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The worst transaction I have had to endure in over 25 years of office experience. A simple postage meter. $20/month rental for one year and i'll be spared that occasional trip to the post office. Sounds like a great deal, right? Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
The only straight shooting pitney bowes does is in their loss-leading initial rental offer: $20/month for 12 months. Month 13 and 14 came along and the price more than doubled. It's a small amount to begin with, so it escaped my attention. I then receive a hand-written fax from a sales rep.in very informal language [like I know her or something] she informs me it is time to renew my lease [lease? What lease? Renew?] and instructs me to simply sign by the little x's and fax it right back to her — and oh! I get a $5/month discount! [lucky me!] there are multiple pages of 6-point illegible font with little circled x's at the front. I stupidly sign when the document is presented to me in my usual fat pile without much scrutiny [guess I just don't deal with enough companies who use 'techniques' to get business as opposed to providing good value and service].
A few weeks later, I realize I am now paying $39 for the same machine I was previously paying $20 for, so I investigate. Lo & behold, I have signed a contract for 60 months! It is still very recent, so I call back my sales rep, [she's my friend after all]. Hmmmm, not so much.
At this point, I am motivated to check out the competition. The equivalent machine under a 60-month contract would cost me $15/month.
After multiple squeaky phone calls, I spoke to a woman in customer retention who reminded me of my kindergarten teacher. The end result after consuming 3-4 hours of my time [I had to throw numerous tantrums over several weeks] was a reduction of this lease to 12 months. Yay! A reduced sentence!
But my favourite is the valu-whatever-it-is [forced] insurance plan. I can escape the $7 adder to provide replacement/repair protection for this miraculous piece of equipment if I add pitney bowes as a loss payee on my insurance. Seriously? This irritation caused me to investigate the replacement value of the machine. $1800. This basic machine is perhaps the least sophisticated of office equipment, a notch above the adding machine. [for some bizarre reason, you cannot buy a postage meter outright.]
And today the final insult that propelled me to sing it out from the mountain tops, a bill with a due date of january 1 that arrived in my mailbox january 11. It says I will be charged a $12 fee (13% of the amount owing) if it is not paid on time. The writing is on the wall! [lessee, safe to say 13% x 12 months = 156%/anum = usury, don't they call it?]. Oh yeah, and 2% per month on top of that.
Pitney bowes is a very familiar name in postage meters. I was impressed, albeit irritated, by the sheer craftiness used in sticking their customers to long-term contracts with forced and quite unnecessary insurance coverage. There are other options. Stay far away, especially if you are a small business or charitable organization.
![Lease Finance Group [LFG]](/images/business/48-48/120234/lease-finance-group-lfg.jpg){kind=small}
I manage a small law firm and out of every vendor we use Pitney Bowes is by far the WORSE company I have had to deal with in our operations. Just today, it has taken me over 1 and 1/2 hours to download postage. They send you over seas and keep you on their phone of unecessarilty long periods of time. BEWARE OF THIS COMPANY.
Please stay away from Pitney Bowes and its related companies. Their company cultures are deceitful and unethical.
In my 30 plus years of working experiences I have never come across anything close to such disgusting business behavior. Never again I will deal with such dishonest evil business empire.
We have a Pitney Bowes meter and have had it for at least 2 yrs. We paid our bills every month, on time. When we recently moved our business to another location, I no longer was receiving invoices for the meter and purchase power. We have called 3 times, once to update our address. Still no invoices. Then we were locked out of the meter. Had to call and customer rep helped to update the postage software and unlock the machine. Which had postage on it, that we were paying finance charges for...This call lasted for almost 2 hrs and ended with a promise that she would fax me an invoice. Guess what? No invoice ever faxed. This morning I FINALLY have an invoice! Yay!. Guess What? There is a 20.00 late fee for Jan invoice the late fee on my mortgage is only $5.00, and they also tacked on another 7.99 fee for postage transfer. That was supposed to be waived and never charged again, according to the lady I spoke with in Nov 11. However, the gentleman with the "up yours' attitude said that my "plan" states that I wont be charged the 7.99 fee, as long as I download under 50.00 in postage. What? When did I sign up for a plan? Send me tha box, so I can send this crap back. We have used about 250.00 in actual postage and have paid at least 60.00 a month for meter rental invoices and postage. Almost 1500.00. Luckily we have moved right across the street from the post office. So, our customers will be receiving their invoices and mailouts with the good old fashioned stamp right in the upper corner. Pitney Bowes likes to "suprise" people. They had better watch out or eventually people will wake up and say enough is enough and they will end up in the pit, alongside their customers. They are too big to care about their customers anymore. I cant believe we put up with it as long as we did and paid as much money as we did only to be treated the way we were. You can shove your late fee, where the sun dont shine Pit, there are other options!
Pitney Bowes is a disgusting corporation to deal with. Every month they make the same 'error' on our invoice and over charge us by $20. Every month we call to adjust and they do the adjustment. Their machine is slower than hand applying stamps, and any 'savings' the machine claims to give you are lost 10 fold on paying for ink, monthly fees, and any other insane fee they try to sneak through hoping that you won't call them on it. I've convinced my entire office to switch to Postal Champs (http://www.paperdirect.com/Postal-Champ-Stamp-Applicator/-141655) pay $25 once and never pay again. You might lose a few cents to over stamping by a penny or two, but today at work the stupid Pitney Bowes machine wasted $4 on postage because it failed to alert me when it ran out of ink.
And no, I don't work for Postal Champ, I just hate Pitney Bowes. fair andbalanced on the other hand clearly works for Pitney Bowes, all he does it troll this web site for them, just check out some of the other swill he has posted defending the evil corporation. I will actively tell anyone who listens to never deal with them.