Suddenly in the last few weeks, my upgraded customers are getting a rush of bills from one of KM's preferred leasing Vendors. The Bill is usually marked "Damaged Goods". The final straw today has been a call from one of our good Law Firms customers. She got a bill dated 7/10/04 for Damaged goods dated 8/10/2002! She threw it in the trash can, but of course now is dealing with past due charges and a collection call. Any ideas or contacts?

Damaged goods ??? like returned machines??? Is this GE??? need more input

Yes, upgrade to return, in working order, shipped properly, no notices of problems with equipment until the customer received bill. No detail available from leasing company.

sounds like a lease company scam to me... I sure wouldn't send any other deals to them

This is a problem across the board, there are a few leasing co. out there that practice this on every piece of equip. that gets shipped to there perferred warehouse. You should ask them to provide you as the dealer an estimate of the damage and the signed bill of lading from the trucking co. if no damage was reported at the time they received the unit,your customer is off the hook, this will take a few phone calls from you the dealer, but its worth it to save a good customer.

Dave

GE (mid-west copier exchange in Vegas) hits our customers all the time, If you call them and bitch about it they will often remove the charges (that's how you know they are full of crap).

I got one last week where the problem was described as "machine was dead/no power, doc feeder jams"

I call and how did the doc feeder indicate a jam if the machine was dead? they removed the charges.

About six months ago one of our customers was invoiced over $500 for a problem described as a jamming doc feeder, I called and explained that even if they put new rollers in (which they don't) its about a $200 job at max. They told me they had a new price sheet as of "a few weeks ago" and reduced the price down to $225, I call a few weeks later to get a more technical desciption of what the problem was and they couldn't produce any documentation, so they dropped the invoice totally.

My guess is that every 15th machine they get through the door gets a damage invoice. KEEP YOUR PAPERWORK STRAIGHT, make sure your S/N's are clearly marked on the bill of laiding and when they invoice your customer for damage, YOU CALL THE SHIPPING COMPANY FIRST to get a copy of the signed bill of laiding from when the box was dropped off, It will not indicate any damage, fax that down to the lease return guys and tell them to credit the damage invoice.