Is it best to lease/rent a digital copier or should I own it? Should I have my copier service contract included in my monthly lease payment?

My 10 years of experience selling new and used copiers tells me that you are better off owning your copier machine. The reasoning for this answer is simple, you’ll save money! The obvious savings is that you won’t be paying a monthly interest fee to the financial institution, but the bigger savings is on the capital cost. When you lease a digital copier the copier dealer will normally set up a 36 or 48 month term. At the end of this term, they will give you an option to buy your copier machine out right for a residual value. You will also be given the opportunity to upgrade to a newer copier. Both of these options end up spending you valuable profits.
If you buy your digital copier at the end of the lease for FMV, you will have paid for the price of the copier machine (during the lease) as well as an additional 25-35% buy out premium. Not to mention the fact that if you don’t keep the photocopier you might be responsible for packaging and shipping costs that can exceed $1,000. Yes, you have to ship the copier back to the leasing company- which in some cases is not the copier dealer you bought the photocopier from! In the second scenario if you upgrade to a new digital copier at the end of your copier lease you will continue your lease payment schedules for eternity. Unlike what other copier dealers may have told you, technology on a photocopier does not obsolete itself in three years. Unless you used the copier machine to the full extent of its life cycle (Typically millions of copies) you could have owned the photocopier for years 4 and 5 without any payments on the copier machine. Add up 24 months of payments and that’s the true cost of leasing you digital copier. Digital Copier Supercenter avoids the normal pitfalls of a copier lease by providing our customers with a $1 buyout at the end of term.
As for the second part of this question, I would not recommend having your copier service contract included in your monthly lease payment. Although it may seem easy to track, try to stay away from this type of copier lease. The main reason is you will be charged interest/finance charge on all the prints/copies you make. If you don’t hit your monthly allowed volume you also will be paying for copies you don’t use. To keep things simple and straight forward we break the pricing out so you can better compare prices. By separating the service rate from your copier purchase you will save money as well as gain the flexibility to mold the contract to suit your needs and allow for potential growth. If your volume increases your service cost per page rate decreases.