Buying A Used Restaurant Pager
Depending on the unique circumstances of your operation, you may find yourself considering buying a used restaurant pager system. This no doubt presents quite a few pros and cons.
Investment in any part of your restaurant business should be tackled with sensible, long-term procurement objectives, which can mean that cheapest doesn’t always equal the best.
Anyway, first, let’s look at the cons.
Like anything that is used or not new, there is going to be a usage history to it that you’re probably unaware of (unless you’ve purchased from someone you know). Units may have been dropped, repaired or even not have worked properly in the first place. Buying 2nd-hand really doesn’t give you much come-back if this is the case.
Consider also the battery-usage in the units you are buying too – many pagers don’t use standard AA or AAA batteries, and could use expensive proprietary batteries. It could well be that the pager batteries have reached the end of their useful life.
More than likely, any warranty or after-sales support is well and truly expired, and will come at a cost to renew or continue.
And unlike a new system, you’re unlikely to get any installation or training support (at least without a cost). Having said that, pager systems aren’t really that hard to use, but there can be a bit involved in getting them tailored specifically to your needs for a start.
Make sure that there is no finance owing on the system. For example, if you buy from a restaurant that is about to go into liquidation, you could find the liquidators on your door a few weeks down the track.
Consider also if there are still readily available spares or replacement parts. Is the unit still in production? Or has it been replaced by a new model. And are they compatible?
Pros
To be honest, I don’t have many positive points for buying a used restaurant pager system.
Obviously, a used restaurant pager system is going to be a heck of a lot cheaper than a brand new one. This means that you can use your budget to possibly buy a better system. So you could buy a brand-name pager that you may have some knowledge of it’s reputation without having to buy a system you have never heard of.
Ultimately, it’s a business risk where you need to weigh the negatives with the positives, and only you can make that call.
If cost is a big factor in your decision, maybe another option to consider would be leasing, or a cellphone based paging system.
You should also bear in mind that the cost of technology really is coming down all the time. Highly versatile paging systems can be bought at a fraction of the cost that they would have cost 3-5 years ago.
If you are set on buying a used restaurant pager system, at least see if you can look at the same (or a similar) one in operation (much the same as if you were buying a new one).
