Discovery Office Systems

We have two copiers leased through this company and it’s been a nightmare for the entire company. We pay over $ 800 per month for them and they break constantly. We’ve had every excuse in the book from them on why these copiers are so unreliable. We have service here at least once a month, many months more than once. Service is also severely lacking.
We have issues with getting toner. They were to auto-​ship toner so that we would not have to keep track of inventory. They have software on our server that tracks usage so they know when to ship toner but they never managed to get this right. Since the beginning of our lease we have had issues getting toner. At one point I was so frustrated, I emailed the president & VP and one of them called me immediately. I appreciated the call and the issue went away after discussion but after 6 months we had the same issues AGAIN. I gave up trying to fix their business problems by complaining and just had to start emailing them and saying, please send me x cartridges as we are out. They still ship me stuff automatically but not reliably. We ran out of Cyan for both our copiers just last week and we were out black last month. It’s frustrating.
I’ve rented Canon’s, Konica Minolta, Xerox and now these Kyoceras. These are the worst copiers I have ever leased. They break constantly. One has had 28 service calls in 3 years! When I asked about the quality of the machines due to them breaking constantly we were told oh well your floors aren’t level. They were, we checked. They sit on a concrete floor with very thin commercial carpet. They then told us we should rip up the 1/​16″ thin carpet and sit on concrete. WHAT? All these other copiers I’ve leased sat on a carpet just like this one without a problem. They will blame everything except their equipment.
Even the techs have started to be sheepish about the systems when you ask them. You can tell they know they are bad.
The lease they have you sign, read it carefully and make them put in level of service agreements. They don’t include them so of course you can’t go back on them for faulty equipment, lack of service, lack of toner delivery. Their lease basically says you pay them and you can’t break the lease without paying the full term. Nothing about levels of service, etc, nothing to protect the client or consumer. They don’t put in a service level agreement because they would not be able to live up to it.
I’ve had techs call and say they would be here and not show up until the next day when equipment was down.
We asked about getting out of our lease and since they do not put service level agreements in them there is really only them letting us out of the lease. When we asked about it they said we’d have to pay them the full lease terms so basically it was about 30K. I should mention we could buy two of these machines for less than $ 10k right now.
Months later I was again disgusted with Discovery after RUNNING OUT OF TONER. I emailed the CEO AGAIN. It was a new CEO. The CEO and Service Manager came to meet with us. They made more promises. Said they would call us by Friday with «options». Didn’t hear back from them. Called them on Tues and finally got my «option» which was to keep this crap and keep putting up with their lackluster service.
WHEN THE CEO AND SERVICE MANAGER CAN’T MANAGE TO KEEP THEIR PROMISE TO CALL BACK A LONG TIME CUSTOMER WHO PAYS THEM ALMOST $ 1K A MONTH YOU SHOULD NOT BOTHER DOING BUSINESS WITH THEM.
When they did get back to us it was on the phone. Nothing in email even though this is the way we communicated to them. No records. They promised us after calling back with our single OPTION (not OPTIONS) that a tech would come out pro-​actively every week to check our machines. That happened for three weeks. Then they stopped.
They claim to recycle toner but when you ask a tech to take it with them, half the time they say they don’t have room in their car. Consider you will need to pay to ship it in for recycling. Consider that I’ve been told by at least two employees at Discovery to just ‘throw them away”. When I pushed the issue they issued a memo to their employees about recycling. We continue to have problems recycling and have had to ship out of our own money in order to be responsible earthlings. :)
You can lease a Canon, Xerox or Konica Minolta for the same from other companies with better service records.
I’ve been addressing this companies service issues for three years and I’m exhausted, don’t sign yourself up for the same headache.
Also consider that the service «award» they have won several years in a row «Northbays BEST» readers poll. They are a sponsor of the magazine and the poll! I’m sure it will buy them another year of being the best at something, but it isn’t the best at providing service, good equipment or keeping promises.