What should I charge for a service agreement for a Designjet T1300 and 4500 Scanner?

[pbrooks259]

Hi, Just wanting to know what I should charge a prospective customer to service their Designjet T1300 and Designjet 4500 scanner. The scanner is getting fairly old.

I'm pretty sure they are wanting parts included. I guess that's normal. I am accustomed to selling equipment with a warranty and then I hardly ever hear back from the customer. I should have been pursuing service agreements all along, but have not. A lot of my customers are a few hundred miles away, so I only do maintenance/repair as needed. This is the 1st I have pursued one. They are 2 hours away (140 miles; 4 hour round trip). I plan to spend 1-2 hours performing preventative maintenance. And then of course there will be the occasional part failure. I normally charge $75/hr. Oftentimes I charge less for travel $25-$50/hr depending on the distance. In this case I'm tempted to charge $75/hr for travel just to help cover occasional replacement parts.

I'm thinking out loud, and this is to help cover occasionally needed parts: If maintenance service every 3 months, $1700 a year ($425 per visit). if every 4 months, $1400 a year ($467 per visit). If every 6 months, $1000 a year ($500 per visit).

I know a service station on a T1300 can be $400 to $500, if you can't get a better deal. 4500 Scanner parts are very expensive. Honestly, I would probably try to pick up a spare 4500 Scanner and just replace the customer's if the repair looks too difficult or expensive.

Thanks for any input.

[fshead]

always quote higher,i doubt you have much competition out there and if machines goes down you need to cover yourself too.
i always insist on a good surge protector and how bout damage exceptions for electric outages or water damage from plumbing or storms

[pbrooks259]

fshead, thanks very much.

[Kiran Otter]

Knowing some may look to me for answers on Desginjets, I just wanted to chime in on this. I've never offered service contracts on Designjet printers or scanners, so I don't know what to suggest. Personally, on the scanner, I wouldn't cover it. Just do time and materials as needed. It may be that the parts are flat unavailable when it needs repair, in which case you're not under contract to fix it.

I'm not sure I understand your preventative maintenance schedule; I tell my customers there really is no preventative maintenance. Just wait until something breaks. In most cases, when the belt fails, it's time to take the whole printer apart and clean everything. Baring that, I'm not sure what there is to do that is preventative, outside of what the user is expected to do, i.e. printheads, ink.

What I can say is that a refurbished service station for the T1300 is $295 from LPS Computer. That's without shipping.

Kiran

[fshead]

i also think it has to do with do you have a scrap yard of parts machines you can pull free parts from..
I always gut my trade ins and mark meter and info i might need down the road

[pbrooks259]

Thanks guys. I just buy most parts off ebay or occasionally from LPS Computer but they are a bit pricey. And Letech Solutions; Vincent Le there seems pretty good and reasonable for designjet hard drives, formatters, main pca's, etc. But they cost a bit. And yes, nice to have used spares.

Also, I don't want the customer to be down for any stretch of time, so the reason I think of preventative maintenance. But really that is just cleaning and lubrication and checking the belt for replacement need. And I would probably just go to site once a year for maintenance--cleaning, lubrication, checking belt, maybe run a few tests, clean and calibrate the scanner, etc.

And yeah maybe I shouldn't cover the scanner--more complicated than a designjet printer in my opinion, expensive parts, etc. But I probably will, and just pick up a cheap one for parts maybe.

Thanks again guys.

[brewster67]

We have machines that are remote, hundred of miles away or fly in. On all of these we don't include travel in the service agreement. We do service agreement for the equipment then charge a trip charge for each time we go out to the machine. I tell them new equipment should not need very many trips but as the machine ages there will be more problems that arise. When it is not cost effective to keep having someone come out it is time to replace the machine.

[fshead]

how do you deal with re calls...
I use to service an account 100 miles away BUT was open 24 hrs a day,,
then after 8 yrs of no problems the new guy they hired wanted 2 hr response time...............
Needless to say that ended the account

[brewster67]

I handle recalls on a case by case basis. We try and get as much info from the end user before we go out. We let them know that if we don't have all the info or the correct info we may not have the correct parts and a second trip may be needed. That usually gets people motivated to give us good info. If the recall is our fault because we didn't correctly fix the machine or didn't have a part we should have then we have to eat the cost of the follow up trip. I make sure that the out of trips are covered my experience tech to cut down on recalls.

[blackcat4866]

Our company offers a service contract on labor only, parts and supplies are extra. And there's a clause that OEM supplies must be used. Overall I can think of only a few occasions when we got upside-down in the contract. How much? I don't know the rates, but I'm pretty sure it's a set monthly amount, not based on square feet or meters. =^..^=