- Messages
- 3,194
- Name
- Paul
- Edit My Images
- No
Most time I read about any company on the web it seems someone is having a bleat about a poor experience. I guess folks are more likely to vent when things go bad ... I thought I'd share my recent experience with Fotospeed, a company whose papers I have used for a while and have previously recommended on here amongst other places. I have no affiliation to this company, I am just a customer.
Apologies in advance, this may be a longish post, but hopefully a worthwhile one.
I run an Epson R2000 pigment ink based photo printer. I have had this for some years and it has long since been discontinued. The drivers and firmware are all up to date at least and windows 10 sees it properly.
Late last year when buying oem inks, I noticed the price had increased quite a bit from previous and that fewer places were stocking the ink. As the printer produces excellent images (I mainly print colour) and still works well I didn't want to discard it. I decided the best course of action would be to invest in a 3rd party ink system. Having seen some exceptional results from these 3rd party inks I wasn't too concerned about doing this and after looking into the various options decided to get the Fotospeed inkflow system. This uses resettable cartridges and pigment inks sourced from the USA. So the kit was duly ordered and delivered in January of this year.
For a variety of reasons my need to print wasn't particularly high this year and I actually had more oem inks than I realised so the inkflow kit remained unopened and stored in a cupboard. Fast forward to mid November and I have around 60 images that I need to print. The oem inks were just about gone too, but no problem I thought, I have the inflow system. I carefully followed the instructions and installed the inks but ran into a few problems, firstly with some of the cartridges not registering. I phoned Fotospeed for advice and after speaking with a few people there they sent out some replacement cartridge carriers (the bit with the resettable chip on). No charge and sent 1st class. These were duly replaced and despite a bit of a faff all registered and I was up and running. I confirmed the printer was functioning as it should, i.e. all inks printing correctly.
I produce my own profiles so I opened a brand new box of baryta and printed out the calibration chart. This was when I had my first inkling all was not well, some of the patches smudged - never happened with the oem inks. No matter, re-printed the patches and let them dry overnight. The profile was produced and the first test print fired off - not good at all. The blacks were totally blocked up and the gloss differential was all over the place. Despite a variety of test and re-profiles as well as using generics and changing a variety of quality settings the results remained stubbornly bad.
So another call to Fotospeed, this time I spoke with a gent called Vince and after systematically going through my processes I allowed him to remote onto the pc and check a few things and produce a test print and calibration chart. These were sent at his request to him. They then produced a profile which was emailed back to me which I duly installed but the results were the same. By now it was out of office hours so I sent Vince a quick email to advise with the intention of calling them the next day. I didn't have to, I got a call from a chap called Toby (I think he's the boss there) and after a discussion I agreed to take my printer in to their offices the next day which I did.
After an hour or so there it became clear there wasn't a quick fix, Vince had tried a variety of papers, inks and even replaced some of the carriers. They suggested I leave the printer with them and they would courier it back to me once they found a solution. By the end of last week Vince wrote to me to tell me that no matter what combination of inks they tried, they could not get a decent print out of it. When I took the printer in, I took in the inkflow system and a set of oem inks (I needed some just in case). I figured as this combination had produced excellent results previously, it would act as a control - so if the oem inks no longer produced a good print then it would be safe to say the printer was faulty. After they installed the oem inks, the printer duly produced its normal standard of high quality output. This is needless to say frustrating and I have used a fair amount of paper and brain cells trying to sort this, as they have.
All Vince could do was offer his apologies and offer a full refund or credit to full amount against future orders, whichever I preferred. I didn't ask, this was offered. And this was despite the inkflow system being in my possession for over 10 months.
We can't win them all I guess, but for trying every possible avenue and spending quite some time on this I can only admire them for going above and beyond. The printer is now back with me, with oem inks and is producing lovely prints as I type on a variety of Fotospeed papers.
Apologies in advance, this may be a longish post, but hopefully a worthwhile one.
I run an Epson R2000 pigment ink based photo printer. I have had this for some years and it has long since been discontinued. The drivers and firmware are all up to date at least and windows 10 sees it properly.
Late last year when buying oem inks, I noticed the price had increased quite a bit from previous and that fewer places were stocking the ink. As the printer produces excellent images (I mainly print colour) and still works well I didn't want to discard it. I decided the best course of action would be to invest in a 3rd party ink system. Having seen some exceptional results from these 3rd party inks I wasn't too concerned about doing this and after looking into the various options decided to get the Fotospeed inkflow system. This uses resettable cartridges and pigment inks sourced from the USA. So the kit was duly ordered and delivered in January of this year.
For a variety of reasons my need to print wasn't particularly high this year and I actually had more oem inks than I realised so the inkflow kit remained unopened and stored in a cupboard. Fast forward to mid November and I have around 60 images that I need to print. The oem inks were just about gone too, but no problem I thought, I have the inflow system. I carefully followed the instructions and installed the inks but ran into a few problems, firstly with some of the cartridges not registering. I phoned Fotospeed for advice and after speaking with a few people there they sent out some replacement cartridge carriers (the bit with the resettable chip on). No charge and sent 1st class. These were duly replaced and despite a bit of a faff all registered and I was up and running. I confirmed the printer was functioning as it should, i.e. all inks printing correctly.
I produce my own profiles so I opened a brand new box of baryta and printed out the calibration chart. This was when I had my first inkling all was not well, some of the patches smudged - never happened with the oem inks. No matter, re-printed the patches and let them dry overnight. The profile was produced and the first test print fired off - not good at all. The blacks were totally blocked up and the gloss differential was all over the place. Despite a variety of test and re-profiles as well as using generics and changing a variety of quality settings the results remained stubbornly bad.
So another call to Fotospeed, this time I spoke with a gent called Vince and after systematically going through my processes I allowed him to remote onto the pc and check a few things and produce a test print and calibration chart. These were sent at his request to him. They then produced a profile which was emailed back to me which I duly installed but the results were the same. By now it was out of office hours so I sent Vince a quick email to advise with the intention of calling them the next day. I didn't have to, I got a call from a chap called Toby (I think he's the boss there) and after a discussion I agreed to take my printer in to their offices the next day which I did.
After an hour or so there it became clear there wasn't a quick fix, Vince had tried a variety of papers, inks and even replaced some of the carriers. They suggested I leave the printer with them and they would courier it back to me once they found a solution. By the end of last week Vince wrote to me to tell me that no matter what combination of inks they tried, they could not get a decent print out of it. When I took the printer in, I took in the inkflow system and a set of oem inks (I needed some just in case). I figured as this combination had produced excellent results previously, it would act as a control - so if the oem inks no longer produced a good print then it would be safe to say the printer was faulty. After they installed the oem inks, the printer duly produced its normal standard of high quality output. This is needless to say frustrating and I have used a fair amount of paper and brain cells trying to sort this, as they have.
All Vince could do was offer his apologies and offer a full refund or credit to full amount against future orders, whichever I preferred. I didn't ask, this was offered. And this was despite the inkflow system being in my possession for over 10 months.
We can't win them all I guess, but for trying every possible avenue and spending quite some time on this I can only admire them for going above and beyond. The printer is now back with me, with oem inks and is producing lovely prints as I type on a variety of Fotospeed papers.
