Photocopiers - Lease or Buy outright?

[MrWu]

Hi all

 

For Copier contracts, do you lease?

 

Or buy outright and pay for toner and maintenance contract?

 

What’s your Bursar’s thoughts on this?

 

Cheers!

[RichCowell]

We lease, and the same with our centralised printers now too - it's been far better since we switched to this. Bursar was always happy leasing copiers, and didn't need convincing when I suggested including the printers too.

[nadeem]

Surely it depends on your cashflow really?

 

I prefer to buy outright and have a maintenance contract for copiers and printers

[Katy]

We lease and pay cost per copy which includes the toner and all servicing/maintenance/call outs etc. If we could afford it we'd buy outright and pay the same cost per copy to include the toner/servicing etc. as it works out slightly cheaper than a 5 year lease.. however lots cheaper if we wanted to run the devices for longer than 5 years - however since when has a copier placed in a school environment made it past its 5th birthday without being a creaking mess?

[Jayellcee]

We lease all photocopiers and network printers and pay cost per copy which includes ink and maintenance. Bursar looked into the details and decided was cheaper in long run.

[synaesthesia]

Lease. Just too much to go wrong, and if things do go belly up you're not stuck with machines that might not do what you need until you can afford to replace.

[PotNoodleTech]

3 year lease. Option to either replace with new units in year 4, or keep the older units and have them "cheap" in year 4, 5, even 6.

 

Flexible as you can either go for maximum cost saving in YR4, 5, 6 or you can just have a brand new fleet every 3 years.

[rad]

depends what your budgets is like?

is it healthy to buy? what about in 6/7 years time when the photocopier becomes an issue, will you have funds to buy another then?

[gh5000]

We do cost per copy only. No monthly lease, buy out right etc.

 

We get machines that have been used at events for a couple weeks. Think the first ones were used at the Open golf tournament

[Katy]

We also have some printers which are on cost per copy (no lease cost and we haven't purchased them) but they are twice as expensive as the big copiers which we are leasing (as they have to make the money to cover the cost of the printer somewhere). Ideal for places where the volume isn't large enough to be worth leasing/buying something just to get the cheaper running costs.

[Wubbalubbadub]

Lease. Just too much to go wrong, and if things do go belly up you're not stuck with machines that might not do what you need until you can afford to replace.

 

This!

 

When it comes to printers... I don’t want to venture further than checking it has paper.. and if that fails, make a phone call!

 

Bursar was more than happy when we got rid of all the printers, and I Reduced the consumables budget from 5K to £0 !

[KevinB]

Lease. Just too much to go wrong, and if things do go belly up you're not stuck with machines that might not do what you need until you can afford to replace.

 

+1 for this.

 

18 months ago we went through a 5-year total cost of ownership exercise comparing buying our own kit and consumables with maintenance contracts for hardware versus everything leased on a per page managed print contract. Over 5 years it's projected to save us about £7k going the lease route and savings so far support this.

[MrWu]

Thanks all! Just trying to gather some viewpoints for a healthy discussion with our Bursar, which historically our school has insisted on buying Copiers outright and then paying for a 5 year tomer and maintenance contract... the culture is totally against leasing but I see pros and cons of each..

[Syman_a]

We lease.

I do not have the time to fault find them as well as all the other bits and pieces that are perceived to be under my remit (i.e anything with some kind of wire or plug attached)

 

Also, on the maintenance side, with the pounding ours get, it is good to know there is someone to call when they have their inevitable hissy fits

Edited May 2, 2018 by Syman_a
spelling

[Oaktech]

Lease the hell out of that.

 

You DO NOT want the bill when someone get a sheet of labels/acetate stuck and you need a whole transfer tractor assembly.

[nicholab]

I love having leased photocopies with papercut as part of the contact. It makes my life easy. It also help expand IT time for other tasks.

[PotNoodleTech]

I love having leased photocopies with papercut as part of the contact. It makes my life easy. It also help expand IT time for other tasks.

 

I agree. All we do nowadays is fill the paper up on the copiers. My Ricoh ones just work day in day out no hastle. On the occasion something goes wrong (barely even once a month) engineer in same/next day to fix.

[jimmy_2k]

Buy. Our school prefers to purchase the copiers outright with 5 year service plans with the potential to extend the service beyond the 5 years if the copier hasn't done a high mileage.

[nicholab]

Buy. Our school prefers to purchase the copiers outright with 5 year service plans with the potential to extend the service beyond the 5 years if the copier hasn't done a high mileage.

 

The service plan is the important bit but harder to get the print management part of it.

[jimmy_2k]

We included that within the tender for the service plan. Ours includes the software support.

[AlanD]

Lease the hell out of that.

 

You DO NOT want the bill when someone get a sheet of labels/acetate stuck and you need a whole transfer tractor assembly.

 

OH! Just be careful here....if the user has damaged a device - I am pretty certain the small print says that they are not liable for that. My experience is that you get a certain amount of goodwill, so unless its common occurrence they may over look such an event.

 

When you lease - someone else is making money off your back....because you can be sure that they will end up better off...

 

But when leasing you can be pretty sure you are going to get a device that is pretty solid....because the last thing they want is lots of call outs....

 

Maintenance contracts too will almost certainly be to the financial advantage of those supply them...

 

But its useful to have know fixed costs - especially if you are a small school but you might not easily manage unexpected costs. For a large school - it might well be beneficial to pay for devices and pay for repairs as they are needed (assuming you are not paying ridiculous call out charges..)...although even in these cases managers like to manage costs more predictably even if it does cost more.

[Oaktech]

OH! Just be careful here....if the user has damaged a device - I am pretty certain the small print says that they are not liable for that. My experience is that you get a certain amount of goodwill, so unless its common occurrence they may over look such an event.

 

Our Canon contract only says 'malicious damage' - so we've had to pay for an MP tray that a child jumped on in a fit of anger and a glass platten that got smashed by someone putting an item in and slamming the lid shut.

 

They've repaired under contract the office copier approaching 10 times now for stuck/melted media of various types. They've even covered accidental damage - someone balanced a mug of coffee on the sheet feeder of the Staffroom and it spilt and they had to replace the whole feeder.

[JohnJee]

We lease. Got a stupidly cheap agreement in place.

[junz]

Would people be willing to release the companies they use to lease printers.

 

Also has anyone heard of topserve.

 

You only have to pay a per page cost but no cost for leasing the photocopiers.

 

We are looking at using them but want to get a few reviews first from other schools

[Katy]

You only have to pay a per page cost but no cost for leasing the photocopiers.

There's a few companies doing something like this - never used the one you mentioned but you'll find the price per page is double what it would be if you were leasing (they have to pay for the equipment somehow), so you just need to work out if you do a large enough print volume to make leasing cheaper.

 

We use a company who does similar for some of our smaller printers, think we pay 4p/colour and 0.6p/mono on a 35ppm A4 colour Xerox device (we are at 2.1p/colour and 0.21p/mono on the bigger copiers which we lease).