IKON IKON Office Solutions IKON Office Solutions Scams Locally Owned Small Business Richmond, Virginia

I own a small locally owned print shop.  I met with IKON 2 months before my shop opened and explained to them what I was opening and what I needed.  For over 30 min. the sales rep. went on and on about what a great company IKON is and all the reasons that my new business should choose IKON for all of our printing needs.  He then went into how long IKON has been in business and that they have years and years of experience helping get print shops off the ground.  He showed us a machine and told us that we would be getting one step down from that machine and the only difference would be 10 prints per min.  He then went on and on about what a great machine it was and all the wonderful things it could do for my business.  When he handed my partner and me the proposal it listed a 500 instead of a 550 like our sales rep. had been talking about for the last 45 min. or so.  I questioned him about it and he said "oh, that is just referring to the series."  He promised a 95% uptime and a 24 hour fix or replace guarantee.  Because printing is how I make money and keep business this part was very important.  If my machines do not work, I can not make money and I lose customers because they can not rely on me.  He also told us that this machine would be able to run all of the different types of paper that I would need as a print shop and then some.  Our proposal also said that we would be trained on the machines for at least one week prior to our shop opening and then would receive on going training though out the course of our lease.  The sales rep. went on to say that he had just returned from another client's shop where he had stayed in a hotel and worked with every single day until he felt confident that the client knew everything about the machine.  

After leaving this meeting, we would never see this rep. again.  We signed the lease based on receiving a 500 SERIES machine but being told that specifically we would be receiving a 550 machine.  The machine showed up 2 days before my shop opened (over a month and a half after our meeting).  It showed up with 789,830 clicks already on it.  The rollers were burned.  The bottom drawer was broken.  It was missing the right upper side of the machine and the entire finisher unit.  It took almost 2 months to get a replacement machine.  Both machines, however, were not the machine that we were told we would be getting.  We were missing equipment and did not receive it all until we had been opened almost 4 months.  

We have been opened for almost 2 years and still have not received any training.  Our "500 series" machine turned out to be a machine designed for a back office, not a print shop and we are experiencing about a 33% uptime, with an average of 6.1 day fix time.  We leased 5 machines from this company and currently none of them are running.  We were told that when our machines would be down for more than 24 hours IKON would run the jobs at their expense until our machines were back up again.  They did this one time for one job only, and now are saying that they never said they would do this.  The lease was supposed to include all networking, but they said if I want the machines networked it would cost me 150 dollars per hour, so I have had to go to an outside networking company to have this done.  None of our machines are running at a 95% uptime.  IKON does not return phone calls or emails for days or weeks.  My reputation has suffered because of this company, and I am not sure how much longer I will be able to stay in business.  They are refusing to follow through on any of their promises.  Right now I am running jobs on a small printer that I purchased from Office Max for 99 dollars.  This has been a horrible nightmare!!  If my business closes, I will lose everything because IKON still wants their money.