I'll play devil's advocate, I've been on both sides.

Customers and driven prices down significantly by only signing 1 year contracts to keep vendors on their toes and rolling groups of buildings into "national accounts". Less money=less service, parts and longer response times.

The majors have to compete so they make cuts in parts and the most expensive cost, labor, to meet investors expectations. The problem is the elevator industry is fairly stagnant so less investors will buy stock.

What other heavy equipment service industry has "full maintenance" contracts? Eventually customers will drive a major to cut full maintenance contracts and the rest will quickly follow. Call me crazy but my guess is Otis will try it first now that Carrier is running the show.

Maybe with the customer fronting the cost of repairs the company will hire more people to meet demand.