Kyocera launches leasing scheme

Kyocera has hit out at Hewlett Packard?s printer leasing scheme, Lease-a-Jet, saying it hides the cost of printer ownership by excluding toner and service charges in the lease.

Kyocera will start its own leasing programme this week through a joint Kyocera and Schroders Leasing agreement called Pageplan, which promises to include both maintenance and consumable costs in one lease price.

Continuing its cost-of-ownership struggle against market leader HP, Kyocera hopes to steal some ground on its rival by telling resellers to sell on the cost-per-page comparison with HP. According to Kyocera, resellers should tell their customers they will only have to pay for the pages they print.Resellers receive a two per cent commission on each sale under the Pageplan scheme. Schroders is to provide full training and it will make sales reps available for joint field visits to secure leasing agreements. It will also provide a Windows-based software program called Kyoquote for leasing sales and administration.

?Our cost per copy is just less than what people would pay for HP consumables,? said Neville Rawlings, Kyocera marketing manager, who criticised HP?s ?hidden consumables costs? in its leasing prices.

?Companies can acquire our printers outside of the IT purchase budget,? he added. ?They can pay out of the revenue budget and therefore replace the consumables purchase cost with an Ecosys lease cost, which includes consumables and maintenance.?