What Questions Should You Ask an Office Printer Lease Provider Before Signing?

Quick Answer

Summary of Key Considerations

• Ask what the service agreement covers, and whether a service plan sits behind the quote at all.
• Ask who turns up and how fast, and what the payout looks like at year three.
• Compare on total cost of ownership (TCO) built from your meter reads, not the monthly figure alone.

Why these seven questions

Most printer lease contracts that go wrong were signed before the right questions were asked. Seven questions cover the ground, and each one has an answer a good lease provider can give immediately, without checking. That immediacy is most of the test. A provider who has looked at your office answers in a sentence. One who has looked at a price list needs to get back to you.

The questions matter most to a small office. In a dental practice or a real estate office running one or two machines, there is no second printer down the hall to fall back on, and one wrong answer at signing is felt every month for the life of the lease. They also work in any order and against any provider, including us. Put the same seven to everyone you are considering and write the answers side by side.

1. What exactly does the service agreement cover, and what is excluded?

Ask for parts, labour, preventative maintenance and toner to be confirmed as four separate things in the service level agreement.

A straight answer names each one and tells you what falls outside. Paper is usually excluded, staples sometimes, and there is often a fair-use position on very high volume. It also says how toner arrives: dispatched automatically from the meter reading, so it turns up before you notice you are low, or only once somebody rings. A weak answer is the word "everything". Nothing covers everything, and it usually means nobody has looked at your office yet.

Ask for the exclusions before the inclusions. Inclusion lists are written to reassure. Exclusion lists are where the real boundaries of the agreement sit.

2. Is there a service plan behind this quote at all?

This is the question that explains most price gaps. A quote with no service plan behind it carries no manufacturer warranty, because the warranty exists only while a service plan does.

A quote without a service plan is a different product: cheaper monthly, and fully exposed the first time the printer stops. Ask it directly, because a quote will rarely volunteer it, and two quotes that look twenty per cent apart are often describing two different arrangements.

3. What is your response time, and who turns up?

Ask for the average in hours. Then ask whether it is the same named technician or whoever is dispatched that day, and what happens if the device cannot be fixed on site.

A technician who has seen your machines before arrives knowing the history. A dispatched contractor starts from zero every time. Our emergency response anywhere in Sydney metro is under four hours, and faults are fixed in hours, not days: the average repair takes 3.2 hours, by one of our own technicians.

If a provider answers with a service-level category instead of a number, ask what their average response time was last quarter. The ones who measure it will tell you.

4. What is the term, and what does the payout look like at year three?

Most printer lease terms run 36 to 60 months. What you want to know at signing is the shape of an early exit, because most businesses re-enter the market at year three or four, when the device stops matching the office. The mechanics of that moment are set out in upgrading a leased printer mid-contract.

A provider who can explain how that payout is worked out, before you sign, is telling you they expect the conversation. If one cannot, ask why before you go any further. Ask as well how much notice the lease agreement needs before it ends, and what returning the device costs. The four structural parts of the agreement are covered in office printer lease contract terms.

What is the difference between a finance lease and an operating lease?

Ask which one you are signing. An operating lease is closer to a rental: the machine goes back at the end. A finance lease, including one that ends with you buying the machine for a nominal sum, is closer to buying over time. The difference, and why it is a question for your accountant, is set out in office printer lease contract terms.

5. What happens if our monthly print volume changes?

Ask about both directions. Offices grow, and offices also go hybrid and print half of what they did two years ago.

Some agreements include a set number of pages in the monthly fee and charge a click rate for every page over it, so a minimum sized for a busier office costs you every month. Ask how the agreement handles a sustained change either way. Under managed print services you pay a fixed cost per page against an agreed minimum volume, and if you consistently print more or less, we right-size your plan. On the Unlimited Print Plan you pay one flat monthly rate, so the cost does not move with volume. That is the point of it, and a large sustained drop is still worth raising.

6. Is this quote built from our meter reads, or from an estimate?

The single most useful question on the list. Every multifunction printer holds a meter reading of exactly what it has printed, split by colour and mono.

A quote built from those numbers is yours. A quote built from an industry average is a reasonable guess about a business like yours, and the two will not compare like for like no matter how carefully you line them up. If a provider has not asked for your meter reads or offered to collect them, you are holding an average.

This matters most where the colour ratio is uncertain, which is more often than people expect. The reasoning is set out in colour or monochrome.

7. Can you pay out our existing contract?

If you are mid-term with someone else, this determines whether a conversation is even possible right now.

We can pay out your existing contract. Whether it is worth doing depends on your term remaining and your current monthly figure, and once we have both it is simple arithmetic. Sometimes the honest answer is to stay where you are until closer to term, and we would rather tell you that than sign you up.

Five things on the paperwork that decide the total cost of ownership

The seven questions test the provider. These test the document, and they are where the costs a quote leaves out usually sit. Together they decide the total cost of ownership across the term, which is set out in full in the total cost of owning an office printer or photocopier.

• Fees outside the monthly figure. Document fees, delivery charges and removal costs at the end of the term.
• Annual price increases. Whether the service or lease rate rises each year, by how much, and on what basis.
• Print management software. Whether software such as PaperCut is included or an add-on. It is usually quoted as part of the agreement and configured on the machine. The options are set out under software solutions.
• Security. Whether the multifunction printer encrypts what it stores and clears job data, which matters most in a practice holding patient or client files. Covered in office print security.
• Installation and training. Whether setting the device up on your network and showing your staff how to use it are included. We install the machines and train your staff as part of getting started.

Why quotes diverge

Same machine, different numbers, both honest

The gap between two quotes for the same printer almost always comes down to what sits behind the number: whether a service plan is included, whether it was built from your real meter reads, and what the payout looks like down the track. Line the seven questions up and the gap usually explains itself.

How to run the comparison, with our answers filled in

Put the seven questions down the side and give each provider a column. Fill it in as you go, while the answers are fresh, because the vague answers are the ones that soften in recollection. Our own answers are in the last column, so you can hold us to the same standard.

Questions two, six and seven explain most of the difference between any two numbers you have been given. If you only have time for three, use those.

Asking these in Sydney

Question three is where the alternatives separate, and it is worth weighting accordingly if your office cannot afford a printer being down for a day. Buying direct from a manufacturer generally routes you through a call centre and a ticket system, with whoever was dispatched attending. An ex-rental machine is cheap to start with, and the saving disappears the first time it goes down. A cheap plan with no service plan behind it has no warranty and nobody accountable. A named technician who has seen your machines before is a different proposition.

Choosing the multifunction printer and the agreement

Once the seven are answered, the remaining choices are the machine and the agreement type. The Canon range and the Sharp range cover A4 and A3 multifunction printers, and the terms behind them sit on photocopier and printer leasing in Sydney.

One thing worth knowing before you sign anything: Australian small businesses have statutory protection against unfair terms in standard form contracts under the Australian Consumer Law, and the regime was strengthened in November 2023. The ACCC sets out how it works. It is no substitute for asking the seven questions, and it is a useful floor.

Local service, Sydney metro

Our own van, our own technician

We have run Axia from Frenchs Forest since 1996 with our own technicians, so you get the same person every time. Most of the offices we look after run one or two machines, and we have over 90% customer retention. The published customer work covers medical practice, pharmacy and aged care.

Frequently asked questions