Ed Worthington's Baltimore Copier Buying 667-228-9208

Hey it’s Ed Worthington from Action Business Systems-Toshiba Copiers. We are a copier company in Maryland serving the Maryland, Washington DC and Northern Virginia area but this blog is relevant to anyone in the world who buys copiers.

In today’s installment of my Copier Service Contracts series I’d like to talk with you about another thing you really need to know about copier service/maintenance contracts: Automatic Increases.

When I say automatic increases what I mean is that ALL copier service agreements contain in the terms and conditions the ability for the company to increase the cost of the service in specific time increments.

For example the agreement may state that the service fee can go up as much as 5% per year each year. Some people may think that’s too much and some may think that’s reasonable.

My main purpose of this post is to make you aware of the fact that these increases exist in the fine print and to let you know that YOU NEED TO READ THAT FINE PRINT SO YOU DON’T GET RIPPED OFF.

This is particularly relevant to me right now because there is a company I am working with right now whose current copier vendor has a 10% per quarter increase built in. Yes I said 10% per quarter. OUTRAGEOUS!!

This company also just received a check in the tens of thousands of dollars from their current copier company because I exposed that fact that they were being ripped off.

The current vendor not only charged them the 10% per quarter but much more. Can you say SHADY!

You may ask yourself how a copier company can get away with overcharging a small business so badly.

Well I’ll tell you how and it happens all the time. It is because the business Owner/Controller/CFO doesn’t pay attention to the service bill from the copier company and they increase it slowly. They don’t increase it by 30% all at once. But maybe by 5-6% every quarter.

It really starts to add up!

So the first ACTION POINT here is before you sign a copier maintenance agreement read the fine print and if you don’t like what you see, negotiate.

The second action point is to read your copier service bill carefully and watch for increases.

This advice could save you a lot of money in the long run.

If you have any questions about copier service agreements or anything else copier/document management related feel free to call me or fill out the form below and I’ll get right back to you. 443-570-0414 Thanks for stopping by.