Tip #10 — Avoiding Some Common Color Copier Mistakes

When looking at copiers, more and more companies are looking to their current copier vendor to provide them a color copier.  Most reps are more than happy to oblige because color is more expensive than black and white and more profitable.  Color is tricky and if you aren’t really looking at the quality you can have a super expensive color copier making very few prints.  I have seen people pay well over $800 a month for a color copier doing just over 1,500 pages a month.  This is crazy, but they can’t do anything about it because they are in a 60 month contract for these prints.

Here are some rules of thumb you can look at in regards to color that should help you save some cash and have a better copier experience…

• Look at print samples from what YOU print on a day to day basis.  Don’t look at sample prints from the copier manufacturer.  This will allow you to see YOUR color on YOUR future copier
• See if Tabloid costs more than Letter paper. (If you use Tabloid)
• See if there are “Coverage Penalties” … what this looks like is this “Color copy/print prices are based on manufacturer yields of 20% average coverage.  Coverage above this can result in pricing to be change in a like ratio” — If there is terminology like this, it basically means if you have 40% coverage, whatever rate you just got quoted will double. DenverCopier has plans which allow 100% coverage at the same price as 10% coverage… so there are plans available which won’t penalize you for going over 20%.