You know that good part about being a tech? The part where people are happy to see you show up. You are the savior. You show up and bring their machine back to life so their job is now easier.
Well imagine if you show up for work and a couple of hours into your day, you are called and told to go and unplug all of your machines and tell the customer they can't use them anymore. Your customers who loved you for years, are now not very happy. That is my Monday.
My contract with Spec Ops ended a year ago. Their plan was to connect to the base contract at a cost per copy, at 3.6 cents for b&w and 9 cents for color. The other contractor didn't want my 330 locations, as their contract was being put out to bid in 7 more months. Their loophole was if you were on their contract, you had to be plugged in to the network. My customers were not ready for that and I got a 6 month extension. Come Sept, the base contract was put out to bid, and as normal, it was a cluster fuck. I got another 6 month extension.
Then my customer found a way out. They could avoid contracting by buying their own machines from a site the military set up for IT related things. Problem is, there is only 1 machine that is a copier on the site, and that is a Lexmark C792. They did not care, and began purchasing them. They just did not get in a hurry placing them. If I had to guess, around 30 have been unboxed.
Konica and base contracting would not respond to our e-mails as we had been trying to find out our status. Finally today my boss found out that it ended 2 weeks ago. I was told to pull the plugs, wrap plastic wrap around them and leave a ticket on top offering them a rental.
Let us pause for a moment and look at the decision that was made. My contract was all you can eat. One flat fee, unlimited copies. I had machines that were classed for 4000 a month, and they did 10 to 15,000. No problem. Now all of my b&w bizhubs have been replaced with color Lexmarks. Let me state that again. I have Bizhub 600's that do 20,000 a month, being replaced with color Lexmark printers.
The customers that where aware of this are not happy. The new machines do not have a service contract, they have a parts and labor warranty. They will now have to budget for color supplies, when they don't really need color. They are used to calling when they need something and I show up in a couple of hours and make it right. Now when they run out of toner they will have to fill out a purchase request to use a gov credit card, sometimes this can take days. Their first line of defense are the IT contractors who started this mess. The It contractors have no concern for any of this, thinking that they are just adding printers to the network and they see no problems. They sometimes take days to show up, and are clueless as to the amount of calls I do on quality machines.
And of course the icing on the cake is that the people in charge of this failed to communicate this to the end users, so as I walk into offices to kill the copier, i am having to tell this story at each place.
I have a feeling that this will all fall apart and I will wind up doing calls on these new machines. I still have a lot of printers, plotters and shredders I service, and just got tagged fro Xerox school.
Well, wrapping the machines has got my carpel tunnel throbbing, I have been awake since 2:30, so I should be nice and tired and ill by the time I have to go in. Also since we don't own the machines yet, I can't tell them when they will be picked up. This means I am killing their copier and leaving in the way, so they don't have room for a new one.
Hope your Monday was better than mine.
Well imagine if you show up for work and a couple of hours into your day, you are called and told to go and unplug all of your machines and tell the customer they can't use them anymore. Your customers who loved you for years, are now not very happy. That is my Monday.
My contract with Spec Ops ended a year ago. Their plan was to connect to the base contract at a cost per copy, at 3.6 cents for b&w and 9 cents for color. The other contractor didn't want my 330 locations, as their contract was being put out to bid in 7 more months. Their loophole was if you were on their contract, you had to be plugged in to the network. My customers were not ready for that and I got a 6 month extension. Come Sept, the base contract was put out to bid, and as normal, it was a cluster fuck. I got another 6 month extension.
Then my customer found a way out. They could avoid contracting by buying their own machines from a site the military set up for IT related things. Problem is, there is only 1 machine that is a copier on the site, and that is a Lexmark C792. They did not care, and began purchasing them. They just did not get in a hurry placing them. If I had to guess, around 30 have been unboxed.
Konica and base contracting would not respond to our e-mails as we had been trying to find out our status. Finally today my boss found out that it ended 2 weeks ago. I was told to pull the plugs, wrap plastic wrap around them and leave a ticket on top offering them a rental.
Let us pause for a moment and look at the decision that was made. My contract was all you can eat. One flat fee, unlimited copies. I had machines that were classed for 4000 a month, and they did 10 to 15,000. No problem. Now all of my b&w bizhubs have been replaced with color Lexmarks. Let me state that again. I have Bizhub 600's that do 20,000 a month, being replaced with color Lexmark printers.
The customers that where aware of this are not happy. The new machines do not have a service contract, they have a parts and labor warranty. They will now have to budget for color supplies, when they don't really need color. They are used to calling when they need something and I show up in a couple of hours and make it right. Now when they run out of toner they will have to fill out a purchase request to use a gov credit card, sometimes this can take days. Their first line of defense are the IT contractors who started this mess. The It contractors have no concern for any of this, thinking that they are just adding printers to the network and they see no problems. They sometimes take days to show up, and are clueless as to the amount of calls I do on quality machines.
And of course the icing on the cake is that the people in charge of this failed to communicate this to the end users, so as I walk into offices to kill the copier, i am having to tell this story at each place.
I have a feeling that this will all fall apart and I will wind up doing calls on these new machines. I still have a lot of printers, plotters and shredders I service, and just got tagged fro Xerox school.
Well, wrapping the machines has got my carpel tunnel throbbing, I have been awake since 2:30, so I should be nice and tired and ill by the time I have to go in. Also since we don't own the machines yet, I can't tell them when they will be picked up. This means I am killing their copier and leaving in the way, so they don't have room for a new one.
Hope your Monday was better than mine.
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