How to Avoid a Bad Copier Lease

Are you looking at getting a copier lease?  There are some common mistakes people make when looking into getting a copier lease that can have them stuck in a bad lease for the future.  Here are some items to consider.

1. Ask for the cash price as well as the lease price.  It is good to make sure the lease rates you are getting are fair, and the easiest way to check is by looking at the cash price vs the cost per month.  We publish our lease rates.  How it works, is you determine how much the copier costs, then you decide do you want to keep the copier or return it at the end of the lease, and then how long do you want the lease for.  You multiply the copier purchase price by the lease rate factor to get your monthly payment.  For example, if we did a 5 year lease on a copier we send back at the end (FMV) which was $10,000 – our monthly should be about $185.  If we got a quote for $200, we just added about $810 to your cost for no good reason ($15/.0185).
2. Don’t roll the old lease over too early.  Some companies will be one year into a lease and then roll over into a new lease in year 2 and give the basically new copier back to the dealer and be stuck paying off the balance.  Often this is accomplished by rolling the remaining cost into the new copier.  You can ask if the price would be exactly the same if there wasn’t a copier to return.  If the answer is no, find out what the price difference is.
3. Don’t lease technology you don’t need.  Some people go about getting a lease where they have a copier that staples and does 11X17 paper when they would have been fine with a desktop copier that just did print, copy, scan and fax.  If you don’t need it, you must delete it!
4. Pay attention to the cost per print.  Buying a copier or leasing a copier has a few costs.  There is the equipment cost, but there is also a supplies and maintenance price.  If you focus all your energies on the equipment without factoring ongoing costs, it will be a costly mistake.  Imagine you could buy a car for $200 a month with 50 miles per gallon engine, and then you could also get a car for $175 per month and it only got 22 miles to the gallon.  When does it make more sense to pay for the more expensive when all other things are equal?  It would be when the gas costs would be $25 more for the cheaper car…  you could say if gas was $3 per gallon, it would be when the distance traveled required 8 more gallons of gas – probably about 300 miles (6 gallons vs 13.63 miles) – So if you drove 1200 miles per month, like many do, you would use 24 gallons vs 54.54 gallons (at $3 per gallon – $72 vs $163.62 – $91.62 per month difference.  Wouldn’t paying $24 more be worth the $91 per month savings?)  This is the same logic used on a copier lease.  You have the copier price and then you have the supplies and maintenance (gas) costs.  Doing the math on both is a good idea.
5. Make sure you chat with your insurance company – Most copier companies will add a charge to their lease if you don’t send them proof the copier will be covered in case of damage like fire or flood or acts of God.  If you add to your insurance policy and get the document, this will help keep your costs lower.

With these 5 tips, you should save some pretty good money on your next copier.  We would love to get you a quote if you want to see what we can do for you!