# My review and experience buying a DTG machine from Equipment Zones



## sgraphics325 (Nov 22, 2011)

We purchased a Direct to Garment Printer from Equipment zone approximately 3 years ago. We spent the first year trying to get the machine no work properly and it never did. We spent thousands of additional dollars with humidifiers, computers and anything else we could try. In the end it never worked right, and was far from profitable. We asked for our money back and were refused. After going through the BBB we agreed to a refund of %70 of our original purchase price of the machine. We got nothing for the 1 years worth of ink we purchased and the hundreds of hours we lost trying to make this work. This agreement was made in October 2012. Since that time, approx. 17 months, Harry, the owner, has lied to us constantly. We have been given pickup dates and they just never show up. He literally lies to us on a weekly basis, thats if we can get a hold of him. We have even spoke with the tech Hawkeye, and he has never even been told to pick up the machine. 2 Weeks ago I gave Harry a deadline to pick up the machine and as of 
Friday he has once again lied and failed to pickup the machine. We are now forced to pursue legal action against Equipment Zone. Somehow this company has an A+ rating with the BBB. Our family owned business has been around for 37 years and never have we felt more lied to and ripped off. Equipment Zone will take your money and run. Don't give it to them. The intention of this post is not to get any response from Equipment Zone, you guys have had your chance, it is only to warn everyone not to do business with them. The BBB has informed us that they will pursue immediate arbitration, but we will be pursuing our own legal action in the meantime. If you have any questions about this post or dealing with equipment zone feel free to email me personally. [email protected].


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## justin_86 (Jun 24, 2008)

I feel your pain. We have dealt with a different machine and supplier with a similar situation and it keeps me up and night. It has been going on for 9 months and its driving me insane!


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## sgraphics325 (Nov 22, 2011)

so I wonder if its the technology or the process or whats going on or maybe we just had a bad machine. we tried everything possible and every suggestion they gave us and it never worked out. the thing is I know they are selling a lot of machines, lots of people are getting into the market, hope they are having better luck than us. either way, it doesn't excuse the behavior of the people making and selling the machines, we stand behind our work and our products and so should they.


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## lazographics (Mar 5, 2009)

sgraphics325 said:


> so I wonder if its the technology or the process or whats going on or maybe we just had a bad machine. we tried everything possible and every suggestion they gave us and it never worked out. the thing is I know they are selling a lot of machines, lots of people are getting into the market, hope they are having better luck than us. either way, it doesn't excuse the behavior of the people making and selling the machines, we stand behind our work and our products and so should they.


I'm just curious but did you buy a Velocijet or one of their refurbished printers?


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## sgraphics325 (Nov 22, 2011)

we bought a refurbished blazer pro. that was what they recommended instead of the new machine because it could print 3 shirts at one time and we were thinking that would be better for higher volumes. Looking back I think they just wanted to get rid of the refurbished machine. He was a heck of a salesman, I'll give him that.


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## jsmcustomworks (Mar 1, 2014)

I am glad i seen this i was really thinking about going thur them for a dtg printer thanks for the heads up i will spend the little extra money to get one


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## treefox2118 (Sep 23, 2010)

I would be hesitant to buy a refurbished DTG from anyone without having a buyback in writing.

DTG is tough enough with new printers. There are many variables that matter if you want a solid print and low downtime.

I've looked at over a dozen DTG machines that the owners swear are duds. More than half were operator error. A quarter were bad installation or parts that might have come loose in shipping. The rest might have been duds.

If you're buying a machine, get it installed & set up by the seller. Negotiate it into the purchase price. Withhold the last 20% of payment until it works as promised before you even touch it.

If they don't fix it, use that 20% to box it up & ship it back.

Equipment Zone appears to have excellent service on these forums. I'm not sure why they appear to have dropped the ball. There is usually at least one more side to every story, with the truth somewhere in the middle!

I hope your issue gets resolved. And that you give DTG another chance some day.


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

> If you're buying a machine, get it installed & set up by the seller. Negotiate it into the purchase price.


That's interesting advice that I don't think I've heard before.


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## treefox2118 (Sep 23, 2010)

I've requested vendor installs in every quote. Ballpark has been $1000+$1500 + airfare/hotel if installer has to fly.

We self-installed our DTGs but my guys have up to 20 years experience with inkjet printers. Those new to the technology should budget the installation cost into their purchase price. $2000 over 36 months is $2 a day only.


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## sgraphics325 (Nov 22, 2011)

in our particular case, we did have a tech set up the machine. we also had the tech to our location on multiple occasions to fix the machine. we literally changed every part possible from start to finish, capping stations, print heads, ink lines. everything. this wasn't a case of we tried it a couple times and it didn't work. we attempted to print hundreds of shirts, spent months trying to get the quality that was required for us to actually sell a t-shirt. there were a few times where the machine actually worked, but that was less than 25% of the time, the majority of the time was spent on the phone or waiting for parts. we actually ended up purchasing screen printing equipment and have been much happier. a note about equipment zone, they monitor this site daily and convince people to remove posts, if you do some looking you will find that they will make promises if you remove posts or stop posting. that is why in my original post I did not ask for a response from them because I have no intention of removing our post. I don't like to talk bad about people or their business, but you cannot imagine the frustration of hundreds of phone call and emails that are all lies. we have a $17,000 dust collector that has been sitting unused for almost 2 years. that's a lot of money collecting dust. if anyone here has confidence in this machine I'll give you a heck of a deal!


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## lazographics (Mar 5, 2009)

Most customers purchasing a dtg printer, whether its used, refurb, or new printer, don't know to get onsite training. There are a lot of sales guys out there that will do anything to just make the sale. Customers hear things like how easy it is to use a dtg printer, how theres no real maintenance or hardly any learning curve, if you have any type of printing experience then this would be easy to learn, and that your guaranteed to make money with this equipment. All great things to hear till you find out the hard way. In most cases customers end up spending more money in parts/shipping and time with phone support just to get the printer back to working condition. And a lot of times new equipment just ends up sitting or gets resold and the burden gets passed on to another customer. I have seen it to many times and I know many customers with new equipment just sitting. Many times I have worked on the same printer that has seen 2-3 different owners in different states and in a couple of occasions different countries. I have tried my best to help these people and its always upsetting to me to hear that a company is not fully committed to helping their customers. 

I have done onsite installation for the last 8 years for both US Screen Print and did contract work for EZ from 09-11. Back at US Screen my fellow installers and I always pleaded with management and sales to always offer onsite training and to try and work it into the final price. It just never caught on. We were understaffed in that department. There were always customers that had received their equipment but were waiting weeks to get training because we were busy traveling all over the world. So a lot of times customers took it upon themselves to learn or got mediocre training through phone support from someone who hardly ever used a printer themselves. This can still be the case now with other companies.

In this case with sgraphics he did get onsite training but was sold a printer that is from a company that is no longer around. Yes the Epson parts are still available but if your having issues with any of the after market parts then they can be almost impossible to locate and really expensive if you do. 

I have installed many blazers and even built a few in my day. Sgraphics I will pm you to see if I can be of any help to you.


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## Resolute DTG (Jun 27, 2010)

lazographics said:


> Most customers purchasing a dtg printer, whether its used, refurb, or new printer, don't know to get onsite training. There are a lot of sales guys out there that will do anything to just make the sale. Customers hear things like how easy it is to use a dtg printer, how theres no real maintenance or hardly any learning curve, if you have any type of printing experience then this would be easy to learn, and that your guaranteed to make money with this equipment. All great things to hear till you find out the hard way. In most cases customers end up spending more money in parts/shipping and time with phone support just to get the printer back to working condition. And a lot of times new equipment just ends up sitting or gets resold and the burden gets passed on to another customer. I have seen it to many times and I know many customers with new equipment just sitting. Many times I have worked on the same printer that has seen 2-3 different owners in different states and in a couple of occasions different countries. I have tried my best to help these people and its always upsetting to me to hear that a company is not fully committed to helping their customers.
> 
> I have done onsite installation for the last 8 years for both US Screen Print and did contract work for EZ from 09-11. Back at US Screen my fellow installers and I always pleaded with management and sales to always offer onsite training and to try and work it into the final price. It just never caught on. We were understaffed in that department. There were always customers that had received their equipment but were waiting weeks to get training because we were busy traveling all over the world. So a lot of times customers took it upon themselves to learn or got mediocre training through phone support from someone who hardly ever used a printer themselves. This can still be the case now with other companies.
> 
> ...


For this very reason we do not allow a sale to go through unless we are installing on-site with the technician on-site for two days.

We prefer our customers to travel to us for training, this includes the whole of Europe and proves commitment on both parts. The cost is minimal for travel these days so I really don't see the need for people to be treated in this way.

The T-Jet blazer pro was & still is a good machine, but as Billy says the custom parts are scarce and expensive. 

I hope you can work it out and get it going, I would buy it in a flash if it were located in Europe.

Regards

Colin


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## lazographics (Mar 5, 2009)

To be fair on my end since I have experience of working with EZ I can say that I have always seen that this company cares about their employees just as US Screen did. I read your post sgraphics and see that you had techs visit you multiple times. Usually onsite repairs are not part of warranty. So having a tech come to you on their busy schedule shows that EZ tried to get your printer working properly. I installed many Velocijets, as well as refurb printers, for EZ and never saw issues that weren't a quick fix. Their printers always performed well. Out of all the installs I have done with many models of printers for both companies I would say 90% of the time it was user error.

Sgraphics if you would like to start a new post under the tjet section with issues on your printer then we can start helping you out or you can pm me.


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## Davalos (Feb 4, 2014)

treefox or anyone else,

is buying a refurb from the OEM as bad idea? I would be attending local training, but reason I would go refurb is to save a couple K and getting an onsite installation would negate the refurb savings.


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## lazographics (Mar 5, 2009)

Davalos said:


> treefox or anyone else,
> 
> is buying a refurb from the OEM as bad idea? I would be attending local training, but reason I would go refurb is to save a couple K and getting an onsite installation would negate the refurb savings.


Theres nothing wrong with buying a refurb printer. Its a great way for someone who is just starting out to learn the techniques of dtg for a lower price. Once your good at it and hopefully do great business then you can always upgrade later. Just as long as its a printer that you can still get parts for. Blazer model printers are still great printers to purchase and use the same Epson engine as some current models. So the capability of printing the same quality is there.


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## sgraphics325 (Nov 22, 2011)

If I wasn't clear in my original post, we don't want anything to do with the Blazer machine, my post is about EZ entering into a written agreement with us, negotiated by the BBB of New Jersey, and completely failing to follow through on it. We agreed in October 2012 to take a loss and EZ buy back the machine for %70 of the purchase price. Literally hundreds of emails and phone calls from Harry at EZ scheduling times to pick up the machine and return our money. Never once even calling to cancel or say they couldn't make it, let alone actually show up. I contacted the tech directly and he tells me Harry never once even told him to come pick up the machine. My post is about their terrible business practices and they cannot dispute this. Honestly I hope no one else has been treated this way and I hope people do have success in the DTG business, but after this experience it's not something we have any desire to pursue. I received notice yesterday from the BBB that they will be conducting arbitration which will be legally binding. We just want EZ and Harry to follow through on the agreement.


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## sandmanbjj (Oct 26, 2011)

I'm an equipment zone customer in Louisiana. I bought the refurb Fast T jet 2. I am actually shocked to read this post. EZ has been nothing but perfect to me. 
Got my printer when they said, called me when I installed it, I printed a shirt within an hour of receiving the printer. (I knew nothing about dtg). They walked me through it and even connected to my computer and adjusted the settings. 
I have never waited more than 30 min for a return e mail, and that includes off hours. They must check their smart phones. 
I'm sorry you had these issues with EZ. But I give them my highest recommendation.


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