Has anybody had any dealing with a company called Tandem?

[Frut02]

I have a meeting with them a week on monday....

[gaz350b]

Someone from Tandem keeps turning up at our place without any prior appointment. Our college is a new building, all equipment is just over a year old...... stop wasting your time and open one's eyes.

 

take a leaf out of c-p-ltd get a good rep on here, don't bother cold calling people we hate it phone or in person. instead sponsor great sites like this and get to know people on the forums, when people need something give them a shout. perhaps do some showcase events (during holidays) when techis like us can get away from their schools and do some networking/learn about something different.

 

my 2p's worth

 

Gaz350

(version b as i cant reset my old account! stupid old domain name...)

[iPrimary]

Someone from Tandem keeps turning up at our place without any prior appointment. Our college is a new building, all equipment is just over a year old...... stop wasting your time and open one's eyes.

 

take a leaf out of c-p-ltd get a good rep on here, don't bother cold calling people we hate it phone or in person. instead sponsor great sites like this and get to know people on the forums, when people need something give them a shout. perhaps do some showcase events (during holidays) when techis like us can get away from their schools and do some networking/learn about something different.

 

my 2p's worth

 

Gaz350

(version b as i cant reset my old account! stupid old domain name...)

 

Renew your domain name and I'll give you a free IMAP email account on it if you want?

[deKay]

Guess who turned up unannounced today?

[cambs2000]

please could someone tell me a bit more about Tandem?

[laserblazer]

please could someone tell me a bit more about Tandem?

 

This thread is over a year old. Seems like they are still trading.

[cambs2000]

I am very surprised they are still trading, I think somebody there needs to re-evaluate the company's business ethics. Clearly out to make as much money as possible by ripping off customers and the profits are obviously not going back into looking after the customers as I have been waiting for toner for over 4 weeks now!! Appears they don't have the basics covered?! And they call themselves a Managed Print 'solutions'. I'd have been better off purchasing a printer and looking after my own toner in the long run. Steer clear unless you are happy to lose money

[Andie]

We purchased two Samsung printers (CLP-620 and 670) from Tandem through our secondary school IT support, who still speak well of them. They are both out of warranty now. The oldest was purchased January 2012. We went for an outright purchase rather than a contract and buy Samsung original toner from a local stationers. The oldest developed a fault last month, with colours badly out of line. Tandem have not been at all helpful in advising us how to get a repair, even with our secondary school support contacting them for us. (I also had issues getting info from them about resetting the counter for the replacement roller they supplied - I found the info myself using Google faster than with them getting back to me.) I got a bit further with Samsung UK support direct, but they still managed to book the fault to the wrong printer. Issue still not resolved as we have gone to a printer repairer that we used before for HP stuff and it seems the Samsungs are a whole new ball game! Our old HPs had always been very reliable and a lot of the time you could fix them yourself with a maintenance option in the menu. I doubt I'll be buying Samsung printers again. I can't rate Tandem very highly for after sales service, I'm afraid.

[plexer]

Well there is after sales and there is equipment outside of warranty as a business you'd end up dealing with the manafacturer anyway.

 

Ben

[cambs2000]

hi does anybody know if this company is still trading?? Can't seem to find their website or anything? Thanks

[Oaktech]

I can't speak for Tandem, but my experience of machines supplied by another company through the Samsung EF has been less than favourable.

 

I had driver issues with the CLP series printers which took whole years to rectify - MS office programs would only print 1 page of a multipage document if you asked for more than 1 copy, and administrative defaults simply didn't work.

 

Whether this was a feature of the company who supplied the machines, or Samsung, we were initially given a contact at Samsung to order spares through - the tray pickup rollers were only lasting a couple of weeks - but they stopped sending us spares, no explanation, we'd call up for a part, the person on the phone would process the order and give a reference and then nothing would arrive, if you called up to chase it they always said the order had been cancelled but couldn't say why. Eventually we got spares through the company who supplied them, but we had almost half of our printer fleet out of action for 2 months while it got sorted.

 

At first, again directly from Samsung, we were receiving genuine toners, in bulk, exactly what we ordered via a managed services web portal, but then access to that stopped working and we started receiving toners from the supplier in random quantities that were apparently somehow based on our meter reads, they were genuine toners but we couldn't ever actually get what we needed. After about 6 months those toners started to be branded compatibles (lasertek) in a resealed genuine box, they leaked all over the machines but they worked. About a month after they became unbranded in a white box and they started breaking the printers - the toners were often jammed and stripped the feed cogs and burnt out the motors. We eventually got replacement printers via a courier as they wouldn't send us engineers but they were badly refurbished - worn feed rollers and still full of old toner - even though they were packaged up in original boxes and sealed with 'Refurbished by Samsung' tape.

 

I found new employment at this point...

[smcmahon]

hi does anybody know if this company is still trading?? Can't seem to find their website or anything? Thanks

 

They now go by the name of TOTAL SOLUTIONS

 

There is/was a large investigation taking place after the profit making part of the Tandem was sold and the loss making part liquidated leaving schools high and dry. There was also a number of issues that they had:

 

1.Tandem had been leasing the same machines with different companies when a school signed up for a 2nd time (this is something that they were very pushy with when they tried it with us!)

 

2. When we entered the contract we were told in writing that we'd be given a whole class of laptops. This turned out to be 12 that we got begrudgingly.

 

3. We'd be told something by a number of sales people verbally and in an email only for them to deny that the conversations even took place.

 

4. They stopped supplying toners and printer consumables towards the end of the 3 year agreement meaning that schools had to source their own (they did recommend Total Solutions as a consumables supplier!)

 

5. They never had correct figures in regards to how many prints we had produced. We took monthly meter meetings so we knew our usage and their numbers were always much higher so they wanted more money from us.

 

I could go on! To top it all off we had Total Solutions get in contact during our messy parting from Tandem asking if we wanted to enter in to a 3 year contract with them!

 

I'd never touch Total Solutions because (as far as I'm concerned) they are Tandem Solutions just with a different coat of paint.

[rush_tech]

There website goes here now RedBrick IT Solutions | IT Support in Bourne I'd stay away from Redbrick aswell

[clockend25]

'This website is blocked as it is categorised as spam'

 

Lightspeed knows.

[DrCheese]

Resurrecting this super old thread.

 

Looks like the directors & employees were all done for Fraud for doing schools out of £760,000 which er.. reading this old thread doesn't come as a suprise!

 

https://www.thebusinessdesk.com/eastmidlands/news/2102269-ex-director-jailed-for-760000-schools-fraud

 

https://www.lincs.police.uk/news/lincolnshire/news/20252/sep/former-sales-director-jailed-for-fraud/

 

(People like this are why Frameworks were/are heavily pushed!)

 

[paulkerton]

I wonder if the person posting here was one of those involved directly in the case... Guess we won't know for another couple of years minimum (2 is 40% of 5 after all)