Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, BKPhoto@... wrote:
>
> 
> 
> What is absolutely infuriating to me is the money and effort
companies spend on trying to market excellent customer support, rather
than investing the money in actually providing excellent customer
support. This business strategy has never made sense to me, and never
will. It definitely effects the purchasing decisions that I make or
have influence over.
> 
> 


This is exactly why I bought the Profiler Platinum package. I had
great support from Xrite for stuff that was old and out of service for
far longer than this Spectroscan (which went end of life about 2-3
years ago). It was that support that made me drop the significant cash
to buy that software, and the Pulse package (up to almost $6000 now in
Xrite stuff), I really do expect a little better. Email support is
fine by me, I'm not asking for anyone to drop everything and help me
get it going again like if I called the 800 number, I do understand
the differences. Hell even Gretag was helping me with this device back
before the purchase, it was part of the way the game was played to
help keep customers buying your products. Having dropped that kind of
money I definitely feel betrayed now.

I've also had decent support on my ancient PrintOpen 4, another
product now long dead.

Also I didn't think Colorvision would make fun of the situation, but I
can almost bet that somehow this will end up changing the way that the
CV products are marketed. You said no more phone support, but that
email/support ticket is possible, this is what Xrite just cut off and
on very expensive items. And with the economy what it is, I can almost
guarantee that CV sales will increase and Xrite decrease, at least at
the hobby/low to mid range Pro level as the end users are trying to
keep costs down. Also personally I will not buy that stupid Munki
product! It is only slightly better than that stupid i1 Design product
that Gretag sold that used 45 patches for a profile. I own that one
because it was the easiest and cheapest way to buy the i1pro at the
time. I tried it, I called it JUNK (which it truly was). I also
suggested to Xrite that they kill it, which they did. Not sure why
that stupid Munki was brought out, just a variation on a poor choice
of design features. I won't even use the EasyRGB for fade testing, not
enough patches to do the job, I use the 135 target in PrintOpen for
this, seems to work fairly well for the kind of data I need. Works
pretty well to profile things like printable CD/DVD disks too.

But in the end this post was mostly just a huge warning to anyone that
is buying a used Gretag or Xrite item, you will be left in the cold,
no matter what that item is. So please pass the word around. I assume
that they will still take your money if you want it to be recertified,
but after that I have no idea about the support status of that item.
Since I never registered my Pulse system (why bother, I had a better
software option) I guess I'm SOL with it too.