Creek to creek
Palm Beach is a strip with a long thin shape. The beach and the Gold Coast Highway on the eastern side, the Pacific Motorway on the western edge, and the two creeks at either end. Palm Beach Currumbin State High School and Palm Beach State School both sit in it, along with the aquatic centre and the surf club, and the shops along the highway have a surprising number of upstairs suites.
Currumbin starts where the second creek does. The Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary is the big name, and around it there is a small economy of visitor operations, animal care, function catering and the admin that goes with all of them. Tallebudgera is the odd one out, a valley that heads inland with a Lutheran college, a state school, farms and a golf course.
Put together it is a patchwork of single machine offices. Hardly any of them have an IT person, and a fair few have a copier that someone bought on a good day and nobody has looked at since.
Three kinds of call from this stretch
The same fault means different things depending on who is waiting for the page. This is how the phone calls tend to sort themselves.
| Where | Who is on the other end | What usually decides the visit |
|---|---|---|
| Palm Beach, along the highway | Agents, allied health suites, accountants, a surf and fitness business or two | Parking on the highway side, a lift or a flight of stairs, a shared front door |
| Palm Beach and Currumbin school gates | School administration, uniform and canteen offices, sporting clubs | Term dates, the sign in desk, a quiet period between bells |
| Currumbin near the sanctuary | Visitor, catering and animal care administration | Peak days and school holiday crowds, which entrance staff use |
| Tallebudgera and the valley | College and school offices, farms, home businesses | Long driveways, gates, a mobile phone number for the day |
The school office copier
A school office has a rhythm that suits no machine. Quiet for weeks, then the first week of term arrives with newsletters, permission slips, timetables and enrolment forms, and the copier that has been idling is asked to do a month of work in two days. Rollers that have sat flat for the holidays pick two sheets or none. A drum that has been fine at a hundred pages a day shows a stripe at a thousand.
So the most useful thing we do for a school here is not a repair. It is a look at the machine the week before term starts, when a part ordered on Monday is installed before the rush instead of during it. Ring and say when the first heavy week falls, and we plan around that date.
If the machine already stopped, tell us what it printed last and what it says now. Most feed faults announce themselves with a particular sound, a grind, a click, a repeated pull and release, and we ask for it in words.
Currumbin and the busy days
Anything that runs on visitors has a calendar with spikes in it. Summer school holidays, Easter, a long weekend with good weather. The printing spikes with it: group bookings, run sheets, safety documents, supplier orders. A copier that was perfectly happy in a slow fortnight will throw its first fault in the middle of the first big weekend, because that is the first time anyone leaned on it.
For this kind of business we suggest booking the check just before the season, not after it. Tell us the dates and which days are untouchable. A tour operator or a function caterer does not have a spare hour on a Saturday, and we would rather arrange the visit for the Wednesday before.
Tallebudgera and the valley
Up the valley the building is the machine's biggest problem. A farm office in a converted shed, a college administration block with a long corridor of closed doors, a home office in a spare room with a window that faces the afternoon sun. Dust, heat and power that dips when the storm cell goes over.
Storm season does the damage here. A copier powered off hard at the wall, or one that has survived a surge, will sometimes start up with a fuser or a controller fault that did not exist the day before. Ask the person in the room whether the lights flickered. Half the time the answer to that, and a decent surge protector, is better than a part.
Directions are the other thing. Some of the driveways are long and a few have no number on the gate. Give us a mobile number and a landmark when you ring. A technician standing at the wrong cattle grid loses time that you are paying for.
Salt, glass and paper that curls
Anything within a few streets of the beach gets a faint film of salt. It lands on the scanner glass, on the document feeder rollers and on the paper itself, which soaks up moisture from the air overnight and curls at the edges. Curled paper is the most common cause of jams in a Palm Beach office, and the least expensive to fix.
Keep the ream in its wrapper until it is needed. Store it flat, off the floor and clear of a window. If the jams ease when you do that, the machine was never the problem, and we would rather you found that out for nothing than paid for a visit.
What we find on these machines
Mostly a mix of one mid range colour multifunction and a handful of desktop lasers. Toshiba and Kyocera machines are common in the schools and the larger practices, and we do a lot of work on both. Canon and Ricoh turn up in agents and accountants, and HP and Brother lasers sit under the desks. Home and small office printers are looked after too if you ring, though they are not what we go looking for.
If the copier is on a lease with service included, read the agreement before you ring us. If repairs are your responsibility, we say what we think is wrong and quote on the phone. We are independent, not the maker and not a dealer, so what you hear is what the machine needs.
When a repair is not the answer
Not every call ends in a part. Sometimes the scan to folder stopped because a staff password changed and the machine still holds the old one. Sometimes a tray reads empty because the paper is pushed too far to one side. A job that prints with a faint stripe is more often a dirty strip of glass than a failing drum.
We will tell you on the phone if we think it is one of these, and talk you through the safe checks. If it needs a technician, the technician is trained, experienced and certified, carries the common spares, and 98% of repairs are fixed on the first visit.
Before you ring
Have these to hand and the call will be shorter.
- The label on the machine, with make and model
- The words on the screen, exactly as written
- Street address plus any gate, buzzer or stairs
- A mobile number that will be answered on the day
- Whether it is owned or leased
If the lines are busy the call is logged and returned. Same day service is available, and we say what can be arranged before anyone is booked.
Cafes, clubs and places that feed people
Palm Beach and Currumbin run on hospitality as much as on anything else. Cafes, a surf club, sporting clubs with a function room, caterers working from a unit behind the highway. They do not think of themselves as printing offices, but the order sheets, the rosters, the licence paperwork and the supplier invoices all come off one machine in the back room.
Back rooms are hard on equipment. Flour, steam, cooking oil in the air and a printer wedged between a fridge and a stack of crates. We ask for a description of the room, and the advice is often to move the machine a metre.
Ask about the paper first
One last habit worth mentioning. Before anyone books a technician, check the paper. The grade, the weight and whether it has been recycled through three offices matter more than people think. A cheap, light stock with a dusty edge leaves its dust in the machine and shortens the life of every roller.
Parts on the van
The right part, in the van, on the day
Where a part is unusual we say so up front, order it and book the return before we leave.
No technician carries everything, and we will not pretend otherwise. What we do is arrive with a good chance of finishing, and 98% of our repairs are fixed on the first visit.
- Common spares carried. Drums, rollers, fusers and belts for the popular makes.
- Load planned. The call notes decide what goes in the van.
- Honest about gaps. If a part must be ordered we say so before we leave.
Keep reading
Photocopier repairsAny make of office copier, repaired where it stands.
Commercial printer repairsWorkgroup lasers and fleets, repaired where they sit.
Toshiba repairse-STUDIO AC and A series, fixed where they stand.
Kyocera repairsTASKalfa copiers and ECOSYS printers, serviced on site.
Burleigh HeadsProfessional practices, design studios and growing firms by the beachCoolangatta and Tweed HeadsBorder town offices, retirement sector administration and airport side businesses
Currumbin Waters and ElanoraCurrumbin Waters, Elanora and the Currumbin Valley: trade units, schools, childcare centres and home studios.Tugun, Bilinga and the AirportTugun, Bilinga, Kirra and the airport side: transport and hire depots, clinics, hospitality offices and the university campus.Buy, sell and lease
Buy, sell and lease commercial copiers on the Gold Coast
We also sell new and refurbished commercial copiers and buy used ones. Same team, same technicians.
A few recent visits
Common questions from Gold Coast offices
Do you cover Tallebudgera as well as the beach end of Palm Beach?
Yes. The creek valley, the college and school offices and the farms are all in our regular run, along with the highway strip.
Our school copier is fine all term and fails in week one. Why?
Rollers and drums sit still over the holidays and the first heavy run finds the weak part. A check just before term is cheaper than a breakdown in the middle of it.
Can someone look at a copier in a Currumbin visitor business before the busy season?
Yes. Tell us the dates you cannot afford a failure and we book the check ahead of them.
Do you attend rural properties up the valley?
We do. Give a mobile number and a landmark with the address, because gates and driveways can be hard to spot.
The machine has acted up since a storm. Is it dead?
Not necessarily. A hard power off or a surge can leave a fault that clears with the right check. We ask what happened to the power and go from there.
Do you quote before you come?
The price is agreed on the phone before anyone is booked, and nothing is locked in by asking.
What happens if the same fault comes back?
We fix it again at no charge.
Will you work around school hours?
Yes. Tell us the quiet times and the sign in rules and we plan the visit to suit.
