Guys, the lesson here isn't about specific brands, as much as fanboy's want to make it about that. Everything has a support life, be it 5, 7 or 10+ years. Not only should that be factored in to your purchase decision, you have to be prepared for less because this is an aspirational timespan that is dependant on a lot of planning and luck. Yes, your favorite brand too. Support clauses go through lawyers who make sure the company has a lot of 'outs' because as I keep saying, OEM's have their own timeframes and all it takes is a complex part that has a systemic issue to blow up support for a product line.
Imagine your laser scanner uses an imaging device from supplier S and the optical coating they used changes characteristics and degrades over time in a harmful way. Service stock of the replacement part is either similarly affected, or was depleted by the first round of failures. You don't stock a replacement part for every machine you ever sold, you stock a very small percentage based on tightly held statistics of failure rates of previous parts. You might increase your stock based on trends you see during the model line's lifetime, but getting an OEM to spin up production is costly so you batch it out. The OEM stopped making the part years ago, your brand sourced it out of stock that was in their inventory at a good price, supply was good at the time, when it started getting constrained you discontinued the product. At that point the part may have been out of production for many years and the OEM already sold the outdated equipment that made that part when they switched to more modern and improved imaging devices. Now you are seeing lots of failures in the field on "Out of Warranty" but not "End of Life" products. What does the company do? It points at their support contracts and policies that gives them a clear exemption for precisely this issue. That 10 years you planned on is out the window, and you have little to no recourse.
If you are a major customer, you will likely get a deep (and I'm talking 30-50%) discount on replacement units, because it is worth it to keep brand loyalty and you know that there will be incidental orders that spring from this. In the worst cases (from the suppliers point of view), the customer might even get whole unit replacements. The business case will identify if the supplier will make the discounts or expenditures back over time. Sales has their own budgets for this, even if support tells them to go to hell. A big customer knows that the 10 years they were told has exceptions, they're experienced and you've provided them the OEM unavailability as why you can't support it anymore. The customer had the equipment scheduled for phase out in a year or two anyway, everything works out.
But if you are Mr. Imortgagedmyhousetobuythis, anything they offer you is a kindness that they are under no legal obligation to make. You will pay more for a lawyer than you will ever get from them, they have no incentive to offer the deep discounts to small frys, they are a business, this would be a long term loss, and unfortunately that's just one of the lessons of life. As a small business you just aren't as important since you can't generate the same revenue as a large customer. It's not unfair, it's business. From your standpoint it may be bad business, and you will come to some forum like this and complain, but there will be 5 fanboys of the brand that will contradict you and tell you it's your fault. The company isn't going to miss your business and complaining publicly won't harm their reputation as much as you might hope. After all, you are riding their machine until its last breath, big business buyers and decision makers will roll their eyes at your complaints. There is lower hanging fruit from a support standpoint as far as maintaining one's reputation, EOL issues isn't one of them.
There are good and bad support people in every company. For the most part they want to help you, even if you are a little guy. I made it my policy a long time ago to ignore who the customer is (here in Asia there is so much big customer worship) and provide good service to everyone. But small businesses are at a disadvantage, and if you haven't internalized and accommodated for this than you shouldn't be in business. Again, it is fair, big companies get better support and discounts because they spend astronomically more and are a consistent revenue stream.
Get bigger or learn to shmooze the support people and make their jobs easy so they go out of their way for you. You are under duress when dealing with support, and it is easy to let your frustration get the better of you, but anger doesn't help as much as you think it does, and support people can screw you if you give them a reason to. Know when and how to escalate issues when that doesn't work. Know how to find alternate means of support, through the community or from independent repair. Third party repair people are smart and capable and will perform miracles far greater than any manufacturer is willing, they take repairing stuff as a challenge, utilize them. They are small like you and know what you are facing.
It's not about the brand, they are all ultimately constrained buy the same circumstances of the business, it's about you and your determination to make shit work and get it done. Good luck.
