Complaint Review: Ricoh Americas Corporation

Why You Should Never Do Business with Ricoh USA, Ricoh Americas Corporation

Ricoh is a hard nose rip off company, which bill their customers by meter usage, as opposed to billing you a set price per month for supplies and services.

What Ricoh does is offer a trial period for the use of their office machines, to potential new customers. When a customer decides they do not want to move forward with Ricoh and not sign a service contract for the new machine(s), Ricoh picks up the machine(s), takes the machine, with usage already on it, now, from the trial customer, cleans the machine(s) up at their warehouse, and then resale it as a brand new, never used machine. Remember, the machine(s) now have usage on them from the previous customer.

When an unsuspecting customer purchases the machine(s), and signs a new contract with Ricoh for Service, they are later billed an exorbitant amount for copies they never made on the so-called new machines. Ricoh trains their installers (techs) to enter a very low start reading for billing, even though the machine(s) may have 500 to even 2000 copies! Any customer, who has only one, or two machines would see this scam right away and would call in to dispute the charges. However, a larger customer, with maybe 10, or more machines, would never catch the over charges and will be billed unknowingly, being ripped off by Ricoh.

Ricoh has thousands of large customers, whom they bill these exorbitant amounts of money for copies the customer never even made.

Another way they rip off their customers is that they will not enter an actual reading for a customer with, say a 2,000 base allowance. What Ricoh does is have their billing agents enter the same meter reading as the previous month, while the customer’s actual reading is steadily going up daily. When the customer is billed three or four billing cycles later, it looks like they went over their 2,000 base allowances, but in reality, they didn’t. This leads unsuspecting customers to increase their base allowance, thus increasing the amount of money they pay per month for supplies and service.

Yet, here’s another way Ricoh rips off its customers. Whenever a customer leases equipment from Ricoh, they are billed from two separate entities. One is Ricoh Americas Corporation, which handles the leasing aspect of the account. The other is Ricoh USA, which handles the supplies and services of the account.  Whenever a customer wants to cancel their lease agreement, Ricoh never comes to pick up the equipment. This leads the customer to continue to be billed for equipment they have requested to be canceled and picked up.  Customer usually ends up in collections, disputing charges Ricoh refuses to remove from their account. This usually ruins the customer’s credit.

Finally, here’s another way Ricoh rips off its customers. Each Ricoh machine is tagged with an Equipment ID number (EID) and a Serial Number. When a customer calls in for supplies or services, they are asked for their EID, and or, Serial Number. Ricoh will delete, or change the EID, or Serial Number in the database, so that when the customer calls in for supplies or service, they are told they do not have a contract with Ricoh, as their number is not in the system. The customer usually ends up waiting for days, if not weeks trying to get service for a machine, on a service agreement they are paying for monthly.

You should never sign a contract with Ricoh, as it is extremely difficult to have them removed leased equipment off of your premises. The reason for this is because Ricoh measures its net worth by the amount of machines they have out in the field at customers’ locations. The more machines they appear to have out in the field, the more valuable they appear to be to investors.

You have all rights to terminate any misleading contract you sign with them if you have experienced this with your Ricoh account(s). Contact you legal department or lawyer should you have any issues dealing with Ricoh.

I hope this helps. Good luck on the decisions you make.

Nicole Keggle- Advocate