I've sent you my contact info in a PM. As you will see I am not a "shill" for any company. I think your company has repeatedly let field testing and product development fall onto the shoulders of your customers. I know the reason I get for why I can't reach tech support is that "you sell tons of these machines" but I'm sure any other company I buy form has shared similar success, yet I can reach their support when I need them. I believe we have talked and you were the first person to say that usscreen had dropped the ball after speaking to so many people- but if you are the same person I talked and e-mailed to before you left then you are also the person that processed my refund that I have not yet gotton. Not getting this refund is not just an inconvience. If I don't continue paying the leasing company for the machines that you have I will go into default. It's very angering to get passed off from one person to another until someone there sends me to a voice mail of another person who is out to lunch. Your price tag is substantial and the performance of the machine should match that. I was told that I could gradually move away from screen printing by your sales man and rely on the T-jet. When this machine works, and deos not band, misregister, or freeze up, on it's best day I get a shirt that is no better than a heat transfer. The hand is sticky and after taking every step to wash it it without fading, I have had no luck at keeping a good image on the shirt. The things I have been told after I bought the machine by your staff were vastly different than before. I've been told that your other customers include a sticker with specific cleaning directions "wash with cold water inside-out" I asked if you provide those stickers and your rep said no. How many customers can I expect to follow those directions and what am I supposed to tell them when they come back complaining wether they followed the directions or not? I produced shirts with my own logo and have suffered the bad rap for what happened to the shirts when other people washed them. I asked why the samples your company printed and sent washed out and I was told you had a bad batch of ink that had just come to the companies attention. I truly wanted this machine to work so I stuck with it as long as I could. I was also told that different water from different cities would fade the ink differently. I wanted to take my company to the internet so there is no way of knowing what the water is going to be like at a finished shirts final destination. I was told a new better white ink was coming out after I expressed my concerns for such a faulty pigment at such a high price, But I was sold what was supposed to be the "best white in the industry" by your company.
On it's best day what are your t-jets and blazers supposed to produce? Never mind their hardware issues, firmware issues, assembly issues...
I'm supposed to make a profit selling shirts that won't look half the quality or "20% degredation" that I was later informed by your company- after their first washing? Am I supposed to charge the rates USscreen suggests for a one time throw away shirt that is very uncomfortable to wear before you wash it? Sticky with pretreatment and stiff with underbase and ink?
I think it was you that told me you had a shirt you printed a few years ago that still looked good considering how old it was, I guess that was before the t-jet 3 or your current machine right? Is the ink still the same? We tested it at sea level in a humid setting with climate control and at 5290 feet above sea level in an arid setting with climate control and both machines produced the same errors and lousy product.
I do feel bad beating up on you and the tech support when I try to get anything working- because I know you have to have a job, and individually none of you build or design the machines. It's the irresponsible manner that USscreen does business that repeatedly shocks and confounds me. I sense the frustration and helplessness I get from your tech support guys. I don't want to have to have them paged at home on you 24hr support line- I know they want to leave their work at home, but with this much money and time I could spend making money or being with my family it's hugely frustrating.
I've been told you sell tons of machines and that you have tons of happy customers but I find it hard to prove, disprove, or believe. I see people here and talk to people at the trade shows who share my experiance. I have to believe that your company knowingly ships out machines it knows will have issues. Collect the money first and then tech support it later right?
"Drop the ball" is my other favorite Usscreen saying. I get it every time I talk to B.S. or any other service person now. "I'm sorry we seemed to have dropped the ball in this case" It's been every case so far Aaron, with fastrip and the 2 t-jet 3's. The balls been dropped in answering my e-mails or calls on the days I've been told to wait around and wait for- the balls been dropped in ever getting those machines to work, the balls been dropped by failing to listen to what the problem of the day I was having with your software or machine was instead to have been told you need a software update and get hung up on only for that not to be the issue, the balls been dropped when I was told, "the sales staff should not have promised you that" and the balls been dropped in returning my money which will still not cover the expense of leasing or all the t-shirts I've made into rags.
I would love to see this resolved and sorry you have to work for this company. I'm not usually as ready to talk [bad] about someone like Scott as all I need in my industry is one pissed off customer, but when I screw up it is a screw up- I try to fix it and then more so as to not have a disgruntled customer. When USscreen screws up what happens? A. Do you issue a recall and stop marketing a machine ridden with flaws?
B. Continue to Sell the machines to take the money now and hire more tech support later?
C. Avoid people who you have taken money from and situate you T-jet kiosk away from your Fast rip kiosk so that no cross contamination issues occur?
That can be your new Usscreen phrase around the office "avoid customer cross-contamination."
Quote:
Originally Posted by AaronM
Hello everyone - I'm going to step in here. First off I want to make sure everyone knows who I am. My name is Aaron Montgomery. I worked for U.S. Screen for 7+ years in their sales department and was involved with the T-Jet from the beginning. Due to personal reasons I moved to the east coast and pursued a career coaching volleyball and parted ways with Scott and company last September. He was very supportive of my change. Recently Scott and I have begun to work together again as volleyball coaching is my passion but unfortunately it does not pay the bills. I am working with Scott in a Marketing roll now (He calls me the Marketing Manager I do believe, but basically just am trying to help where I can from Boston). So now everyone knows where I am coming from and what my relationship is with U.S. Screen.
To that end, I have always been fascinated with internet message boards etc. To me at times it is like online dating. People can’t always express themselves very well in typing and they also say things they would never say in a true public forum where you actually had to be face to face. Anyway I would invite everyone that posts on these or any forums to make sure people know who you are. We are people trying to make a living not computer, so be proud of who you are and put it out there.
Now on to the issues at hand. This thread has been a very interesting read. Not to say that any of the issues these folks have had are not true, but there is also a lot of false information. The entire post regarding the DTG and relationship to the T-Jet and the Japanese “vendor” is false. I’m more than happy to share the real story, but am already rambling on so PM if you want details. Also there is no class action lawsuit that has been presented to U.S. Screen. So hearing both side of the story is important and that doesn’t always happen on these forums. Information can be twisted and turned on purpose, and sometimes just due to a lack of complete knowledge. We sell a ton of T-Jets because they are good machines and we do try our best to help people. U.S. Screen has not been around since 1979 because of a fluke. The Fresener family does truly want to help garment decorators and they wrote a book about it and won many awards because they cared.
Parkwood – I’m unsure of your information as you have no public profile or have posted your details in your 33 posts to date. You say you have no link to U.S. Screen, but you hope we fail. Really? U.S. Screen doesn’t hope you fail. Boards like these would not be here I don’t think if U.S. Screen didn’t start screenprinters.net back in 1995. We wanted to give the garment decorators a place to learn and meet online. Even today, our industries trade organization is the last place people go, but the Fresener’s stepped up and brought screeners to the WWW. If we hoped you fails, would Scott have been awarded with the Parmele Award for “outstanding lifetime contributions”? We actually hope you succeed and if our products can help you we would be more than happy to sell them to you. If not we also have plenty of other free services on our website that you can use. Have you ever used our message boards or buyers guide? If not I suggest you do, and you might get some good information from the hundreds a free articles on our website. I’m sorry that you feel the way you do.
Now “fooledbyfresner”. First of, just so you know the name is Fresener, not Fresner. Secondly, I went through and read your other posts etc. but none of them say who you are. You are making some pretty bold statements and that is your right, but I would love to know who you are so I can address your properly and hopefully work together in a business like mannor. Please reply to this public forum with your name so hopefully we can begin to make some progress. You seem to have problems with all of our products and I would love to try to work them out as opposed to calling each other names. If you are not a shill for a competitor then there should be no problem in giving us your information.
TSW2005 – Again, I have no idea who you are, but I’m sorry about your problems. It does sound like you do now have the new Blazer Express and it is printing. Your latest complaint seems to be print time. There has been a lot of talk of production speeds on the Blazer line of T-Jet printers. In our initial prototype machines we were able to get our older published printing speeds. But in the last four months of production and testing, we have done minor tweaking to improve the print quality. All manufacturers of these machines walk a fine line between speed and print quality. If the machine advances the shirt too fast you can get banding. If you advance slower, you get no banding and betting ink coverage – and sacrifice speed. We have slowly and not intentionally sacrificed some speed to get the best prints possible. Our customers almost unanimously ask for the best prints – even if speed is a little slower.
Were we slow to change our marketing? Yes. No doubt about it. That is why I am working with Scott again to try to help correct that, and now we want to move forward. Did we try to deceive? NO! In fact, we are working very hard to improve the speed and are re-working the entire source code that drives the machine. We are making great headway and this will of course be a free upgrade to any owners of our machines. In my first few days back with U.S. Screen I have looked all over the internet at the “other” machines out there. Not a one of them comes close to disclosing the information we do. Even at trade shows we are one of the few inkjet to garment machines where we will print a design that you bring to us to see how it goes. Ask Brother to do that and they will have a very nice “spin” for you. But really they don’t want to show you all the other stuff that goes into making the machine run. We all have files in our RIP queue’s set-up and ready to print to save time at show. REMEMBER…. When looking at any machine or watching a video of a machine print – it is not only the print time but the complete cycle from when you press “print” to when the machine is ready to press “print” again. We will have “real time” videos on our website by February 26 showing light and dark shirts printing in real time so you can judge for yourself. Before you think the grass is greener with competing machines, again, see a machine in action and time the entire process.
The other speed issue is that these machines MUST print a second pass in register when printing white ink. This is no easy task and those who have machines know that registration can be an issue. We use very sensitive and high quality sensors and frankly, we also have tweaked the machines to be more accurate when getting ready for the second pass. This, too can cause a small loss in speed as the print head is working to be dead on over the sensors. This is called the turnaround time.
We are posting a revised Production Rate chart on our web the first of the week. If you send me your contact details and email I will send it to you first thing in the AM. I’m in Boston and will be checking my email by 8AM EST and will get back to you right away. My email is . This chart is temporary and will be updated as we find ways to improve speed – without sacrificing our already outstanding quality. We have taken a hit on speed but a leap in print quality. We apologize to anyone who feels they have been misled. It was not our intention. Remember, if you are listening to the competition – make sure they are giving straight facts about print speeds. The Blazer will certainly be faster sooner.
OK – So to summarize my long post here. I’m happy to be back and I look forward to communicating with all of you on these boards and others. I’ve got some catching up to do so if I miss any posts that you would like info from U.S. Screen, please feel free to contact me directly at .
My only experiance has been with t-jet and fast ink, so I'm open to the idea that DTG or Brother might have better inks.I've heard from many people that they were happy with their Brothers, and DTGs. In fact the DTG almost had me talked back into the direct to garment industry.Unfortunantly I did not have my money back from t-jet to spend on their machine. I feel like in order to have success with a direct to garment machine you need to set up at fairs or in a mall with alot of impulse buying. My shop is a full service print shop, screen printing, pad printing, poster serigraph, vehicle wraps, plotter cut signs, yards signs, biz cards, ect. I'm in a strip mall but the customers I attract are mostly business people. I just don't think the technology is there. I'm siked that you are having success with your machine but I have to wonder if you are appealing to a niche that I am not exposed to in my locale.
For curiosities sake I will get some samples from Brother and DTG. With USscreen claiming to be the leader in DTG sales- I have to assume that if they are the best than everything else must be even worse.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mk162
fooledbyfresner said:
I have to disagree with this statement. While I think it is harder to make a profit on smaller machines such as the Kiosk and the T-jet. The larger and faster machines make it much easier to turn a profit with increased production and better reliability. I cannot speak for the US Screen garment printers since I personally wouldn't buy one or EVER recommend one. I do hear some good things coming from SWF DTG's and the Flexi to some degree. We run a Brother and make good money doing it, very good money.
When I was waiting for my refund, I got the same treatment from them. I think one of the posters to this forum hit it on the head when he stated "That's just the way this company does business".
, so I'm open to the idea that DTG or Brother might have better inks.I've heard from many people that they were happy with their Brothers, and DTGs.
Get a Brother and you will not be dissappointed.
I have one and it is great and I do not care what anyone else says it IS plug and play
I have taken the worst image (from a fax paper) and sold a bunch of shirts from that one crappy image.
Fooled - I got your PM and responded. I will get back to you when our support manager makes it into the office in Arizona. I do show a refund approval in the system so I'm not sure what the situation is. Sorry for your problems.
Sincerely,
Aaron Montgomery
U.S. Screen Print & Inkjet Technology
I've talked to Aaron and notified him of the ship dates in early November of 2007 when Usscreen received the two machines and was told that I was approved for the refund and that he would look into what the hold up is. Today is Feb 27th 2008, let's see how much longer this gets drug out.
Everyone's situation will always be different. Some will be established companies, some will be startups, some will be out of a home office, some out of a retail space. The one constant would be that none of them would ever want to be in a situation where they had given multiple thousands of dollars for a piece of equipment that doesn't work, and that they were obligated to continue to pay for. I feel like if it were me personally in this situation, I would have investigated in legal action before now. I would assume that they are paying around $400 per month which is a substantial bill for a piece of equipment not making me any money. At this point and as a new startup myself, something like this would have a good potential at putting me back out of business. So, yes, I would say that there may be a need for legal action.
How long is long enough? Some of these complaints in similar threads have gone on for months with no replies at all.
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Hard labor kills, make t-shirts instead.
Last edited by sunnydayz; February 28th, 2008 at 12:19 PM.
Reason: Removed quote
I just wanted to let everyone know I have removed several posts from this forum including the letters by fooled to us screen. Arron has given his contact info earlier in the post and it should be dealt with between the customers and the vendors, this is not the place to settle legal issues.
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Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest. ~~~Mark Twain BobbieLee
Update, on T-jst refund. A week ago today Aaron told me that USScreen would issue a check by March 12th. I have kept in touch with the leasing company and there has been no payment as of yet- but they are also trying to contact Usscreen to make sure the amount covers the intrest accrued during the months we have waited to get a refund. I'll update you on March 12th.
Update, on T-jst refund. A week ago today Aaron told me that USScreen would issue a check by March 12th. I have kept in touch with the leasing company and there has been no payment as of yet- but they are also trying to contact Usscreen to make sure the amount covers the intrest accrued during the months we have waited to get a refund. I'll update you on March 12th.
So Aaron said that they'd give you back a full refund plus interest? Or you're just hoping for the interest?
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Hard labor kills, make t-shirts instead.
No he did not specify- the leasing company said they were trying to collect on what they were owed in interest since the refund lapsed for so many months. If they don't pay the interest we will have to sue for it. We've already got everything in place.
Re: Bad experiences with Tjets and US Screen 
