Originally Posted by
Larry Bratton
Continuation - I had to purchase a new tube this week. I started the process on Tuesday after going through all the troubleshooting procedures with Ian at Epilog, he recommended a new tube (my current one was 3 years old). OK..so how much? Well $1395.00 plus the core charge deposit (heart in throat). Joe Pelonio had posted that if you send the tube prior to them shipping the new tube, they will waive the core charge. So, it turns out this is a great way to do it. First of all, it drops the price of the tube by $200 to $1195 for what they now call a Model A tube but you have to pay the shipping. So I pulled the tube, packed it up and shipped it second day air. I supplied Ian with the tracking number for the old tube. I assumed they would not ship until they received the old tube...nope..they would ship now with payment. OK, it's now Wednesday, I finalize the order and they tell me it will ship 2 day UPS (my account) and I will get it today (Friday). Yesterday morning, I do not have a tracking number and the money has not been taken from my account...hummm...so I call. Now this is what I liked, seems the tube HAD NOT GONE OUT because they had some processing problems with their system for payment. Solution- they shipped it NEXT DAY AIR at NO CHARGE! It is supposed to be here today as planned. Invoiced me for the $1195 and no more.
Sometimes companies have problems. This happens, but how they react to solve the problem is what counts. I have owned an Epilog machine for almost 5 years now and they are still the best in my book when it comes to tech support and service.
Continuation: Well I am sorry to report that this did not turn out as previously stated. When UPS came on Friday, I was expecting my tube as promised. UPS driver did not have it. OK, I really really need this tube, so I call to see what happened. As it turns out, instead of the tube being shipped by next day the shipping failed to be changed and it shipped 2nd day air. Brian DeNelion got involved at this point and came through like a champ...HE SHIPPED ANOTHER TUBE, OVERNIGHT, Saturday delivery on them. I had to drive 30 miles to a UPS store in order to get it Saturday, but that part worked out. Get home, open the box, guess what, no fans. So, I'm still dead in the water. Ian failed to tell me to keep the fans off the old tube, and since it is not written anywhere, I shipped what he told me. So, this is Monday now, I call, they have my fans, so they ship them overnight. Got them Tuesday.
Time to install and align. Since we don't do alignments too often, I always call tech support for help but I said I think I can do it. So, I worked with it for a couple of hours and still could not get it right, so I called tech support. I get Joe, who I have never heard of and we started doing the alignment. Went through the procedure as he dictated. Now, catch this, after an hour and half on the phone, the machine will not cut a lick. He says, we can't resolve this today, as it was after 6 his time, and he would call me back first thing tomorrow. I went to sleep thinking about what was going wrong. I dug around until I found a set of written instructions and started at instruction #1. I discovered that the tech had failed to align the burn to the center of the hole where the beam enters the periscope. This is done with mirror #1 on the EXT. After I did that, I got it working perfectly. Guess it just goes to show that IF ALL ELSE FAILS, READ THE DIRECTIONS! By the way, Joe never called back or followed up. Not too good.
Epilog Legend EXT36-40watt, Corel X4, Canon iPF8000 44" printer,Photoshop CS6, Ioline plotter, Hotronix Swinger Heat Press, Ricoh GX e3300 Sublimation