Contract Wars

[fixthecopier]

One of the contracts I have been working is out to bid. This is no surprise as the contract has been over for 3 years. The government contracting officers have not been able to issue a contract that would stick in all this time.This has worked well for us as we have been getting monthly rent for 600 machines since then. At the end of May the contract was once again awarded, this time it was given to Ricoh, but then protested by the other low bidder, Sharp , and it was thrown out last month and put out to bid again. Xerox, HP and Lexmark have already been dropped for not meeting specs which leaves the same 3 as last time around, Sharp , Ricoh and Konica Minolta. The current contract has band volume levels, di200 do 2000 a month, di251 for 4000 a month, di351 for 10,000 a month, di470 for 15,000 a month and di650 for 20,000 a month, and they have to pay for any prints over. Nothing on the current contract is used as anything but a copier.
The new contract will have all machines fully connected, print, scan, fax and copy. There will be no monthly minimum ammounts. If the people who have been doing 10,000 copies a month are gone and the machine only does 100 copies this month, then that is all they pay for. It will be the old pay per click system. I understand that Ricoh is bidding 5 different volume levels, Sharp is bidding 3. Konica has decided to get special pricing on the 361 and use it for all 5 volume levels.
We sell Lanier so I know what the Ricoh product line will be, and I think the Sharp will be similar in quality. This is a rough enviroment. Lots of machines are left in hallways with no set point of contact and are not well cared for. We did not bid the Lanier line because we know it will not hold up, this is a 5 year contract. The bizhub is beefy and the 300 I have on another base contract prove to be almost soilder proof. I should know by Dec 1 who gets it. Any thoughts from anybody. Think the low end products can do 5 years on an army base. What is the track record of the 361 since it is not sold in the US?

[tmaged]

This past year we installed about 30 Sharp AR-M257's at our VA. All have all the options & are holding up well. These boxes are the same as the AR-M277 which has been out a long time, so all the bugs are pretty much out.

[fixthecopier]

That is what I would call a controlled environment where the machine is well cared for. A lot of places that would be the case out here, but I do not think most of you folks know the joy of having a machine in a hallway where 200 people have access to it, no one is in charge of it and most do not care. I have copiers in tents out in the woods. I have locations where the finisher has been removed and a box has been taped up to catch the paper because they do not want pay for damage again, and I have run out of working finishers. I have started some of my calls with "WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU DONE TO MY COPIER THIS TIME!" or the ever popular " WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, ARE YOU FUCKING STUPID? YOU CAN'T FILL YOUR OWN TONER BOTTLES!" Of course we charge for abuse, but that does not help.
I guess the best way to compare would be for you to set a copier at a gas station, out of sight of the attendant, put a sign on it that says free copies and go check on it 2 weeks later.
If Ricoh or Sharp get it, their techs will hate going to work after the honeymoon is over. As I have said before, most everything works when it is new.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the network will be secured. The people with admin rights will come from other buildings, sometimes days later, and most of the time they will say the problem with it not printing is in the machine, causing the customer to call you back and say you have a problem, making you go back and try to explain to someone who is an IT idiot, how you have tested your equipment and you know the problem is within the network, and they should call the network people back again. I love playing that game. We play that game with printers I work on, and I have had to defend my honor by taking the printer back to the shop, hooking it to our network and telling the customer they will have to go to the shop to pick it up so they can see it print.

[blackcat4866]

If I were you, I would be jumping up & down for joy! Let this customer go to some other poor sucker.

Our customer like this was not quite so bad. It was a grocery chain and all the machines had coinops. Of course they did not want the machines taking up space in the customer service area, so they were typically placed in the lobby where the sliding doors are. Then shoppers could slam the machine with shopping carts and the temperature would vary anywhere from 20F to 60F depending on how often the door opened. On one ocassion I found the outer door propped open because it was getting stuck, and there was snow on the copier.

At least once a week I had to change the operation panel. The first two or three were covered, then we realized we were idiots. The customers didn't care if the machines got beat on, and neither did the underpaid checkout girls. Like you say, noone wanted to be responsible for anything. I would try to get a signature on an workorder and every employee would vanish. "I don't know anything about that...." was the universal response. One user delighted in poking out the sticker covered panel with some sharp object, so even the new panels looked like a pin cushion within a few days.

It didn't help that the copier was a major piece of crap. The Canon NP6221 was jammomatic if ever there was one, and it sure wasn't improved by the extreme operating temperatures and humidity.

I cried tears of joy when that contract was up, and some poor Konica dealer then got screwed. =^..^=

[fixthecopier]

You hit the nail on the head. I have been waiting for this contract to go away for the last 2 years. My primary contract just got renewed for 5 years with 300 bizhubs, so I am safe. I forgot to mention that the customer can change to color if they want.