Don wrote:

"J. Clarke" wrote
"Don" wrote
Anybody know how to get ahold of Shop Fox?
I found their phone number and just called them to find a local
distributer. Called them up and a ditz answered and I asked her for the
contact info for a local distributer of their products.

What led you to believe that she was a "ditz"?

Well, she put me on hold 3 times.

Which probably means that she had to take other calls and put _them_ on hold
or direct them to the appropriate party.

She said *Um* after every other word.

So does William F. Buckley. Regardless of what they think of his politics
I've never heard anybody refer to him as stupid.

She was not well informed of their office procedures, and didn't know how
to deliver the message effectively.

I thought you were trying to find a place to buy a product, not conducting a
survey on office procedures.

I could go on but I'm certain that in
this day age most people over the age of say, 12 or so, are well aware of
the type of people that generally answer the phones of large corporations.

What type of people are those?

And did you ask for a
"distributer" or a "dealer"? The two aren't the same.

I initially told her I wanted to purchase at least two Shop Fox products
and I asked for places locally that can sell them to me. She asked for my
zip code which I gave to her. She then proceeded to tell me of a place in
another town, 25-30 miles away through severly dense traffic. Its tourist
season around here and the roads are slammed.

So what did you expect her to do, have Scotty beam down a factory showroom
across the street from you?

She only had 1 and that was 25 miles away.
Bear in mind I live in one of the 10th largest cities in FL.

In other words you live in either a bedroom community or a small town.

My town, Cape Coral, has a population of more than 125,000 and the town
where she mentioned the dealer was located, Fort Myers, is similarly
populated. Do these sound like small towns. Oh BTW: The population around
here doubles during the tourist season, which is going on right now.

Yeah, they're pretty small. Might be a fair sized metropolitan area when
you put them together, but not so big that there would be a whole bunch of
places selling stationary power tools. As for the population doubling
during the tourist season, how many tourists buy stationary power tools to
take home with them?

I told her they were making it difficult to do business with them.

What do you expect them to do, buy a storefront a block down the street
from
you?

Are you being deliberately obtuse or what?
I expect Shop Fox to use a business plan similar to their competitors so
that they may be successful in business, to get their products to
interested consumers in various ways.

So buy from one of their competitors whose business plan puts a dealer who
will sell to you on terms that you find acceptable in a location which you
find to be acceptable. Nobody is forcing you to buy Shop Fox.

Or suggest a means by which they might ensure that there is such a reseller
other than buy building a store across the street from you.

Right now, I can purchase any sort of Delta, DeWalt, B&D, Skill,
Milwaukee, Ryobi, etc., tool that I might want, from at least several
sources within 10 miles of my home. But I can't find anyway at all to
puchase Shop Fox products in person.
Hello? Anyone home in your head?

Then buy one.

She replied arrogantly and insultingly so I bid her farewell.
I called the contact she gave me and got a recording to another number.
I called the other number and the guy told me I would have to order
$2000 worth of stuff or wait 30-60 days, after paying him in full, for
him to gather up $2000 worth of orders so he could avoid paying
shipping. I then asked him how much would the shipping be for the Shop
Fox H0625 drill press and he told me he didn't want to waste his time
ordering 1 thing. Okie-Dokie.

Sounds like he's not a very good salesman. Perhaps you should talk to
them
about picking up the line if you think you could do better.

Do better at what? Someone else's job?

At making money selling Shop Fox.

No thanks.
I spend most of my time running my own business.

So it's your perception as a business owner that there is not enough market
for Shop Fox products in your area to justify your setting up a business
for the purpose of selling them? If you don't think you can make enough
money selling Shop Fox in a location convenient to you to make it
interesting for you to do so, then what makes you think that anybody _else_
would think that there would be any profit in doing so?

Now that I know how difficult it is to just purchase their products my
confidence in their service after the fact has been jeopardized.
If I want this thing it looks like I'll have to order it online.

And this is a problem because?

sigh
As I said in another post, I'd prefer to make big ticket purchases in
person.
But alas it looks like I will have to make my purchases online.

Or buy from another vendor.

It sounds to me like they're going to make the sale to you no matter what
they do, so their business plan seems to be working just fine in your case.

BTW: Shop Fox's website is: www.shopfox.biz and the phone number is:
1.800.647.8801

And lots of people wonder why I can barely tolerate anyone anymore.

Actually that's pretty clear.

Whats pretty clear John, is that you have a bug in your ass and you want
to take it out on me.

Well, you're the one who seems really irate over things that anybody who
owns a business would not normally be irate over. Keep sweating the petty
things and you're going to have a heart attack.

I tried to conduct some friendly business with a large corporation that
didn't seem to care about selling their products.

Or perhaps they're simply cleverer than you think, considering that it seems
that after this experience that you percieve to be so horrible you're still
going to hunt down an online reseller and buy from them anyway.

If you have never been in a similar situation then you should consider
getting out more often.

What do you mean by "a similar situation"? If you mean the situation of
having to order something online, that gives me little trauma. If you mean
in the situation of foaming at the mouth because a company has not
persuaded anybody within ****ing distance of me to stock their product for
immediate delivery, then, no, things like that don't bother me.

BTW John, its people with attitudes like yours that are the reason for my
last line above.

Yep, spring-loaded in the ****ed-off position. God help your employees.

--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)