I wanted to reach out or more than anything vent about Schlinder.
They have basically been giving away their products in our area. I was hoping for insight on what others have been using for ammo on competing against them for new installs. It seems like we are beating our heads against the wall on competing with them. The Proprietary reason just does not work when they are giving it away at the beginning. We all realize it will be a catch 22 at the end.
Like I said just venting more than anything. Still would like to hear from the forum on their thoughts.
I can deal with maintaining their hydros, but the 3300s are very proprietary with not only their controls but also their belts... Opps...I forgot only Otis can call them belts, Schindler has to call them "suspension traction media". Anyway they do not monitor their belts like the Otis Gen2s they are designed for so many runs and then the elevator shuts down until they are replaced. So I can only imagine what Schindler would sell their belts for $$$. This makes them near impossible for anyone else to maintain at this point. But a building owner typically won't know till its too late.
The problem is the elevator selection decision is usually made by the architect and the general contractor who typically only care about taking up the least amount of space(no machine room) and price.
So if you can't get in front of the owner to sell them on the maintenance aspect of it we've found the next best thing is our relationship with the general contractors. If you are reliable, fair, honest, and easy to work with consistently we find that we can be more expensive and still get consistent work from some contractors. Some jobs don't even go out for bid with the really good relationships. This of course isn't with all contractors, there are many where it doesn't matter how good you are to work with, they will always award it to the company who is $500 less.
Just My 2 sense and I feel your pain.