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Lost a bid to canon on 2 ea. aficio 2105. customer put the equipment out for bid and we lost. We proposed at $1,595.00 lower on the 2 aficio 2105s' hardware and went in at .0065 on service for 4.8 million a year. canon came in at .00637 so we are $624.00 more on service for the first year. Customers reason: the drum yield on the canon was at 5 mil. I say so what... so we go in to protest and customer says: well, if you protest, we'll just buy the one canon and then re-bid the other copier and make it crystal clear that we need a drum with 5 mil. yield. Small town so my company may not want to protest the bid 'cause it may hurt us down the road with other customers.

I think it is illegal for customer to purchase 1 system since the bid was for 2 systmes. By, the way, the bid stated "Service contract NEGOTIABLE" and they figured in a 5 year span, they would save money. Yet, we only bid the service for a year. Any suggestions or comments?

Gogo
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Did Cannon guarantee that rate for 5 years, if not what is the increase going to be at the renewal date. That is what a lot of dealers are doing now to get the business, go in with a dirt low rate and the contract states renews at the then current rate but it doesn't cap the rate. It could increase 20 to 30%, I've seen it happen.
First, if this is a commerical account they can buy at whatever price. If this is a state account, I don't know Montana purchasing laws but in NY the account must purchase off the lowest responsible bid. This interpretation is a little vague. You could be the lowest bidder but lose the deal because of bad service history with the account. Second, if you protest the account can throw out the hold bid and rewrite you out of it next time.
Last but not lease it ssounds like the canon rep pre-sold the account before you.

Good Luck next time.
You're right merlin. I've been doing this for about 14 yrs. and I am use to the bid going to the lowest bidder and I have never seen anything like the unfairness of this situation. The guy basically told us that he could spec the systems out with the drum yield included on the bid and that they did us a favor by not doing so. I don't think he can do this. As far as the Canon, they have had the account for over 10 yrs. It's a School.
The state of NY last year decided to included just about all manufactures full line of MFP's except for 2 companies, and awarded with want the call P numbers. This stop all the bidding state agencies had to do prevised. Now each location can buy off the P numbers whatever they want, regardless if another vendors is slightly lower. It's now up to the salesmen in each area to sell there products and themselves.
The state of NY did this to stop all the time and paper work it takes to bid something out.

By the way I being selling office equipment for over 23 years.

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