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Remember this. weather or not you have a machine registered the company is required to sell you parts. Registration is only for support and software. If you have a Part number and a company denies you parts it is illegal.

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adlsmt

You have stated that an OEM will not sell you a part for a used machine that was built by the OEM and is still supported per the OEM�s standard part policy unless you buy a contract.

I will admit I find that hard to believe. Unless you are leaving out a detail or two about their specific sales process and the specific reason for that.

I would like to talk to the President of the specific company you are referring to. I will call him, President to President and I will post my findings here.

You may very well be accurate. But there has to be a reason, and I genuinely doubt that it is pure greed.

Please email me the company name offline kbliss@blissindustries.com

Ken Bliss

This message was posted the Electronics Forum @

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Ken, I am still negotiating a possible deal with the company I referenced, therfore I will not mention the name now. If it falls through I will let you know. However I have made it clear to them that their second user atitude stinks and is still swaying me against thier machine. As far as the costs of equipment being amortized over the life and resale not an issue, I own my company and have had to sell off equipment to stay in business a few times. If I had three to five year contracts with my customers it would not be an issue. For those that have customers like that, let me know who they are, I would love to do business with them.

I was not aware that a company had to sell you parts. I just ordered a set of manuals for a machine and was told it was against thier policy to sell them since I did not pay for 2'nd user support. BUT, they would make an exception this time.

I also bought a software upgrade without registering a machine a few years ago and when the software was defective they did not want to give me a new copy because I did not pay the 2'nd user fees. They sold me a defective product and wanted $3,500.00 to replace the $400.00 software. They claimed replacing it was "technical support". That is not right. I did end up paying the $3,500.00 when I had a problem we could not solve, it was a 5 min conversation with them but I dont hold that against them at all. Although I never use the phone support, its there from now on.

To be fair to Ken Bliss, he is in a durable goods more than a technology co. (please dont take offense to that Ken) I had a rack left over of his that came from a broker. I just bought like $2,000.00 of hardware for it to convert it to panasonic from him. If I had not had the frame, It would have been cheaper to build the whole thing myself. Bliss has been great and gave me no crap for not buying the whole system from them. That is why I will continue to use them. Let me know when the dessicant cabinets come out.

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Good points Ken But the reality of the matter is that we are selling off some fuji equipment that even though it is 1994/1995 still has a sale value of 45-65K Each. I am replacing it with faster systems with 0201 specs. With the margins so razor thin every dollar counts. If you add up the 50K or so X the 40 or so systems we are replacing world wide it is a big number. That is why residual value is so important. We use our systems for 5-7 years and use a 5 year straight line. Any number we get for the system at the end of it's life goes right to the bottom line or helps reduce the cost of the new system via trade. Thus reducing the cost per placement or Loaded labor rate how ever you want to look at your costs.

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I recently installed some used capital equipment for a major multi-national corporation. I was blown away by their penny-pinching, micro thinking attitudes of how they felt their 2nd or 3rd hand purchase should be supported directly by the OEM. The fact is these guys had no idea how to operate, calibrate and maintaine this used equipment. Why should the OEM absorb all of the costs associated with bring these guys up to speed? It might be different if the users had invested in calibration equipment, oem training programs, software and so-on but that was not the case (purchased directly from the OEM). Then and maybe then they could have some negotiating (read "leverage") ability to offset the cost of registering the machines.

I am sididng witht the OEM's on this. Its like the saying "speed costs, how fast do you want to go". In the mean time while you are dickering around with NOT registering the software, I am plowing right past you with upgrades, applications support, field service engineering support, learning best applications and advanced opeations for my equipment (same as your equipment), impressing my current customers, future customers AND making a proffit.

Bottom line is you need to be informed on these types of issues and factor them into your cost matrix for capital equipment acquisitions.

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I would like to clarify that the $14,000 quoted on used Ersa machines is for a Service contract, not a licensing fee. For $14,000 a company who has purchased a used machine off the market or has a machine out of warranty, would get four 5 day trips from our service techinican over a year period and an additional 20% off parts needed for the used machine. If a company doesn't require that level of service, they can purchase a bronze contract for $4,500 which get's one week of our techincian on site and 10% off parts needed. If you only require phone support, we would charge a flat rate of $120 to support a machine not purchased from us. Bottom line is that OEM's cannot afford to support machines that were not purchased from them. If you buy a Chrysler car from a previous owner and it breaks down, you cannot expect to have Chrysler fix your car for free. As business men and business owners, I'm sure you are all aware of the costs that are associated with service. Therefore, Ersa has put together "SERVICE CONTRACTS" as an option for companies to get service from the manufacturers. These are not licensing fees!

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