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KM's Fairy Godmother Department
Dec. 6th, 2005 10:39 pmAfter my nasty labels-gumming-up-printer experience the other day, I emailed Konica Minolta's technical support line to ask for advice on if it was possible to clean the image transfer belt of my printer. (In case anyone's wondering what this bit does, I found a nice explanation whilst googling for advice). At most I was hoping for some hints on whether or not I could use WD-40 or IPA, and to be honest I was rather expecting to hear that there wasn't much I could do short of replacing the ITB assembly - which costs about £300.
I was thus pleasantly surprised to get the following reply:
Dear Mr Bradshaw,
I will send you some cleaning solution to remove the residue.
Kind regards,
Shaun Lamberton
Technical Support Agent,
Konica Minolta Printing Solutions
Thinking objectively, I can see the business sense behind this generous gesture: a happy customer with a working printer will keep on buying expensive colour toner cartridges. Nonetheless, it's a very prompt and helpful response; Mr Lamberton, I salute you.
Regarding the weekend's other hassle, I finally got my car back today, after paying a bill that made my Flexible Friend cringe to the tune of a sum that just made it into four figures. It does seem that everything that could wear out did so at the same time, but spread over five years and 75,000 miles I suppose that it doesn't seem quite so horrifying. As it is, the garage were very apologetic for the delay - one of the replacement bits had to be re-ordered as the first box had the wrong part inside - and not only discounted some of the parts but threw in a free valet.
This was also the first time I've had one of the new MOT certificates. Having been studying land law, I can see the similarity with the changes that the Land Registry have made recently, in that in both cases (buying land or getting a car MOT'd) the bit of paper you get is no longer the legal proof in its own right, but is rather just a notification of the update of a central electronic register. I'll be interested to see how well the security works on the new system, as I understand that concerns in this area led to long delays in introducing the system. But if it all works, the idea of being able to independently verify that a car's MOT is genuine is a good one. And it's nice to see that the standard form has a feature that some garages have been using for a while: a peel-off sticker for your windscreen with a reminder of when the next test is due. I just hope it's not prone to coming off inside the test centre's printer...
I was thus pleasantly surprised to get the following reply:
Dear Mr Bradshaw,
I will send you some cleaning solution to remove the residue.
Kind regards,
Shaun Lamberton
Technical Support Agent,
Konica Minolta Printing Solutions
Thinking objectively, I can see the business sense behind this generous gesture: a happy customer with a working printer will keep on buying expensive colour toner cartridges. Nonetheless, it's a very prompt and helpful response; Mr Lamberton, I salute you.
Regarding the weekend's other hassle, I finally got my car back today, after paying a bill that made my Flexible Friend cringe to the tune of a sum that just made it into four figures. It does seem that everything that could wear out did so at the same time, but spread over five years and 75,000 miles I suppose that it doesn't seem quite so horrifying. As it is, the garage were very apologetic for the delay - one of the replacement bits had to be re-ordered as the first box had the wrong part inside - and not only discounted some of the parts but threw in a free valet.
This was also the first time I've had one of the new MOT certificates. Having been studying land law, I can see the similarity with the changes that the Land Registry have made recently, in that in both cases (buying land or getting a car MOT'd) the bit of paper you get is no longer the legal proof in its own right, but is rather just a notification of the update of a central electronic register. I'll be interested to see how well the security works on the new system, as I understand that concerns in this area led to long delays in introducing the system. But if it all works, the idea of being able to independently verify that a car's MOT is genuine is a good one. And it's nice to see that the standard form has a feature that some garages have been using for a while: a peel-off sticker for your windscreen with a reminder of when the next test is due. I just hope it's not prone to coming off inside the test centre's printer...
