Louise Unsworth, business unit manager at Brother UK, continues to explain how supplying genuine supplies is essential in fostering great relationships with customers, helping them to enhance security, reduce health risks and avoid unexpected costs.
Being aware of the impact that counterfeit supplies can have is one thing, but it’s also important to consider the quality of those from third party providers. There’s often a perception that they are cheaper alternatives offering similar performance to genuine supplies, but this is far from the case. Non-genuine supplies are causing a variety of issues for end-users, damaging hardware and impacting the quality of print.
Nobody wants to have to fork out for a new printer after one becomes damaged by poor quality supplies, or overhaul a fleet of faulty machines, let alone deal with the associated downtime. It’s easy to see how this could impact relationships between customers, partners and vendors.
Most hardware comes with a warranty. The higher value the item, the more important that warranty is. The last thing we want is dissatisfied end-customers due to void warranty, and this can potentially be caused if non-genuine or counterfeit supplies are used. If it’s deemed that third-party supplies are a cause of hardware damage, then warranties can become void and the end-customer will likely have to fund a replacement.
Such a sudden high cost could be a real blow for a smaller company to deal with, not to mention the effect this could have on the business operations in the short term. This is where customer education from the outset is key for supplies. Even if partners are not involved in providing the third-party supplies, the warranty could still be void, and it’s easy to see how this could potentially damage relationships with end users.
Most print manufactures will be able to determine whether third-party products helped to cause problems that resulted in a fault, so is it worth the risk to you or your customers?
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