering the Brother HL-1435 and the Samsung ML-1740. But it seems the
Brother won't work with Linux.

Then get a Brother HL-1440 which works with Linux and can be had for as
little as $99. Works with both LPrng and CUPS. Love mine. I'm having a
little problem with a KDE error on some K-brand apps, but it works perfect
printing webpages on Mozilla and printing text files w/ Abiword. I'm sure
the prob is just a minor KDE tweak I haven't found yet.

nb

David Chien wrote:

so we already know
those $40+ cartridges don't even cost the reseller/store more than
$20-30,

Which is normal retail markup margins for all retail stores (abeit
much lower margins than some businesses like clothing where retailer
margins are more like 90%, I understand).

and they sure as hell don't cost more than $5 to make in any 3rd
world country (pick the usual places they make these catridges
in...).

Canon (subject in this thread) cartridges I buy say "Made in Japan" on
them. I don't think Japan qualifies as '3rd world'.

Not to mention, they put in a 'stupid' chip in some systems to
prevent
easy refills -- for sure, it's not becuase they need to 'count' the
That's Epson and maybe others, but not Canon.

Mike

Mr Rock from Canon finally called back to see if he couldn't help. Well, it
turned out he couldn't. As he explained, he's not a technician. He's a printer
software specialist and can ask things such as if your ink cartridge is full.
Those kind of things. That's about it. Front line, you know.

But... after some discussion, he decided to give me support's phone number.
And, after a 10 minute online wait, support had the answer:

_ Hello! Yes? Send your printer in.

I explained I wasn't going to pay 100$ for another 5 minute job. So I was
transferred to the service manager and the line was cut off.

I called back Signora Patrica Sawyer, head of complaints department. She was
there today and explained Canon would be glad to help with another 100$ fix.

It's always either "Why don't you buy a new one?" or "Send your printer in."

Think about it next time you buy a printer: Canon spells... err, prints one of
two things: trouble, problems, troubles, problem.

Here goes for Google keywords! Reader check my original posting.

GP

pete wrote:
On Wed, 15 Dec 2004 13:30:14 -0500, GP wrote:


rant

One thing is su though I'm still satisfied with my Canon FTB-QL 35 mm
camera, I'll never buy another Canon product. This company has changed for
worst... or is it only that they weren't manufacturing 35 mm film for the camera?

But, hey, it's Christmas, let's keep the spirit up! I'll soon be distributing
my little /factsheet/ at Staples


You are a looney

By today's standards, I have to agree.


GP

"GP" wrote in message
...

I explained I wasn't going to pay 100$ for another 5 minute job. So I was
transferred to the service manager and the line was cut off.

I called back Signora Patrica Sawyer, head of complaints department. She was
there today and explained Canon would be glad to help with another 100$ fix.

It's always either "Why don't you buy a new one?" or "Send your printer in."

Think about it next time you buy a printer: Canon spells... err, prints one
of two things: trouble, problems, troubles, problem.

I think it is a bit much to complain about a printer that has been working for
15 years with only minor service. $100 every 15 years does not seem
unreasonable....

- Bob Headrick, not speaking for my employer HP

Bob Headrick wrote:
"GP" wrote in message
...


I explained I wasn't going to pay 100$ for another 5 minute job. So I was
transferred to the service manager and the line was cut off.

I called back Signora Patrica Sawyer, head of complaints department. She was
there today and explained Canon would be glad to help with another 100$ fix.

It's always either "Why don't you buy a new one?" or "Send your printer in."

Think about it next time you buy a printer: Canon spells... err, prints one
of two things: trouble, problems, troubles, problem.


I think it is a bit much to complain about a printer that has been working for
15 years with only minor service. $100 every 15 years does not seem
unreasonable....

First, it seems the printer was first made in 1993, the Canon representative
told me. So, if he's right, it seems I haven't bought it at the same time as
my first computer. I'd have to check my bill, if I still have it.

It's still an old printer nonetheless, but sometimes I don't print for months.
So it hasn't been put to heavy use.

And that's still not the point. When you ask where the purge unit is and,
instead of giving you a straigth answer, Canon says "Send in the printer",
which would have cost about 100$ for the 5 minute job I finally did myself
without sending my pronter to the other end of town for 2 weeks or so, I call
it unfair.

And when you finally realize that the printer has been designed to fail -- the
little sponge, contact of the cartridge unreacheable at the end of the
compartment (see my post) -- I, for one, call the company Mother ****ers.

And had you read more carefully, you'd have found that it's the third time it
needs repairs, which is approx. once for every 3500 sheets. I call this
unacceptable.

- Bob Headrick, not speaking for my employer HP

As for HP, I've never owned one of their products. A friend of mine had a
Deskjet 500. The thing was undestructible. She even filled old cartridges with
Carter ink to print drafts. I remember reading a report (PCMag, or somthing of
that kind) by a writer who dreamt of putting the ax in it, just to get rid of
the damn thing and get his boss to buy a new printer.

Where the company is headed to nowadays with La Fiorina, I'm not sure. Not at all.

GP


GP