Pisses me off, what do you do?

**allan** · 08-11-2022

The problem I have with toner not included is that the customer will buy any crap they can find to use in your machine. We never leave more that 2 toners for a machine at a time. Every tech holds the responsibility to maintain a relationship with the person responsible for installing the toner and there is an agreed location where spare toners will be stored. When I go into a customer part of the call is to check up on toner and supply from predicted boot stock as needed.

**allan** · 08-11-2022

Originally Posted by slimslob

I remember back in the days of the early plain paper copiers that used coated masters instead of drums. Each master was good for a fixed number of pages and then had to be changed. There was one Sharp dealer, I think it was Select Copy but it might also been Phil Hunter whose main office was in Fresno, who didn't sell service contracts with includes toner and masters. He sold a case of mastered bundled with enough toner, assuming normal usage, and included maintenance with the supplies.

We still run copy printers, Riso and Duplo. It this case ink is included and master rolls are separate.

**mloudy** · 08-11-2022

So the one thing our MPS customer demanded in the beginning is that only OEM toner was provided. When we changed the terms from the toner being included to them paying for it the OEM toner part stayed in there. They also require 48 hours for toner deliveries. With the gaylord pick up and returning of unused supplies we have them tied to us for buying the toner. It is a unique situation and there would be other MPS customers that I would worry could buy crap toner.

One new thing is they now require that I contact them when we pick up a gaylord. They email us when they are full and ask us to come get them. I suggested they just cc the new guy in charge keeping track of this and kill two birds. Nope, giant corporations don't work like that.

**mojorolla** · 08-11-2022

I'm gonna disagree on this one and suggest stop blindly sending them boxes of backup toner. If a dealership is doing its job, it should know customer volumes and tendencies towards stupidity. We send toner when they need it, or when they soon will. With monitoring software, email alerts, and the ability to change the machines alert conditions, there is no reason nowadays to send out a set of toner that will sit on a shelf for 6 months or more. I also explain to our customer that the machine is a "zero-loss system" (yes, I made that shit up) and that the machine will tell them when to replace the supplies. For our customers who do ungodly volumes, those customers get 1 toner for the shelf which is replaced when they use it. This ensures they always have a backup without losing our shirts on lost supplies.

**mloudy** · 08-11-2022

I will say it is a ton of work for one guy to monitor this for mulitple MPS customers. We would need employees dedicated to the task of monitoring how much toner every device at every MPS customer should use. For the customer I was speaking of it is two seperate locations with 58 color printers, 30 mono printers, 24 A3 color copiers, 24 A4 color MFPs and 2 A3 mono MFPs.

I would auto ship toners based on the alerts from PrintTracker. At some point they would end of being out of stock becasue there was no way for me to account for brand new toners being tossed in the trash en masse. I knew when a supply was replaced prematurely as an alert would be sent along with the remaining life of the supply replaced. The Crib people find supplies squirreled away which is not supposed to be the way it works per their internal rules.

The best feature that Sharp came out with is that the toners can't be pulled out of their A3 color copiers until they are empty. There is a way the end user can eject them but so far I have only heard of one customer finding out how to do it and that was just yesterday.

**mojorolla** · 08-11-2022

[QUOTE=mloudy;2189743]I will say it is a ton of work for one guy to monitor this for mulitple MPS customers. We would need employees dedicated to the task of monitoring how much toner every device at every MPS customer should use. For the customer I was speaking of it is two seperate locations with 58 color printers, 30 mono printers, 24 A3 color copiers, 24 A4 color MFPs and 2 A3 mono MFPs.

I would auto ship toners based on the alerts from PrintTracker. At some point they would end of being out of stock becasue there was no way for me to account for brand new toners being tossed in the trash en masse. I knew when a supply was replaced prematurely as an alert would be sent along with the remaining life of the supply replaced. The Crib people find supplies squirreled away which is not supposed to be the way it works per their internal rules.

The best feature that Sharp came out with is that the toners can't be pulled out of their A3 color copiers until they are empty. There is a way the end user can eject them but so far I have only heard of one customer finding out how to do it and that was just yesterday.[/QUOTE

Our software tells us average monthly volumes, I can set alert levels for supply and service errors, and, after the second toner change, it will predict the next date of replacement. I can also see when the toner was replaced AND at what level. If they throw 45% in the trash, I get an email, and somebody gets a phone call and possibly billed. I also use the same software to project PMs coming due. I know months ahead of time when supplies and service will be needed. If the device has email alerts, I set those up to, with an email address dedicated to only alerts.

Many in our industry have that "I've been doing this for 30 years" mentality. Thats is great BUT are you still doing it the same way you did 3 decades ago...? This is one of the main reasons dealerships struggle to keep up. Some still call once a month to get the meter read faxed over....thanks for choosing The Flintstones Copier Company.
I don't need a team because I utilize every technology I have at my disposal.

**mloudy** · 08-11-2022

I have PrintTracker set to do just about everything as your system does and it works at all of our other MPS clients. PT also has all the reports and forecasts now but did not until their Pro version was released. The old version was nice because I could run a report to show the customer of the exact day, time and location someone prematurely replaced a supply or all the supplies. It was sooo random across many department. One unique thing was that it never happened in what I called the white color areas. It was always in the production areas. I have yet to find the premature reports in Pro but I still get the emails.

For this customer I could set 1 printer to alert when toner got to 5% and that printer would run another 30 days before it needed changed. Another printer would hit 5% and the toner would last another 30 minutes. Before they started buying and ordering toners themselves I went through every device and set the alert levels differently based on their volumes. Then a printer would go from running 500 pages a week to 5,000 so I was constantly needing to monitor those changes. In the beginning the default alert was at 25% and I shipped based on that. Eventually they called and said they had too much toner in stock and after long discussions with many people the option they agreed to was to lower the alert levels to 5% but I warned them what might happen. Soon I got complaints that they we out of toners. When the discussion was made to switch over they did not like a limit on toners or paying for the prematurely replaced supplies. When someone is accounting for 10% of your total revenue you are more inclined to make less demands. Keeping a customer that wasn't profitable isn't smart either.

So they buy supplies for their printers and MFPs that they can freely remove toners that aren't empty. They pay a cpp soley calculated on parts and labor. For the A3 Sharp color machines everything is included and the pay a black and color cpp that is all inclusive.

Did I already say I hate MPS?

**tonerhead** · 08-11-2022

Originally Posted by mojorolla

I'm gonna disagree on this one and suggest stop blindly sending them boxes of backup toner. If a dealership is doing its job, it should know customer volumes and tendencies towards stupidity. We send toner when they need it, or when they soon will. With monitoring software, email alerts, and the ability to change the machines alert conditions, there is no reason nowadays to send out a set of toner that will sit on a shelf for 6 months or more. I also explain to our customer that the machine is a "zero-loss system" (yes, I made that shit up) and that the machine will tell them when to replace the supplies. For our customers who do ungodly volumes, those customers get 1 toner for the shelf which is replaced when they use it. This ensures they always have a backup without losing our shirts on lost supplies.

Love that "zero loss system" gonna have to borrow that.

**tonerhead** · 08-11-2022

Another thing that pisses me off is the customer that insists on having extra toner on their shelf "in case they ever run out" Some customers are buttwads, and will not give on this point. Had one customer in particular, his contract was b/w only, color each 8 cents or whatever we provide toner for both. Color was pay as you go for him. Weird contract, but he is a lawyer, nuff said about weird. In his case he had cmy on shelf and he only did 200 color per year. I mentioned to him that he had 10 years of toner on the shelf and 10 years inside the machine already, could I please return those to our stock. He declined, he said it was our job to insure the machine remained functional to best of our abilities. Toner on shelf helps to insure functionality. Here it is 5 years later and original toner is at 60% full yet, same replacements still on shelf. As a tech I've given up, I just report to mgmt, it's their problem, not mine.