Is Unlimited Really Unlimited?

With all the talk of unlimited printing, flat rate service, all in printing and any other buzz word being used by our industry right now the bigger question becomes, is unlimited really unlimited?

I tasked myself with learning the T's and C's of these various contracts people are using for "unlimited" printing and have found that unlimited doesn't really mean unlimited for almost all vendors claiming to have unlimited printing. I spoke with people in the know about these agreements multiple times to make sure I wasn't missing anything.

The current model of delivering service, which is not broken in my opinion, is understanding the usage and putting a support plan in place that works for the client. A good account manager should be making quarterly visits and reviews with the client and making any changes necessary to the service agreement. If there are overages the account should be changed to better reflect the changes within the organization. Most sales people fail to do quarterly reviews with their clients therefore leaving them with agreements that don't accurately reflect the changes, good or bad, going on in their organization. With that said, I have had clients who did not want to change their allotted amounts because overages were a "cost of doing business" in their budgets and the budgeted amount was the base they allowed for from the beginning in those budgets. Many have said they will make appropriate changes in the next budget cycle or even the next contract renewal time.

When I look at an offer of unlimited printing, I want "UNLIMITED PRINTING". The T's & C's of these agreements are not unlimited. Every agreement I have reviewed from directs to dealers has a clause that states you will have a set benchmark of pages per month and if exceeded they have the option to increase your payment to compensate for your "unlimited printing" and their loss of revenue. Having a lease payment of X dollars with unlimited printing sure sounds like a sweet deal until your organizations printing environment changes and you are running over their benchmark and all of a sudden you see increases by large percentages each month. There will be no way around this as they will be monitoring the volume remotely. I have no problem with remote monitoring as all manufacturers and dealers, including myself use some form of monitoring for meters, toner collection and service.

Most clients expect the truth to be told in the sales process. Hiding T's & C's about increasing costs to an unlimited service plan is not how the sales process is intended to go. Many will say that typical service agreements have yearly increases, and that is true but clients can calculate and expect that and not get a big bill down the road for correction.

So as you can see unlimited does not mean unlimited in any case that I have found. I will say some dealers are getting creative in how they deliver this to their market but I would assume that even they are not truly unlimited. This is not changing the game or something innovative in my opinion. It's just another way for a new buzzword to come into play in the industry and hope that customers jump on board. My first question to someone selling on unlimited printing is why do I have to sign a lease. I want to buy the equipment and then you give me unlimited printing. I'd bet 100% of sales people turn and walk away from the deal because it doesn't work that way and the structure of that program is required that you have that lease payment that includes the service.

Ex - I get a $400.00 payment for a 30 page per minute color system. The vendor tells me unlimited but benchmarks me at 10,000 pages per month for black and white and 1,000 color. Let's say the service is 150.00 per month. Customer uses .01 per page b/w and .05 per page color because that was their last agreement. $250.00 per month for the lease of 36 months makes that machine 30 page per minute machine around $8,500.00. Put that same payment to 60 months and now you are paying $12,000.00 for what is ultimately a $6,000-$7,000.00 machine plus the corrections when you pass the benchmark they set.

Does this "unlimited printing" really seem like a good deliverable to the customer? There are too many unknowns and it gives the vendor a lot of power to increase those costs at any time. If I was a client looking into new equipment I would make sure I understood the T's & C's of these unlimited agreements and really think if I was getting a good deal. I have heard of many customers upset with their vendor over these unlimited printing programs and how they were hit with hundreds or thousands of dollars of corrections at year end or their payments jumped up significantly the middle of the term.