Ask Me Anything

Greg Walters, Kevin Neal, Chris Polek & me

First see the attached file and download.  This quote was sent to me from my good buddy and P4P member Jeff.

His note to me is below;

There so many things going on here but let's start at the top!

• Ever wonder why there is no mention to the brand of the MFP?  I have my thoughts because I used to do this when I sold Adler Royal and Copystar. My thought pattern is that I did not want to lose because of the brand name.  Seems the quote person may have had the same thought that I did and left out EPSON.
• Look at the MSRP, thoughts?  The MSRP stands for Manufacturers Suggest Retail Price.  I understand the suggested part, but this is a far difference when Epson states the MSRP is $6,500.  Whenever I see a quote like this is make me suspicious about every thing else.  I believe the say is "if it sounds too go to be true it is". My wife tells me I'm jaded..
• 5 YEAR Warranty (no service charges or cost per page) okay, so let's look at whats missing. For me no service charges would mean there is no cost for parts, but there is no mention of the word labor (makes one think). Of course there is no cost per copy because of what I see below, by the way please call it a cost per page.  More peeps print because almost no one copies any more.
• At first glance I thought this was an A4, however it is an A3 MFP with 13x19 capability.  That's pretty cool.
• First (this means you will pay for any additional ink kits) 86K black and 50K color all free! (the keyword on Epson's web site is "up to") So is this really awesome?  I know for me to provide something like this would cost be almost $4K if I included that many pages with one of my A3 Ricoh devices.  Note that the Epson C879R ships with enough ink for "up to"  86K black and 50K color.  I have not clue what the coverage % is, however we all know that heavy coverage could cut the volumes in half
  • for me the next line is the kicker that tells us all we need to know.
    • Cost of operation
    • .004 black
    • .009 color
  • What is the cost to the client once the replaceable ink pack runs out?  I did some research on google and found nothing (hoping others can help out with this).
• After writing the above line,  I found the MSRP for four replacement inks comes to $1,730.  Thus a far reach from the quote
• Okay, it's time for some math and math was nothing I was fond of in school.  If the cost per age for black is .004 then 86,000 color pages would cost $344 (f they ink cartridges lasted the yield on the quote.  The 50,000 color pages at .009 would cost $450.  Our total is $754 based what our proposal states.  Funny, because the MSRP from Epson is $1,730.  Makes us think even more right?
• last one for the night, the 60 month lease cost will net the dealer of $120.02 will net the dealer a little over $6,000.  Is there enough profit for the dealer to offer this program?  Of course there is, however the question becomes what happens if and when the ink does not meet the yields?  How about the cost to replace those inks once they run out?  Is labor included or is this just for parts?

Yes, the quote can seem like this is a great deal, however there are many questions and I think there should be some disclaimers about ink yields and the replacement costs.  Epson is upfront and does an excellent job on their web site and adds disclaimers about ink yields and usage

Would love to hear from others on this!

-=Good Selling=-