Their Definition Of A “Service Call”….
To the factory dealers and many independent servicing companies, a service call is billable when one of their technicians simply arrives at your door. If they dispatch a technician to your office, one way or another they expect to be paid regardless of the circumstances or outcome. And, if you didn’t buy the equipment from them or haven’t done business with them before, they may ask you for a credit card number over the phone as insurance that they’ll get paid for the call before sending a technician.
However, if you’re one of those people who are inclined to feel that what’s fair is fair and that the technician is entitled to be paid for his time regardless of the outcome, we give you this fair warning—- If you were a technician you’d fix it yourself. Otherwise, you’re at the mercy of someone who “simply claims” to be an expert on your equipment.
The problem is that occasionally even the most seasoned technician may not always know how to solve a particular problem. Rather than admitting that they can’t figure it out and walking out empty-handed, the trick is to lie and tell you (in the most confident voice they can muster) that your machine needs a very expensive part, gambling that you’d have to be stupid to spend that kind of money to have the equipment repaired.
The moment that you say that you don’t want to spend that kind of money to repair your machine or that you want to “think about it,” they at least walk out with a check for the “service call.” This scenario doesn’t even take into account the number of service providers, advertising on the Internet, who know nothing about your equipment but will walk into your place of business knowing in advance that they are going to be pulling this stunt. The real rip-off is less that you paid for nothing but more that, taking the technician’s word, you may end up throwing out a perfectly good machine that could have been repaired for the price of a service call and a five cent part had the technician known what he was doing.
If you’re wondering what would motivate someone to lie to cover up for their lack of knowledge,
you would be surprised how many technicians in this industry learn how to be businessmen first and
technicians second. See “A Warning And A Pledge”
There are precious few companies, like ours, that are willing, given the right circumstances, to send you a seasoned, senior level technician to troubleshoot a problem and give you an estimate to repair — for free!
What About Parts?
Provided that the factory dealer doesn’t charge you more than MSRP, we can save you marginally on small parts like paper feed rollers, gears, switches and sensors. However, the real savings is on what we charge for the high-ticket and consumable items.
Generally, we are more than 20% less on copying drums, processing units, developers, wiper blades, fuser rollers, fuser related parts and most especially—circuit boards. Sensitive to the often aloof attitudes of the factory dealers and to the stunts pulled by some independent servicing firms, our technicians will often go overboard when explaining, in non-technical terms, the need for any parts which we claim may be needed to implement repairs.
Please note that, for an “independent,” we maintain an unusually large spare parts inventory for the equipment that we service.