In today’s society time is money, although it’s not a new concept it’s certainly truer now than ever.

When it comes to certain things in life we will spend as much money as needed to get a product or service completed as quickly as possible. But what about your office equipment? How much would you spend to get it working and keep it working? As with most technology products things change quickly and what cost a thousand dollars yesterday may only costs a hundred dollars today.

Repair or Replace?

An example of this would be a multi-function printer that cost $4,000.00 eight years ago now has a replacement printer available that costs around $,1000.00. With an average repair cost of 10% of its purchase price ($400.00) would you spend that much or would you buy the new one for a $1,000.00? This is a question that has been asked over and over in the last couple of years as older equipment is requiring repairs and new machines are coming down in cost. What would YOU do?

It’s All About Attitude

I think the answer is determined by the person responsible for these decisions (assuming they have all the information they need to make an informed choice). Take cars as an example, in my experience, some people are trade in ready and will do so at the drop of a flat tire and then there are those that just keep repairing the car they have even if it costs thousands. Where to do you fit in?

In the world of office equipment the trade early, trade often could very well be the end for independent service companies. This is not a good scenario since what happens when there are no independent service companies? The price goes up when you do require service as only the OEM manufacturers will be able to provide repair service, if any. With the prices of new machines going down it looks like the manufacturers are trying to phase out repair service since their making machines cheap enough to scrap the old and buy new.

A Race to the Bottom?

However, will our replace vs fix habit cost us more in the long run? Like anything though you get what you pay for, in order to keep the prices down something got to give. There’s a reason why a machine cost $4,000.00 and is still around 8 to 10 years plus later. Will these new machines last that long or will they just be replaced more often by even cheaper ones?

Something to think about.