Loyalty is a good instinct. You find a vendor, the relationship works, and staying put feels safer than starting over. We understand it — we're a relationship business ourselves, and some of our clients have been with us for a decade.
But here's what we've watched happen, over and over, in our industry: as a vendor relationship ages, it quietly becomes one-sided. The annual increase goes through — every year. Charges appear that weren't there at the start. The contract that used to include more now includes less. None of it feels like a decision, because no single year's change is big enough to force one. And when the thought of looking elsewhere comes up, the answer is automatic: "we're just used to what we're doing."
The compounding problem
That's the cost of loyalty: it compounds. A relationship priced fairly fifteen years ago can drift a long way from what the market looks like today. Some providers don't charge for freight — does yours? Some hold increases down, or cap them in the contract. Some include more in the agreement — supplies, service tiers, loaners — than they did a decade ago. If nobody's compared in years, nobody knows.
What an evaluation looks like
Not a sales pitch. An accounting. What are you actually paying per page? What's in the contract now versus what was in it originally? What would the same arrangement cost if it were priced today? A free Print Navigator assessment or a lease review answers those questions with your own numbers — and if the answer is that your current arrangement holds up, we'll tell you that, too. Loyalty is worth keeping. It's just worth knowing what it costs.
— The Next Level team
