Have you ever bought a second hand car? Ever been to a garage sale and found an absolute bargain? Well if you haven’t then my writing is not for you! If you have you would have by now learned that not everything in today’s environment has to be brand new for it to be considered a ‘bargain’ or a treasure for either home or the office.

This rule applies to copiers and printers too! Even though your chances of finding a second hand copier or printer still working at a garage sale are quite slim there is hope out there for a bargain in business printing.

So what happens to those printers & copiers that those top 500 companies use for only three years at a time? Where do they go? What are they used for? The answer is simple; they are either resold or used for parts. Just like a car is sold second hand with a good 100,000 kilometres on the clock left or is sent to the wreckers for parts salvage so is a copier and printer. The question is how to we get access to these bargains or potential treasurers for our offices?

Next time you are looking at implementing a solution for your office, whether it is print, fax, scan or copy, make sure to ask your supplier or consultant about re-furbished machines. You will find that some consultants will either mention re-furbished equipment to you or they will avoid it at all cost. This comes from many factors within their company and the rules involved with the re-selling of second hand equipment, for some it may be easy, others a headache.

Once you bring up the topic make sure to qualify a few simple questions with your consultant about the second hand equipment. The first, and most important, is to ask what the current meter-read is of the equipment. This determines how many prints the equipment has made so far. Then follow on with asking how old the equipment is, or how long the equipment has been in use for (remembering from one of my previous articles that manufacturers only have to supply parts for a certain period of time by law). This will allow you to determine the average monthly print volume of the equipment in questions. Then, finally ask what the manufacturer’s monthly cycle recommendation is for that specific re-furbished model.

With these three simple, yet very effective questions, you can then determine how over, or under, utilized the equipment is and whether or not you are in for a potential bargain or lemon. Of course your vendor will still offer service agreements and a warranty of some sort; however they can not guarantee that the equipment will work after a specific time (you will need to establish this also when speaking with your consultant).

If you are still wondering whether or not a second hand piece of equipment is even worth considering then consider this. Most copiers & printers are designed to last over a five year period (in Australia copiers are classed as an asset for five years); however the average upgrade period is between the two and a half to four year mark. That means that besides all of the calculations that we just went through before that you could instantly have one year to two and a half years worth of life in the equipment.

Consider this; re-furbished equipment can sometimes be above 50% less than the newest version available of its kind.

So even though I can not guarantee that a printer or copier will be sold at your local garage sale this weekend, I can say that re-furbished solutions have provided some of my greatest achievements within the industry.