Most service contracts renew on substantially the same terms as last year, which is exactly the problem: the schedule has drifted, the rates have moved, and the exclusions have quietly grown.
Updated 2026-09-17 · 6 min read
A service agreement is usually negotiated once and renewed several times. Each renewal is presented as a formality, and mostly it is — but it is also the only point in the year when you have leverage, and the only point at which a year of billing problems can be fixed at the source rather than one invoice at a time.
Start with the equipment schedule
The covered equipment schedule decides more claims than any other part of the contract, and it is the part most likely to be out of date. Over a year a kitchen gains units, loses units, and replaces units under warranty with new serial numbers nobody recorded.
Walk the site against the schedule. Every unit you expect to be covered should appear by model and serial.
Remove equipment you no longer have. You may be paying a premium calculated on units that left the building.
Add anything installed mid-term, including replacements issued under a previous claim.
Check that units serving the same function are on the same coverage level, so a reach-in is not covered while its twin is not.
A unit missing from the schedule is not a paperwork problem. It is a repair you will pay for in full, and you will find out on the day it fails.
Rates, and how they moved
Compare this year's rate schedule against last year's line by line rather than against the headline premium. Increases are often distributed unevenly — the standard hourly rate holds while the after-hours multiplier, the trip minimum or the diagnostic fee moves.
Ask for the rates to be stated in a single schedule that covers standard hours, after-hours, weekends, holidays and travel. A contract that fixes some rates and leaves others to "prevailing rates" has left a gap you will be billed through.
Exclusion creep
Exclusion lists grow. A clause added at renewal is rarely pointed out, and a single word can move a whole category of repair onto your side of the line — "gaskets and seals" appearing in a consumables list changes the economics of every door repair for the next year.
If you have last year's document, compare the exclusion sections directly. If you do not, ask the vendor to identify what changed; a vendor unwilling to say what they altered has told you something useful.
What the response commitment actually promises
Response time terms are worth reading closely because they are frequently misread in both directions. A four-hour response commitment is an obligation the vendor owes you. It is not, by itself, authority to bill an emergency callout fee — that needs its own clause.
Is the response window defined in business hours or clock hours?
Does it differ by severity, and who classifies severity?
Is there a remedy if the window is missed, or is it a statement of intent?
Does any fee attach to an expedited response, and is it stated in the rate schedule?
Worth asking for at renewal
A refreshed equipment schedule as an appendix, dated and signed.
All labour and fee rates in one schedule, with no reference to prevailing rates.
A written definition of consumables, listing what it includes rather than leaving it open.
Confirmation of who performs required maintenance, and delivery of the records if the vendor does.
A statement that fees not listed in the rate schedule are not billable.
That last item is the most valuable and the most often granted, because a vendor billing honestly loses nothing by agreeing to it. It converts every unlisted fee from an argument into a simple question of fact.