Printing in more than one language
Sunnybank is known for its Asian shops and restaurants and the busy centres around Mains Road and McCullough Street. Above and behind them are accountants, tax agents, solicitors, migration agents, doctors, dentists and tutoring and education businesses. A good share of what they print is in Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean or another script, and often alongside English on the same page.
That brings its own faults. A job that prints cleanly in English may come out with missing characters or boxes if the right font is not on the machine or the driver cannot embed it. A scan to email may go out with a file name that the mail system mangles. These are not usually hardware faults. They are settings and drivers, and we can fix them on site.
If your office prints in more than one script, tell us when you ring. We will test a sample before we leave.
Mount Gravatt, Upper Mount Gravatt and Garden City
The big shopping centre at Upper Mount Gravatt draws a ring of professional suites around it. Dental surgeries, physiotherapists, accountants, financial advisers, finance brokers and real estate offices are all along Logan Road and Kessels Road. The Mount Gravatt Showgrounds sit nearby, and so do schools and sporting clubs with busy admin offices.
Machines are mostly mid range A3 colour multifunctions with a laser at reception. A common call is a copier that jams at the same spot every time, which points to a roller or a guide at that spot rather than to the paper.
Printer service from Sunnybank to Mount Gravatt, suburb by suburb
The southside is a long run of suburbs. This is roughly how the offices line up.
| Place | Offices and businesses | Machines and faults |
|---|---|---|
| Coorparoo, Holland Park, Stones Corner, Greenslopes | Practices, small firms, agencies, a private hospital and the clinics around it | A3 and A4 multifunctions, scan faults, privacy for patient records |
| Mount Gravatt and Upper Mount Gravatt | Professional suites, retail, schools, sporting clubs | Mid range colour copiers, feed jams |
| Nathan and Salisbury | University campus, research and engineering offices, motor businesses | Shared machines with heavy use, sign in faults |
| Sunnybank, Sunnybank Hills, Runcorn | Accountants, migration agents, tutoring colleges, medical, retail | Multi language print faults, small colour copiers |
| Eight Mile Plains, Kuraby, Rochedale | Offices along the Pacific Motorway, trade premises, distribution | A mix of mid range copiers and workshop printers |
Nathan and the university side
Griffith University has a campus at Nathan, and the surrounding offices include research groups, engineering consultants and student services. Print use is heavy and comes in bursts that follow the teaching calendar. A copier used by dozens of people a day, often with a card or code at the panel, wears its feed parts faster than one in a quiet office. When the card reader or the code system fails, the copier itself is usually fine and the fault is between the panel and the server.
Coorparoo, Greenslopes and the practices
Logan Road and Cavendish Road carry small professional offices, and Greenslopes has a private hospital with a lot of specialist rooms around it. A consulting room prints referrals, forms and letters for patients who are waiting. A stall at the front counter shows, so we try to finish in one visit.
One thing about privacy. A practice copier with a hard drive keeps traces of past jobs, so before a repair or a replacement we talk through that data. Nothing leaves the building until we have agreed what happens to it.
What goes wrong
Most calls sort into one of these.
- Feed rollers worn smooth, with jams that repeat at the same point in the path
- Fusers at end of life, with smears, creases or toner that rubs off
- Missing characters, boxes and broken scans in non English documents, traced to fonts and drivers
- Scan to email or folder that stopped after an IT change
- Bands and spots from a drum, a belt or a dirty laser window
- Sign in or card release faults on shared machines
Tax time, tutoring terms and the rush that follows
Accountants and tax agents have a clear calendar. July to October is the individual tax season, and the machines in those offices work hard for four months, then quiet. Tutoring and education businesses run to school terms and weekends. Migration and legal offices run to their own deadlines, often tied to document lodgement.
Whatever your calendar, a service visit just before the busiest weeks is worth more than a repair in the middle of them. If you know when the rush starts, tell us.
Fonts, drivers and the page that looks wrong
A page with a missing character is a different kind of fault from a page with a streak. The copier is usually working perfectly. The job reaches it with a font that the printer language cannot embed, or the driver substitutes a font and breaks the layout. Scans can also fail: a file name with non English characters may stop a scan to folder or confuse a mail server.
We look at the driver on the computer that sends the job, the page description language the machine uses, and the fonts on the machine. We test with a sample of the actual document, not a test page. Bring one along when you ring, or have it ready for the technician.
Machines in small colleges and education offices
Tutoring colleges and language schools print worksheets in volume, often double sided and stapled. They use finishers heavily, and the staple unit and the paper path through the duplexer are the first places to show wear. If your machine staples at an angle or jams only on duplex jobs, the duplex path and the finisher are where we start.
What sits on the desks
In practices around Coorparoo and Mount Gravatt we see a lot of Canon imageRUNNER ADVANCE and Ricoh, and Toshiba e-STUDIO and Kyocera TASKalfa in the busier offices. Konica Minolta, Sharp, HP and Brother appear too. We are independent of the makers and say so plainly.
Eight Mile Plains, Kuraby and the motorway offices
The Pacific Motorway corridor from Eight Mile Plains through Rochedale and Kuraby carries a different kind of office. Business parks, call centres, distribution, trade suppliers and a busway station that brings staff in from across the southside. Floor plates are big, tenants are many, and the machine is often a shared device on a floor with sign in and secure release set up by an outside provider.
If your sign in system is run by someone else, say so when you ring. We can tell whether a fault is in the copier or in the link to the server, and we will say who needs to fix it. Where the copier needs a repair, we do it on the day where we can.
Repair or replace on the southside
Many southside practices run machines that were bought a decade ago and have never missed a month. That is a good sign, and it is also a risk, because parts for older lines run short and a major failure can cost more than the machine is worth. Our rule of thumb is simple. If the next repair is a large one and the machine has had another large one in the last year, we talk about a replacement. We tell you what the repair would involve and what we think of its chances, and then you decide.
Where a replacement is right, we sell new and refurbished commercial machines that are warranted, and we buy the old one. That conversation is kept apart from the repair advice.
Weather and the wet season
Southside storms arrive in the afternoon and bring power surges. A copier that dies with a click in a storm often needs its supply board looked at first. Storm season humidity also swells paper and brings on jams. If your machine only jams in the wet, check the paper first.
What we promise on a southside job
Southside jobs go to technicians who are trained, experienced and certified, with the common spares in the van, and 98% of repairs are done first time. We repeat a repair at no charge if the same fault returns. No one is booked until you have agreed the price by phone, and nothing is locked in. A busy line means a logged call and a return call.
Moves, replacements and old machines
We relocate machines and set them up at the new address. We supply new and refurbished commercial machines, warranted, and buy used ones. Tell us the make and model.
Ask the people who print
The operator knows first
So our technicians ask before they open anything. What did it do, when, how often, who was using it. Then they go and look.
Tell us the first thing you noticed, even if it sounds small. Often it is nearly the whole answer.
- Asked first. The users are the first source.
- Written down. What you said goes on the job record.
- Checked against the machine. Then the covers come off.
Keep reading around Brisbane
LoganSpringwood, Underwood, Slacks Creek, Meadowbrook and BeenleighLogan Central and Browns PlainsLogan Central, Woodridge, Meadowbrook, Browns Plains and Crestmead: council counters, campus fringe, trades and dispatch benches.
South Brisbane and WoolloongabbaSouth Brisbane, West End, Woolloongabba, Kangaroo Point and Dutton Park: clinics, studios, towers and event offices.
Carindale and Camp HillCarindale, Camp Hill, Carina, Belmont, Chandler and Greenslopes practices and firms.
Acacia Ridge and ArcherfieldAcacia Ridge, Archerfield, Rocklea, Coopers Plains and Salisbury
Toshiba repairse-STUDIO colour and mono copiers, fixed where they stand.
Kyocera repairsTASKalfa copiers and ECOSYS printers, repaired on site.
Scan to email not workingScans that never reach an inbox or a shared folder.Buy, sell and lease
Buy, sell and lease commercial copiers in Brisbane
We also sell new and refurbished commercial copiers and buy used ones. Same team, same technicians.
A few recent visits
Questions people ask us on the phone
Our documents print with missing characters. Is the copier broken?
Usually not. It is typically a font or driver setting. We test a sample on site and fix the setting.
Do you offer printer service in Sunnybank and Mount Gravatt?
Yes, along with Sunnybank, Mount Gravatt, Nathan, Eight Mile Plains, Kuraby, Coorparoo, Holland Park and Greenslopes.
Can you set up scanning for a practice with privacy needs?
Yes. We configure the destination and talk about stored data before we leave.
Our card release stopped working. Is the copier at fault?
Often the fault is between the panel and the server. We check on site.
The copier jams at the same spot every time. Why?
That usually points to a roller or a guide at that point in the path, rather than the paper.
Our staple unit stapled at an angle. Is that a repair?
Yes. The finisher and the paper path are the first places we look.
When is the best time for a service before tax season?
A few weeks before the rush, so a fault shows up before the pressure does.
Do you buy used copiers on the southside?
Yes. Give us the make, model and condition.
Our sign in system is run by an outside provider. Who fixes a sign in fault?
We can usually tell whether the fault is in the copier or the link to the server. We fix what is ours and say who needs to fix the rest.
Do you cover the Pacific Motorway business parks?
Yes. Eight Mile Plains, Rochedale, Kuraby and Runcorn are on the same service pattern.
Do you service machines at the university end of Nathan?
Yes. If there is a sign in process, say so when you ring.
