We live in a world where convenience often trumps all. The ease of a cost per copy lease makes paying for your bills on either a monthly or quarterly bill that much easier. At most, if billed monthly, one can see as many as 24 bills per year, one for each monthly cycle plus any additional overage.
The dark side of the cost per copy lease is it doesn’t provide an even playing field when gathering competitive quotes. We have all heard a rep say that a comparison isn’t ‘apples to apples’. In as commoditized a market as copiers I think most copiers offer the same general features but that’s another discussion. Lets say for instance you have a fleet of copiers on a 60 month lease and your cost per copy lease monthly payment is $1,500 of which $500 represents service. For any myriad of reasons, 36 months into your lease, the devices are not sufficient to your organizations needs. As many organizations do, you go out for bids and gather quotes. Every vendor, with exception of your current vendor, is at a $12,000 disadvantage or as much as $225 tacked onto your next lease.
$500 x 24 months = $12,000.00
Each competitive vendor is responsible to pay the remaining stream of payments inclusive of service, while the current vendor simply negates the service portion of that contract. Don’t lose faith, you can reach out to your servicing organization or rep and request that you break your cost per copy lease into a traditional maintenance and lease agreement. This will appear as a red flag for your rep but at the end of the day, you must do what is best for your organization, after all, what could they do with an additional $13,500?
With decades of experience, we understand the process of procurement and how to make it work for your organization.