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Do not buy from these thieves!
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When I was first looking for a DTG printer, I settled on the Anajet because of the huge amount of attention I received from their Sales Director, Josep and his supporting team. Fast forward 2 years, and the contrast in levels of service, as an existing customer now, could not be more stark.
Despite numerous amounts of emails to Josep and other folks at Anajet, my emails go unanswered. I paid almost $20,000 for the mP5, spent even more money attending the training in Costa Mesa, and several thousands of dollars during ownership of the machine. My reason for buying the mP5 over other machines, is mostly attributed to that it was marketed as a great machine for folks with no experience in the printing industry, and only required 1 day of training to operate and maintain it. Lies…. And something Josep and the Anajet team are completely aware of. This machine should NEVER be sold to Lehman’s, looking to enter the DTG space, with no printing experience. If you’re a start-up and cannot afford to hire a fulltime print operator, do not make the same mistake I did and purchase this printer. I used to think that you only regret things you haven’t done. Purchasing the Anajet is one of a few regrets of things I HAVE done. You will spend so much money just keeping the machine from breaking, it will end up breaking you! Temperamental doesn’t begin to describe my experience with this inherently faulty piece of equipment.
What’s worse, is that if you’re a start-up and don’t have a steady stream of orders coming through, you have to use the printer several times a day, just to stop it from breaking. And then when something small goes wrong, and you don’t know how to fix it, you end up running several print tests in order to work through fixes, and it becomes a vicious circle. Each print head clean uses around 1% of ink, so if you are to do 3 print head cleans per day, over the course of 1 month, that’s a full set of cartridges burned through, simply making sure the machine doesn’t break. And at over $500 for a full set of cartridges (from the local distributor), it gets very expensive to keep the machine running.
Here’s some additional insight & advice for other folks in similar circumstances to me…. I purchased the printer from the USA and shipped it to Dubai. Anajet’s distributors in Dubai were selling the machine for $15k more than Anajet in the USA, so I ran the numbers and decided to purchase it in the US and ship it to Dubai. In fact, Anajet shipped it there for me. When it arrived, I was provided support initially by John Schultz who did a fantastic job at helping myself and a colleague get it online. John remained helpful through the following 2 months, helping us over Skype (despite the 11 hour time difference between Dubai & LA). After a couple of months of using it and getting our hands dirty, we needed to purchase more ink and wanted some additional training from Multisystems, the local distributor in Dubai. Sound easy enough, right? Wrong. Because we purchased the machine from the USA, the Anajet distributor REFUSED to service us, and even REFUSED to sell us supplies. We were caught in the middle of a political game between the principal and its distributor, and this lasted for several weeks, with only one casualty…. Our company! Anajet refused to smooth the situation over, despite happily taking my $20k and shipping the machine to Dubai, knowing that it was intended to be used in the territory of their distributor. Eventually, I managed to meet with the local distributor and get them to agree to sell me supplies, at almost double the price of Anajet’s prices, albeit. Anajet were in the wind – and did not want to know, or hear from me!
Fast forward 1 year and the story gets worse. I flushed the printer for a period of a couple of weeks, knowing that I was unable to operate it or run print tests whilst travelling. Obviously, flushing the machine costs money. First you have to purchase the solution and pay labour costs for help flushing it. I then fill it with ink, and the white print head is no longer working. Well, it was working before it was flushed, so what went wrong? And at almost $2k for a new print head, it’s expensive to replace, putting aside the extra bits & pieces and labour fees. So I emailed Josep and the team Anajet and their response eventually came ONE MONTH later, which was:
“As our recent acquisition by RICOH has been in full swing and we have been adapting to all the changes therein. After further review, we are not able to accommodate your request as your printer is no longer covered by the manufacturer warranty. The parts you have requested should be and can be readily obtained through your local distributor (Multisystem). I apologize for the latency in response as I had to escalate this request on your behalf to see what viable options we had available.”
What the hell does Anajet’s acquisition by Ricoh have to do with anything? After receiving this reply, I persevered. I referenced the “Implied Warranty” parts of the Consumer Rights Act in the US, so as to avoid having to spend money on a lawyer. As far as I am concerned, whether the machine was in or out of warranty was not relevant. The machine was not functioning as it was supposed to be, according to Anajet. The machine was flushed, in a dormant state, when revived with ink, the print head was no longer working and under the US Consumer Rights Act, this type of scenario is covered by implied warranty. Despite emailing this to Josep and then eventually following up with the founders of the company, Don, Karl & Mark – not a peep. Nothing. You’d think after spending $30k with a company, they would have the decency to respond…. They didn’t. They simply do not respond to emails that they don’t want to.
I have now managed to sell my machine on the 2nd hand market and salvage what I can from the investment. Ironically, I now have a steady stream of orders coming through and I could have been a good source of both reviews and repeat business for those clowns at Anajet. I am not outsourcing my printing, instead of fulfilling orders in-house. My mistake was to underestimate what liars and thieves the folks at Anajet are, and how little they value ethical practises in business. Even if I can stop one person from buying an Anajet, that would be something positive. Besides, the DTG market now has much better printers, costing less money, which are nowhere near as temperamental as Anajet’s products, which should NEVER be purchased by a start-up. It’s very telling that the only positive reviews here are single paragraphs, they’re undoubtedly from Anajet employees, or their staff’s network of friends & family. The only people describing their ACTUAL & GENUINE experience with Anajet, are the only ones who have put any thought into composing their reviews – and they’re almost entirely negative.
My advice to anyone, is DO NOT BUY from this company. They’re sharks. They’ll take your money and run, and when the going gets tough, you will not hear from them. They’ll simply ignore you. Disrespectful, thieving bunch of clowns, especially their head of sales.
Nick - Funky Camel
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