Supporting printers

[geeksRus]

most of our customers purchase printers with their systems...and we of course sell printers by themselves. question is, how much free support should be granted on a printer? little things can drive you nuts and waste your time. shouldn't the tech support for the printer come from the manufacturer? users expect us to support the printer for the life of the warranty.

[Damned Angel]

I support the printers for the life of the printer warranty for free. I will test the printer on the customers computer and on another test system to see if the problem is with the printer or the customers computer. If its the printer, off the the manufacturer it goes.
After the warranty, same thing. Just once the warranty is up, its $30 for a half hour of my time.

Call your sales rep for printers you sell and see if they offer any kind of technical course on how to repair their products, some companies pay up to $75 an incident if you are certified and repair the problem!!


If you don't want to support the printers at all, I suggest not selling printers with your systems. That way the customer can not come to you wanting help for free.

[cyberhh]

I always offered free diagnostic support for the life of the printer warranty. If the printer was broken - off to the manufacturer, if it was user error I got paid for my time. The markup on printers was never good, and too many customers were just too lazy to read the instructions and install the printer correctly, so that way I was never paying tech's to repair something that was not broken.