Tagged With "fees"

A California company has filed a federal lawsuit against Xerox Corp., seeking class-action status, claiming the global document technology company charges excessive and illegal fees for services, equipment and supplies. “Xerox induces individuals and entities to contract for equipment and supply services without disclosing the true cost of such services,” according to the 22-page complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Rochester on Tuesday. “Xerox also buries unconscionable and...

Seems like some poor soul got pissed off because they did not read the fine print. Curious how this will pan out.

That's what I was thinking. Someone got pissed because they didn't read their agreement.

I guess another question to ask is: If we are acting as consultants to our clients, is it our duty to point out the "gotchas" in the fine print for the buyer? In my opinion, that is what differentiates the consultant from the salesperson. If Xerox had asked the client to sign an acknowledgment that these items were discussed, maybe the lawsuit could be avoided.

Good point, however I've seen many over the years with selective memory when I've pointed out the t&c's at the signing of the documents. In other cases I've had many accounts that read the entire t&c's and questioned most of the pitfalls. its those terms that are ambiguous that get clients going, such as "we may raise the service rate on an annual basis". Very opened ended, no cap on increase, in 99% of the time, there is an annual increase

I had a customer who felt the Xerox hung the moon and switched vendors prior to lease end. All my attempts to meet with the guy were thwarted. The Xerox rep did nothing to inform him what was about to happen so he ended up with lots of gotchas because he wouldn't meet with me and the Xerox rep didn't care enough to hold his hand through it all. My point is, sometimes it is the responsibility of the new vendor to educate the customer.

The acnowledgement was when they signed the contract. If someone who is authorized to sign legally binding contracts for a company is not informed enough to read them before authorizing it is a training issue. I advise clients and build separate Master Lease Agreements for my large clients to eliminate some of the fluff charges. Other smaller clients I tell them it is a cost of doing business.

Xerox isn't the only vendor who is using this sort of practice to make money. Many of the OEM's have similar contracts. Lease and service contracts are intentionally created to hide fees and leave the customer open too being billed for extras. An extra charge for using thick paper, to ship the customer toner, no mentioned of service price increase when combo billing under lease contracts, ect.. are all used to find profit opportunists. I am shocked it has taken this long for a case to be filed.

Who's largely to blame for these practices? WE ARE. We are if we pick our leasing partners based on the rate factor rather than the contract terms. All of these "alternative forms of revenue" are the leasing company's way of getting back the profits lost by OUR demand for lower rate factors. You can try to blame them all you want but it is all in response to our demands.

Dealers get the lower rates from the leasing companies and then mark them up to their sales force who in turn may or may not mark them up to the lessee. One reason why equipment lease will probably be regulated in the near future. Which means more paper!! yay! I do agree with Brian, no other documents should be required besides the lease. The Lessee needs to read the lease, if they don't understand the lease then they need to ask questions or give it o their attorney for review. But once you...

Curious to know if any of your dealerships charge for inital installation and/or connection fees? If so, is it a flat rate or per hour charge? And is it based on the type of machine? Lisa

Flat charge for any device, gets added to based cost of the each device. Includes everything no matter if client IT is doing it or dealer is.

Thanks Art! Can you share what the rate is that you charge?

Our reps are not charged. Our reps are free to line item things on the sales order as they please. The only time I line item an install charge for the customer is on hardware like HP small plotters where the customer can buy on-line for almost the same price as I buy the machine as a dealer. In that instance I will price the hardware in-line with the price on the web and I will line item a delivery and installation charge typically $195.00

We charge $395 for 2 hour of networking and installation time. That will include D&I, networking, and removing any equipment. If the equipment we are replacing need to be returned to a leasing company, we have the client cover that cost or build it in the deal.

We're close, and we're at $400 for each device

Xerox is implementing select customer-targeted service fees effective August 1. Can anyone confirm if this is for dealer and/or direct customers? Thanks!

$125 fee for a copy of a lease agreement?!? Sounds like a good opportunity for a sales rep to upgrade whatever printer Xerox is using to print those out.

Wow, that's pretty steep!

I like the fee for customers who don't let the devices communicate with the manufacturer's remote monitoring systems.