Forum Moderators: buckworks
Their claim is they are "protecting dealers" with storefronts--which we also have but most of our sales are on the web. We sell locally, but if we sell outside of our market the manufacturer will not extend the warranty to the buyer. I've had many say "they can't do that" Incidentally we have invested the same money with their POS items as other storefront retailers.
Any thoughts on this?
If it does then maybe consider bonded warehousing? You put up a secure inventory bond and your supplier puts some product (that you can rotate) on your shelves. With the secure bond in place your organization doesn't pay for the product until you pull it for an order.
That way they don't know how the sale originated they just know that you shipped it from your location...
That we advertise only their batteries, and that we show only list (MSRP) prices. They also complained about us selling "out of our territory", but when I told them that we had no "territory" they got confused and gave up on that one.
We don't sell that brand any more. We sell their major competitor, who has no qualms with us doing what we do. We do still get some occasional hate mail from the original distributor about us "undercutting" prices and "ruining territories" (what that means, I think, is that we are taking his customers).
The simple fact is, the old model of "territories" is dead in many industries, and will soon be dead in most others. A lot of companies have failed to realize yet that the internet has changed everything. Some changes are subtle, but they are there.
"How about making deals with dealers in the buyer's region"
I'd prefer not to get into that. The people that call us have seen the product in their area but those dealer prices are through the roof.
"So what happens if you take a phone sale outside your market? Would that sale qualify for extended warranty?"
With a few manufacturers the warranty is not extended through the manufacturer. This leads to another problem. Most people are aware they are not covered if they buy off the web because these manufacturers state it on their websites. Dealers are catching on, informing their potential customers of the warranty issue so as not to lose the sale. Ocassionally we sell to some that aren't aware of it--sometimes it gets so busy we forget and I don't want angry customers that discover this after the fact.
Problem is other sites that sell the same product mention nothing about internet warranties. We provide information on two products that have the policy--a page link detailing who is covered and who is not. But with the way people surf the web, many don't see the link and we don't want to place a big "NO WARRANTY" link on those pages. I feel I've done enough if people are serious about spending that kind of money. They should do their research. Some that are aware of the warranty issue do buy, others opt to go with the local dealer.
We don't stock any products. They come from distributors that drop ship for us. About our competitors on the web: All of them(or the ones that count) list warranty coverage, assuming the product is bought locally, yet nothing is mentioned about internet sales. We have one other manufacturer that has recently implemented the same warranty issue, but we haven't put the information on the site yet.
Keep 'em coming but that would get extremely expensive if we had a few failed products. By the way, these are fixed goods and cannot be returned. The only solution is complete replacement. I thought I heard something about manufacturers having to provide some kind of warranty by law?
