If your software vendor also sells hardware, you have probably heard some version of that. It comes up more than any other question we get, and it usually comes up late — after the quotes are in, when somebody is nervous about signing.
This page is not an argument with your software vendor. It is what we would tell you on the phone: which company is responsible for what, and the one question worth putting in writing before you decide.
A scanner running your warehouse system involves three separate responsibilities. They get talked about as one, which is where the confusion starts.
The system the scanner talks to — Pronto, SAP, Manhattan Scale, JD Edwards or something written for you years ago. Only the people who make it can support it. That is true no matter where the hardware came from, and nothing on this page suggests otherwise.
The device itself. A Zebra warranty is Zebra's warranty — it attaches to the serial number of the unit, for a period that starts when it is bought. It is not issued by whoever sold it to you, and it does not change shape depending on which reseller's invoice it came on.
Choosing the right keypad. Staging fifty devices so they join your wifi and open the right session. The battery in year two, the screen in year three, the spare in the drawer. This is the part that is actually up for grabs, and it is what we do.
The confusion is almost always between 1 and 3. "We will not support it" is usually heard as "your warranty is void", but those are different claims about different things. It is worth finding out which one is being made — and that is a question with a simple answer, in writing, from the people making it.
Not to catch anyone out. Because a written answer turns a conversation you half-remember into something you can act on.
“If we buy the Zebra hardware from another supplier, does that change anything in our support agreement with you? If it does, could you point me to the clause?”
Some agreements genuinely do specify supported hardware, or a supported configuration, and there can be sensible reasons for it. If your contract says so, that is the end of it — buy the hardware from them. We would tell you the same thing on the phone, and we would rather you did that than got yourself into trouble to save a few hundred dollars a unit.
Which is worth having, because it is usually worth a good deal of money across a fleet. And it is not only about price — it is about who you would rather have on the phone when a device fails in a cold store on a Friday afternoon.
We have no idea what is in your agreement, and anyone who tells you otherwise without reading it is guessing. That is exactly why the question is worth asking rather than assumed either way.
We would rather say this than have you find out we left it out.
When a rollout goes wrong, having one company responsible for all of it is worth real money. If the project is big, tight on time, and you have been burned before by two suppliers pointing at each other — pay the difference and sleep.
If it is going through a capital approval with the software, splitting the purchase can cost more in paperwork and delay than it saves on the units. Nobody ever got thanked for a purchase order that took three extra weeks.
If your vendor is configuring every device, testing against your system and shipping them ready to work, that has real value in it. Two things worth asking, though: is the staging actually happening, and is it included in the unit price or billed on top?
Ours is included. It is not a line on the invoice and never has been, because a device that arrives not working is not finished.
Anyone can forward a Zebra order. Here is what the thirty-five years is actually for.
Running Pronto, we would supply the 38-key MC3400 rather than the 47-key. Pronto's function keys sit along the bottom row of the 38-key layout, one press away. On the 47-key you press FUNC and then a number — two presses instead of one, on every transaction, all day, by every operator.
No data sheet tells you that. It comes from having put both in front of people who use them for eight hours. Order the wrong one across forty devices and you have bought a permanent tax on every scan.
Devices that arrive on your wifi, opening the right session, with the scanner configured to send what your system expects. Not a carton of factory-default units and a login.
Then the unglamorous part that decides whether year three is expensive: batteries, screens, printheads, a spare on the shelf, and someone who repairs them rather than quoting a replacement.
We have been doing this since 1991, through Symbol, then Motorola, then Zebra — the same equipment under three badges. That is not a boast about longevity. It is the reason we know which keypad Pronto wants, and it is not the sort of thing a company whose main business is software has any reason to know.
We are not the cheapest place in Australia to buy a barcode scanner, and we have never pretended to be. There are online sellers who will beat us on a single handheld, and if that is all you need, buy it from them with our blessing.
What we will do is publish the number. Every price on this site is the price — printers, scanners, labels, service rates. You can check us in ten seconds without speaking to anyone, which is not something the rest of this trade makes easy.
And look at the bottom of the quote. We do not put freight on a large order. A customer once showed us a forty thousand dollar quote from a competitor with twenty dollars of freight on the bottom of it, and what he remembered about that quote — the only thing he remembered — was the twenty dollars. On an order that size we will bring it to you, and around Sydney we usually do. We have driven three hours each way to hand over forty scanners when that was what the job needed.
So compare it. Take whatever you have been quoted for an MC3400 or an MC9400, and put it next to ours. We are frequently a good deal less than a quote that arrives bundled with a software project, and the only way anybody finds that out is by looking. If we are dearer, you have lost ten seconds and you will know.
Tell us what you run, how many, and what you have been quoted. We will tell you what we would charge and what we would configure differently — and if buying from your software vendor is the right call, we will say so.
