Seven questions to ask before signing with an equipment vendor

What this is about

Equipment vendors are the longest commitment a practice makes after the lease. A poorly-chosen vendor can stretch installation by months, trigger lease payments without revenue, and lock you into service contracts you cannot escape without legal action.

The seven questions below are the ones doctors who have already made the mistake wish they had asked. They are ordered by how much they reveal — the first matters most.

1. "Can I speak with three of your customers who installed within the last 18 months?"

The single most predictive question. A vendor with happy recent customers will produce names within a day. A vendor who hedges, redirects, or offers only customers from five years ago is signaling something.

Ask the references three things:

How close to the original timeline was the actual installation?
What was the worst week of the project?
Would you choose this vendor again?

The last question is the most honest. People hesitate before lying about a direct yes/no.

2. "Who, by name, will be my project manager — and what is their cell number?"

Equipment installations fail in the gaps between sales and operations. Sales promises a January delivery; operations is booked through March. You do not learn this until February.

Naming the project manager before the contract is signed forces a real handoff. Getting their phone number means you can call them when something slips — and they know you can.

If the vendor cannot name a project manager during the sales process, that is the answer.

3. "What is your standard remediation timeline when equipment fails out of the box?"

New equipment fails. The question is what happens next.

Good vendors have a documented process: a 24-hour response, a 72-hour loaner delivery, a defined escalation path. Bad vendors have a 1-800 number and a queue.

Ask for the timeline in writing. Ask what happens if the timeline is missed. A vendor who will not commit either way is telling you what the experience will be.

4. "What does the service contract cost in years two through five?"

The equipment price is usually fair. The service contract is where vendors recover margin.

Year one is often included. Year two doubles. By year five, annual service on a single chair or imaging unit can exceed $10,000.

Ask for the five-year total before negotiating the equipment price. Many vendors will reduce year-two-plus costs to close the equipment sale.

5. "What happens to my data if I cancel?"

Modern medical equipment is connected. X-ray systems, EHR-integrated chairs, dental imaging — all generate data, much of which lives on the vendor's servers or in their cloud.

If you switch vendors three years in, where does your data go? Most vendor contracts give them broad rights and you narrow ones. Read the data section of the contract before you read the price section.

This question also surfaces vendors who are using lock-in as a business model. The good ones answer plainly. The ones who get nervous are the answer.

6. "Will you give me names of GCs who have installed this equipment in the DMV?"

A vendor whose equipment your contractor has never touched is a setup for finger-pointing during installation. Walls get framed wrong, electrical is under-spec, plumbing arrives in the wrong location — and no one is at fault.

Ask the vendor for two or three DMV-area general contractors familiar with their equipment. If they do not have names, you are the integration project.

Cross-reference with your contractor: do they know this vendor? Have they done a clean install of this product?

7. "What is the cancellation penalty if I do not move forward?"

The honest answer is usually 10 to 25% of the order value. Some vendors hide larger penalties in the fine print — equipment-specific tooling, custom configuration, restocking fees that apply weeks after the contract is signed.

Ask for the cancellation terms in plain English. Ask when the cancellation window closes. If you cannot answer the question "what does it cost to walk away on day 30 vs. day 90?" before signing, you do not understand what you are signing.

The decision after the questions

If a vendor passes all seven questions cleanly, you still have not chosen them — you have qualified them. Get the same answers from two more vendors. Then choose on a combination of:

Project manager confidence (do you believe them?)
Reference quality (are the calls reassuring or rehearsed?)
Total five-year cost (not list price)
Contract terms (cancellation, data, service escalation)

The cheapest quote rarely wins. The vendor with the calmest project manager and the clearest references usually does.

What this prevents

Three real patterns from DMV physicians who skipped these questions:

A practice that delayed opening by 11 weeks because the equipment vendor was double-booked and never told them.
A practice paying $14,000 per year in service contracts on equipment that cost $28,000 — a multi-year contract sold during a tired late-day signing.
A practice that switched EHR vendors and discovered three years of imaging data was held hostage behind a six-figure data extraction fee.

Each of these is preventable with a 30-minute conversation before the contract is signed.

Drsops is launching in fall 2026 with verified peer reviews of medical contractors and equipment vendors in the DMV. Join the waitlist to be among the first to use it.