What I hear
Four things that go wrong in a church office.
These come up again and again. If you recognize two or more, the machine probably isn't the real problem.
Nobody remembers signing a five-year lease
"The person who set this up retired in 2021."
Church staff turn over. The secretary who signed the agreement moves on, the paperwork goes in a drawer, and four years later nobody can find the contract or say what's in it. Meanwhile the payment keeps coming out every month.
The contract renewed itself
"We were going to switch, but apparently we missed the window."
Evergreen clauses renew automatically unless you give written notice, often 60 to 120 days before the end of the term. A part-time office has no realistic way to track that. It's the single most expensive detail in the whole agreement and it's usually in the small print on page three.
A logo costs the same as a photograph
"Color is expensive, so we print the bulletin in black and white."
Most contracts bill one flat rate for any page with color on it. A bulletin with a colored masthead and black text costs you the same as a full-bleed photograph. Kyocera machines can meter actual coverage and bill in tiers, which is why I do.
Scanning stopped working and nobody knows why
"It used to scan to email. Now it just says failed."
Almost always a mail-server change rather than a copier fault, and almost always handed back to you as "you'll need to talk to your IT people." If your IT person is a volunteer with a day job, that's where it sits for six months. I fix it.
How I do it differently
Built around how a church actually prints.
- You own the machine outright No lease, no sixty-month term, no evergreen clause to diary. The council approves a purchase once instead of committing five years of budget nobody has voted on yet. If you ever leave me, the copier stays with you.
- Color is billed by how much you actually use A bulletin with a colored header is charged as a low-coverage page, not as a photograph. For a church printing weekly bulletins and a monthly newsletter, this is usually the largest single difference in the bill.
- Set up for people who don't use it every day Address books built so a volunteer doesn't retype an email address. Scan to email and scan to folder configured and tested. Simple defaults on the panel so the Thursday volunteer and the Sunday sexton press the same button and get the same result.
- Pre-owned machines where they make sense A good used Kyocera at a fraction of new is often the right answer for a parish printing a few thousand pages a month. I'll say so even though it's a smaller sale.
- You get a person, not a queue The same name and the same number every time, and the person who answers is the one who drives out. When Sunday is a deadline, that matters more than a service-level agreement on paper.
Copier Rescue
Down on Thursday with a bulletin due Sunday?
If you are under contract with another provider and they have not come out, call me. I will diagnose it for free. No charge, no obligation, and no pressure to leave anybody.
I will not touch the machine beyond diagnosing it. You have an agreement with somebody else and honoring it is their job. You are still their customer and I won't put you in the middle of it.
I'll tell you what is actually wrong and what it would cost to fix, then leave you with it. Knowing beats waiting and guessing, especially on a Thursday.
Before you talk to anyone
Two things worth doing this week.
Both of these help you whether or not you ever call me.
- Find your contract and look for the renewal clause Search it for "renew," "notice" or "term." Note the end date and the notice window, then put both in the office calendar with a reminder set a month before the notice window opens. This one step has saved churches more money than any copier I've ever sold.
- Work out what you're actually paying per page Not the click rate you were quoted. The full figure, with the equipment payment included. The calculator does it from your own invoice, doesn't ask for your email, and doesn't mention me in the result.
Straight answer
I'll tell you if you're already getting a fair deal.
Sometimes the honest answer is that your current arrangement is fine and switching would cost you more than it saves. I would rather say that than sell you something you'll regret in year three. If your council needs a second quote on file, I'll give you a real one either way.
Ask me to quote it More about Logos Solutions