[kevin_nisbet]

Yup, even for smaller business stuff. For a non-profit I'm on the board of, the staff wanted a more useful printer/copy machine than just a store bought thing, it's a small office, so I said sure find something and let us know.

So I get a contract and am told it's been vetted and I should sign it. What I found was outrageous.

- If we cancelled for any reason, including if they just didn't do any of there terms in the contract, we owed the full price of the remaining contract immediately.

- The way they structured it was also as a rental, so we were paying full price for purchase of the equipment embedded into the term of the contract, but it was the vendors equipment, so if we cancelled we still paid them full price for the equipment, and they got to keep it.

- If there were any legal disputes, no matter which party was at fault, my side would pay for all the lawyers.

I said nope, can't do it. And my staff were pissed at me for like a year because everyone just signs those things.

[trollbridge]

I’m also on a nonprofit board. They have an independent LLC and an independent nonprofit which signs contracts for various services like that, and then contracts with the “real” nonprofit to actually use the services. Was advised to set it up this way by an experienced nonprofit consultant.

We had to shred a bad contract (oddly enough, also for a printer / copier) and simply abandoned the LLC and declared it defunct. The service provider never has even showed up to pick up the printer. It was a pay per page contract where they unilaterally raised the price about 200% for no reason.

We also abandoned a water cooler and water cooler service after the vendor simply refused to answer our requests to end the service. (It’s $20 a month. There was no long term contract signed.) Apparently nonprofits are a target for this sort of thing, so we now don’t even mention we are a nonprofit and handle business relationships via the LLC.

It’s absurd things have become this way.

[daheza]

How are you setting up LLCs nowadays? I set one up through legalzoom and get charged an increasing amount each year (it increased $100) this year and I can't cancel / dissolve the charges via the UI. Even though I signed up online, I have to contact the state to dissolve the LLC then show legalzoom proof in order to cancel their yearly fee. Its pretty crazy.

Are there other better vendors for this kind of work out there?

[xmprt]

I get why your staff would be pissed because dealing with a crappy printer/scanner is the bane of a lot of office workers' existence... but they must have been able to find a better vendor or something off the shelf which supported the features they needed right? What special feature could they possibly offer to make them brave enough to put all those terms in their contract?

[yobbo]

They count on potential customers not reading the contracts, or being able to do math or research themselves.

Typical customers for these types of scams are small offices with no technical person in the loop.