Cranky Customer

The lease is non cancellable but they will make you a ridiculously bad buyout offer, higher than the remaining payments. This can be negotiated down but it will still be bad. What you can do is tell them you want to return the meter portion of the machine which is rented not leased. Then tell them that you want the monthly equipment lease amount only, without the meter rental or maintenance. This should save you approximately 45% of the monthly payment depending on your maintenance options. This will take a long time on telephone hold but they will finally come back and agree to it. Continue to make your monthly or quarterly revised lower payments or try and negotiate a new buyout using the new lower lease payment.

Try calling Pitney Bowes office of the President at 800-622-2296.

It is sad, since PB has some truly great products and some very talented staff. The big problem is that the sales reps are not given any authority to truly solve customer problems.

In addition, the company has become so large, it has lost touch with how to provice customer service. I think Pitney Bowes could take some lessons from Verizon Wireless, who in the last year or two has cleaned up their call centers' acts.

A company who takes their customers for granted won't succeed for long.

If you have a good sales rep, that's a plus. Again, they are limited in what they can provide for you, and they may not stick around too long. As a former rep, my career with Pitney was short-lived due to my inability to provide my clients with the sort of service I expect.

Unfortunately, the other vendors out there today are no better and perhaps MUCH worse.

It is time for someone new on the scene to show them how it needs to be done.

Do to an office closure we tried to return the machine 2 years early on a 5 year lease and they offered a buyout higher than the remaining lease payments. I did a little research and found that we could return the meter head and cancel the maintenance which saves about half of the monthly charges. That is what we opted to do. Pitney Bowes won't tell you about this option and you will get transferred around until they finally find someone who can agree to it. They sent us a revised invoice and we will pay that for the remaining 2 years. They have not sent the box to return the meter head yet and it has been over 2 weeks. Horrible company to do business with.

I work for a staffing agency and we had the exact same problem with Pitney Bowes but they refused to pick our old machine up after they had left us without a postage machine for 2 months, telling us the postmaster in our area said our machine had to be replaced because it was old (of course we later found out the postmaster did not tell Pitney Bowes this) then they said the new machine did not work because our phone lines were bad (after paying over $100 to have our lines serviced we found out this was not true either),then to add insult to injury there customer service people BLOCKED OUR PHONE CALLS. Yes, believe it or not they blocked our phone calls for over a week before we realized what they were doing.

It took us 3 months, 3 certified letters and in all honesty at least 50 phone calls to get our problem handled.

As soon as our lease is up we will drop Pitney Bowes like a hot potato! Their customer service is the absolute worse!

I am a technician working at the very soon to be closing sprint olathe kansas mailing factory. I can tell all pitney bowes customers first hand that pitney bowes will do anything they can to save money. For example Spint customers purchased 8 series high speed inserters that have a special "burst" mode. Our supervisors told us to never tell the customer about it or else face termination.

To anyone considering working for pitney bowes, two words..DON'T. The management consists of sociopaths who would backstab their mothers to get ahead.

As I type this, I've been on the phone for over 25 minutes getting routed around in Pitney Bowes phone tree hell. I'm trying to return their machine and get a check for the postage on it. After promising they would fax a form to request the postage amount, it was never received. As I wait on hold for a "Specialist" I get angrier and angrier that customer service with this company is CRAP! We are with Nexxpost now and they respond to our needs within the hour. Personal service with Nexxpost is SUPERB! "PIT"ney Bowes can take a flying leap! I can't wait to be done with this company, their products and the service, if you can call it that!

Let me begin by saying that I am a sales rep for an authorized FP (Francotyp Postalia) dealer. It is not my intent to try and sell anything here but to maybe provide some clarity on the meter industry and what to look out for.

The nature of the industry allows for the manufacturers to do one of the following: play by the rules and service the customer well, OR do only what is necessary to stave off legal action from the USPS and royally screw the customer. It is obvious what PB has decided to do.

Now let me go a little further. I have read every comment on here (the little fit thrown by Alan the PB employee was especially amusing - call your customers dumb, that'll ease their pain...Alan you are a moron) and I have seen several references to Neopost and Hasler as the saviors from PB. And that may very well be true in the market that the customers are in. I can tell you that in my market place (Central Arkansas) that this is not the case and this is largely due to the fact that the specific Neopost/Hasler dealer in my marketplace is only interested in market share, and the almighty dollar (much like PB). We have been an authorized FP dealer here for only 10 months and what we are finding is that most Neopost/Hasler customers in this market are charged HUNDREDS of dollars for annual rate updates, service response times can take days to weeks (maintenance contract irregardless), and what's worse is that they are actively screwing over State Government by low-balling prices, lying about State contract requirements, not fulfilling those requirements, and charging County and State entities exorbitant supply and rate change costs. This means that because of their greed, every taxpayer in my state gets screwed.

With all of this said, this is what is important: meters and mail handling equipment can help you, and if done right can actually save you time and money. But for God's sake be careful. Make your rep show you everything: ask them about USPS rate changes and the costs, ask them about maintenance, ask them about ALL of the details of their leasing program, ask them for a customer reference. And after that, ask yourself this: "If I had to ASK the rep for clarification on all of these issues, do I really want to do business with them? Why exactly are they playing games with me?" Even if it's not the big nasty PB, ask around about the specific dealer of the equipment you are looking at, not just the manufacturer. FP, Neopost, Hasler, all make great products and like all large manufacturers, their customer service can experience "hiccups" (I'm not referring to the systemic nihilism of PB here); but it's their dealer network that you are interfacing with and that is responsible for servicing your equipment and writing up the contracts. On the flip side of that coin, it is the manufacturer that is billing you in most all cases (or a leasing company), so you have to be aware of that duality as well.

Not many reps will be up front with you when it comes to postage equipment because it is very easy for them not to, sign you up, lock you in, if you don't like it well too bad. The most important thing to know is that you have options available to you, many reps like to make you think that you don't, keep them honest, if they're not upfront with you, kick them to the curb because I guarantee you that you will end up paying more than you signed up for simply because you didn't say "Don't screw me please."

BTW, PB is in court for ANOTHER customer based class action law-suit for unethical business practices. They just don't get it...

My company currently has a lease with Pitney Bowes, the original term of the lease was 6 freaking years which a former manager signed up for. With 45 months remaining we are required to pay $100 dollars a month ($4500 total over the life of he lease). We asked for an amount to terminate the lease and they would be happy to terminate it for $4500.

Pitney Bowles is horrible. The automated phone system loops and loops. I wanted to buy postage but I can't. They say my machine will do it automatically. It won't. So I call and call... I have been on the loop pushing buttons for over an hour. I recommend email. Stamp machines are terrible!!!!!