The End of Xerox's ASP program

[rockdude]

As of June 1 2021 Xerox is essentially firing all ASP's from doing any warranty or service contract work.

No more "Warranty reimbursement claims"

No more "No Charge for Warranty Parts"

i.e. You sell a Bran New Machine (Versalink C8100) and it has a failure one week after the sale. You can repair it on your own with NO REIMBURSEMENT FOR PARTS OR LABOR FROM XEROX, or just let Xerox handle all repairs and interactions with the customer. You will be left out of the loop.

Xerox is just giving a small discount on the dealerships XPPS total machine count and that has to cover "EVERYTHING" Warranty, Service Contract, Parts, etc..

Xerox will be sub contracting it's work to Compucom, and other sub contractors.

We did the math and unless you have over 2500 XPPS machines the discount would not even pay one techs salary.

We will no longer be a ASP with this plan (25 years...done).

I personally don't see how 95% of the dealers will be able to remain Xerox ASP's with this plan.

I guess HP here we come.

[slimslob]

Re: The End of Xerox's ASP program

Sounds like Brand X is having some major money problems.

[Rusty.Harris]

Re: The End of Xerox's ASP program

We "got into" xerox over a year ago. Boy, when I got into this business in the 80's, Xerox was "the king".
They are so screwed up, they have no idea what they are doing. Banking only on their name.

[SalesServiceGuy]

Re: The End of Xerox's ASP program

We "got into" xerox over a year ago. Boy, when I got into this business in the 80's, Xerox was "the king".
They are so screwed up, they have no idea what they are doing. Banking only on their name.

When you call to place a service call, the call center attendant is trained to ask the customer 20 questions to try and get them to fix the copier themselves. Many customers find this tedious and say this is not my job.

In my area Xerox service techs, especially in thinly populated areas, are often independent contractors, often ex-Xerox service employees, who fix copiers for a fee. Are you saying this practice is coming to an end?

[Murv]

Re: The End of Xerox's ASP program

They're changing service models. It ain't pretty, but we put almost everything under our own contract anyway, so, not so much a big deal for us.

[SalesServiceGuy]

Re: The End of Xerox's ASP program

They're changing service models. It ain't pretty, but we put almost everything under our own contract anyway, so, not so much a big deal for us.

What about Xerox sales agents who do not actually employ their own service technicians?

I guess Xerox now dispatches a Compucom tech who likely has little experience servicing copiers?

[Murv]

Re: The End of Xerox's ASP program

What about Xerox sales agents who do not actually employ their own service technicians?

I guess Xerox now dispatches a Compucom tech who likely has little experience servicing copiers?

On an XPPS contract, yeah, that would be my guess. Not saying that this whole move they are making is a good one for ASP's - just saying probably won't affect *my shop* too much. Our entire tech staff is Xerox trained up through light production, as well as HP and Lexmark trained. You break 'em, we fix 'em.

My guess is that XPPS customers will be seeing a lot of Compucom and Barrister techs. We've seen an insane increase in phone calls from Barrister - of course, they want to give you 25 bucks to do a call and we counter with our 3P rate, so they haven't been using us much until they end up with a machine that some fool has ****ed up and they need us to save the day.

[slimslob]

Re: The End of Xerox's ASP program

We "got into" xerox over a year ago. Boy, when I got into this business in the 80's, Xerox was "the king".
They are so screwed up, they have no idea what they are doing. Banking only on their name.

At one time Brand X was was the only plain paper copier on the market. Most of the machines they had in the field were either on lease or rental, not customer purchased. They made a lot more money that way and did away with problems from supply pirates.

When they lost their exclusivity, many of their customers liked the idea that they now had the option to buy equipment. They started cancelling their lease and rental contracts. To cut down on lost revenue, Xerox started charging a cancellation fee to the sales person who was in charge of the account. Many of those sales people quit. And Xerox's problems got worse.

[Murv]

Re: The End of Xerox's ASP program

At one time Brand X was was the only plain paper copier on the market. Most of the machines they had in the field were either on lease or rental, not customer purchased. They made a lot more money that way and did away with problems from supply pirates.

When they lost their exclusivity, many of their customers liked the idea that they now had the option to buy equipment. They started cancelling their lease and rental contracts. To cut down on lost revenue, Xerox started charging a cancellation fee to the sales person who was in charge of the account. Many of those sales people quit. And Xerox's problems got worse.

And then there's Carl Icahn. Make it look good on paper and then part it out...

[SalesServiceGuy]

Re: The End of Xerox's ASP program

On an XPPS contract, yeah, that would be my guess. Not saying that this whole move they are making is a good one for ASP's - just saying probably won't affect *my shop* too much. Our entire tech staff is Xerox trained up through light production, as well as HP and Lexmark trained. You break 'em, we fix 'em.

My guess is that XPPS customers will be seeing a lot of Compucom and Barrister techs. We've seen an insane increase in phone calls from Barrister - of course, they want to give you 25 bucks to do a call and we counter with our 3P rate, so they haven't been using us much until they end up with a machine that some fool has ****ed up and they need us to save the day.

I learned a new abbreviation today.

What is 1P and 3P?

A first-party relationship (1P) means the marketplace acts as the retailer, and the brand is the wholesale supplier. As a dealer you have a first person relationship with your customer.

A third-party relationship (3P) is when the brand is the retailer, and sells directly to buyers via the marketplace. As a service provider for Barristers you have a 3rd party relationship with the customer.

I cannot imagine it working out well when a Barrister tech works on a copier. Do you think Battisters has the technical resources to support a technician or is Barristers merely a broker for service providers.

With Barristers it must be buy all new parts and wait days for them to arrive before a service call can be completed. It is not like a Barristers tech would have parts in local inventory

[Murv]

Re: The End of Xerox's ASP program

I learned a new abbreviation today.

What is 1P and 3P?

A first-party relationship (1P) means the marketplace acts as the retailer, and the brand is the wholesale supplier. As a dealer you have a first person relationship with your customer.

A third-party relationship (3P) is when the brand is the retailer, and sells directly to buyers via the marketplace. As a service provider for Barristers you have a 3rd party relationship with the customer.

I cannot imagine it working out well when a Barrister tech works on a copier. Do you think Battisters has the technical resources to support a technician or is Barristers merely a broker for service providers.

With Barristers it must be buy all new parts and wait days for them to arrive before a service call can be completed. It is not like a Barristers tech would have parts in local inventory

Barrister is a clearing house. They pretty much put the calls up on an electronic board - techs have an app on their phone and they can accept or bid on calls in their area. Base rate for them seems to be about 25 bucks per incident. They give you an opportunity to counter-offer, but they argue with you and pretty much tell you they can find someone to do it for the 25. So, basically, they end up with some good techs - retired techs looking for extra beer money, out of work techs. that sort of thing. The rest they end up with are greenies who put a hard drive in grammy's computer so they decided to hang out a shingle. Barrister ends up getting on the phone and calling places like us to clean up the messes, and even then they try to negotiate us down to 50 bucks or something. And, yeah, they try to triage and then they ship parts out. Last call we took for them was supposedly a supply install milk run. Tech arrived on site to discover a 59.F0 on a 4525 with a grinding fuser drive. Still not resolved for the customer at this point because they don't want to pay us to spend the time replacing the drive. They want us to go back out and check voltages on the DC controller that have already been checked because their support folks are reading <badly> from a manual and don't seem to have a lick of firsthand experience. So... Yeah... I pretty much feel sorry for any customer who is at the mercy of Barrister. Edited to add - The long and short of the deal is that Barrister is not at all used to dealing with an actual ASP with trained techs.

[SalesServiceGuy]

Re: The End of Xerox's ASP program

Barrister is a clearing house. They pretty much put the calls up on an electronic board - techs have an app on their phone and they can accept or bid on calls in their area. Base rate for them seems to be about 25 bucks per incident. They give you an opportunity to counter-offer, but they argue with you and pretty much tell you they can find someone to do it for the 25. So, basically, they end up with some good techs - retired techs looking for extra beer money, out of work techs. that sort of thing. The rest they end up with are greenies who put a hard drive in grammy's computer so they decided to hang out a shingle. Barrister ends up getting on the phone and calling places like us to clean up the messes, and even then they try to negotiate us down to 50 bucks or something. And, yeah, they try to triage and then they ship parts out. Last call we took for them was supposedly a supply install milk run. Tech arrived on site to discover a 59.F0 on a 4525 with a grinding fuser drive. Still not resolved for the customer at this point because they don't want to pay us to spend the time replacing the drive. They want us to go back out and check voltages on the DC controller that have already been checked because their support folks are reading <badly> from a manual and don't seem to have a lick of firsthand experience. So... Yeah... I pretty much feel sorry for any customer who is at the mercy of Barrister. Edited to add - The long and short of the deal is that Barrister is not at all used to dealing with an actual ASP with trained techs.

So with service provided by Barristers, there is likely a different tech with different skill levels who arrives for each service call. Maybe they can refer to a Barristers database what work was done.

Barristers has turned the copier industry into a form of Uber.

A great new thing for a Sales guy to know when competing against Xerox.

I think Xerox must be drifting away from the SMB market to focus on larger accounts and high profit accounts serviced by corporately employed techs.

In my Province of Nova Scotia, Xerox has the single gov't account for several years now. Many complaints that you just cannot get service and when it arrives it is often poor.

The Province awarded to Xerox on a RFP, a 800 cpc machine included deal aka MPS deal. Although the revenue is high, the responsibility is high, the profit is nil so why bother.

[Murv]

Re: The End of Xerox's ASP program

Barristers has turned the copier industry into a form of Uber.

Pretty much. They just don't always seem concerned about whether or not the driver has a license.

[azehnali]

Re: The End of Xerox's ASP program

the issue is really not xerox
Canon Ricoh and Konica have driven the service and machine prices down so much the only way to compete is to cut corners hence all this

[SalesServiceGuy]

Re: The End of Xerox's ASP program

the issue is really not xerox
Canon Ricoh and Konica have driven the service and machine prices down so much the only way to compete is to cut corners hence all this

I agree but in my territory Xerox has been very guilty of driving down prices themselves. Often crazy prices to get big deals.

I think come renewal time a lot of school boards and large govt's are going to see rising prices.