Fuck You, you underpricing rule-breaking assholes

The BBQ Pit
1

The Widget is priced at 100.00. The batteries are priced at 30.00

You are allowed to sell at a discount, of course. Nobody sells at list.

There is something called an MAP, Minimum Advertised Price. That is set by Widget Company. The Widget is MAP’d at $ 85.00. The batteries are MAP’d at 25.00.

You heartless cheap-assed lying thieving rule-breaking motherfuckers, you are selling a Widget at 70.00 and the batteries for under 20.00.

You know it is prohibited. You don’t give a fuck- because you know Widget Company wants to ship units more than it wants it’s dealer network to play by “the rules”.

I always play by the rules. So, I lose sales.

Fuck you, dealers who cannot obey the rules. I hope your place of business is overcome with swarms of flying cockroaches. I hope that snakes pierce the foundation walls and bite the asses of employees while they are defectaing. I fervently hope that on a weekend one find summer day, the roof of your building is torn off by a tornado. ( weekend event, so that nobody is hurt. )

I pray the IRS crawls up into your lower descending colon with a Xenon powered flashlight so very powerful and all-illuminating that your tiniest infraction, the extra Mochaccino that you deducted from Starbucks illegally in 2002 costs you your business.

May the water taps start spewing e.coliform-impacted chunks of bacterial disease. May your website mysteriously be lnked to various terrorist websites, and cause you to be investigated out of business by Homeland Security.

Fuck you for cheating. The world is full of cheats, this business is full of cheats. Fuck it, I won’t cheat. Not even a bit. I wont’ sell overseas because i am not supposed to. I won’t sell within my state and not charge sales tax cause that’s against the law.

Fuck you, you lazy sneaky cheat fuck.

This isn’t some goddamned tap-dance game show, I feed my family by selling Widgets at a fair price, giving discounts to people I train to use Widgets. I eat costs, I ship on my nickel, I do the right thing by the people who hemorrhage money to get a Widget into their hands.

This is the third company in a week I’ve caught doing this. I send the info on to Widget Company. You bet I do. You fuck me over by cheating and lying, you bet I’ll fucking turn you in. Hope Widget Company rips away your right to sell Widgets.

Fuckers.

:mad:

Cartooniverse

2

The Widget costs many thousands of dollars. The prices used here are for example only. The profit margin, slim as it is, really does help me support my family.

3

I’m a thing-a-ma-bob user, myself.

4

Good show. I particularly liked the snakes through the restroom walls and the IRS Xenon proctoscopes (which apparently triggered ads for LED flashlights and Irritable Bowel Disease, plus an Evangelical site somehow).

5

Unfortunatly MAP pricing is not a rule for selling the item at a certain price. The term is Minimum Advertised Price. They can sell the item for less but they’re not supposed to advertise that lower price.

They are cheating if they are running ads showing lower than MAP prices. Simply selling it in the store for below MAP is not cheating.

6

Whatever happened to competition? Are you upset that your competitors are not helping you to maintain the monopolistic price on the widgets you sell? It makes perfect sense for them to charge a lower price if it is going to increase their profits. If you can’t compete at that price get out of the widget business.

7

It should also make sense for them to honor the contract they have with the widget producer.

If their agreement with the producer stipulates that they should not advertise the widgets for less than a certain price, then they should adhere to that agreement.

Personally, i think the widget producers are just as much at fault as the retailers. If i understand the OP correctly, the widget producers seem unwilling to enforce their own rules, and are more concerned with shipping units than with policing the MAP rule. If that’s the case, it’s hardly surprising that some retailers are going to break the rules. The widget producers should stop shipping to companies that break the rules.

Yeah, the OP is a little unclear on this issue. He never directly states that the other retailers are advertising for less than the MAP, only that they are selling for less than the MAP.

8

Its a strange balnace that varies dpending on the company. Some manufactrers are very strict not just about advertising but the selling price. If you violate the cntract they will pull your right to sell their product. Others will turn a blind eye until they get enough complaints. In our case a local competitor was useing a technicality to advertise for less. When we complained the manufacterer just shrugged citing the technicality. We then said , okay we’ll use the same technicality and did the same thing. At that point the manufaterer said okay okay, neither of you can do it. Which accomplished our original goal.

If they are not actually advertising below MAP then the complaint may be being ignored because there really isn’t an infraction.

9

Not hardly. According to the restrictions place upon the dealers in this country by the Widget Company, the MAP is the lowest price that the item can be advertised or sold at.

In all three cases, it was not “advertise at MAP, sell below”. It was that they went wayyyyyy below MAP in print and in web site advertising.

I never claimed a monopoly; I resent the accusation. In fact, i am an incredibly small player in the Widget game in terms of volume. I just know how to play by the rules. I have no illusions of cornering a piece of this market. To look at this from another angle, I am prohibited by Widget Company from selling overseas. Because of who I am in this business, and the way I do other business, I get quite a bit of inquiries regarding sales outside of the U.S.A.

I send em on to the Rep responsible for that country, or area of the world. No sweat. I lose a sale, lose a chunk of money, play by the rules of the game.

In speaking to the contact at Widget Company regarding the other two offenses, he immediately passed it on to the VP in charge of marketing. In both cases, the companies adjusted their advertising and true sale prices.

So, it does beg the question, why are you attacking me for being forthright and playing by the rules- that should keep a healthy competition for all who sell, and a level playing field?

mhendo I already addressed some of your questions above. Yes , there is a clear agreement betwen Widget Company and the dealers. I didn’t mean to make it sound like Widget Company didn’t care at all- and upon re-reading my OP it does sound that way, doesn’t it? They also are very careful about regulating how their dealership network runs it’s business as pertains to Widgets. They are quite tough about it. I attended the largest photo trade show in America last year for these folks- the PMA show. Photo Marketing Association show in Florida. ( Not for retail customers, this show was Manufacturer to Distributor only ).

They were very tough with their dealers and distributors about pricing. It was quite an education.

I did tell the fellow who emailed me and informed me of this third company, that if they are selling at that price, I cannot match it and I wished him the best of luck.

Two wrongs don’t make a right.

10

Sorry to double post, I didn’t read this last post on Preview. I would not be selling the Widget below dealer cost, but I would be shaving my profit to near nothing if I were to match the three companies. To me that is irrelevant. It is not the deal, as put forth by the nice folks at Widget Company.

As far as that technicality thingy, well. There isn’t one here. The unit costs what it costs, the MAP is what it is. All dealers hold in their hand (s.i.c.) the same Excel spreadsheet with the prices. Nobody gets special rates or deals.

They’re just cheats. Plain and simple. So, fuck them.

11

While there are few companies out there who have the power(or balls) to actually lop off a sizeable portion of their dealers for breaking the rules, Rolex did this about 10 years ago, by my memory. If you sell Rolex watches, you have to buy their whole line and agree not to discount. You take their crap models with the good ones. In the 1980’s. many of their dealers “wholesaled” the stinky models out the backdoor for cost(50%), and also wholesaled others at something over cost.

Rolex did a purge on their dealer network. Probably chopped off 1/4 of their dealers. It worked. This doesn’t happen much any more.

12

If you do not have volume, you are not likely to be getting the same price from the manufacturer as higher volume vendors. So you are pretty much relegated to providing exceptional service in order to maintain your margin. It seems to me that your argument is with the nice folks at widget company, not their vendors because it is pretty easy to enforce pricing if you really want to, a lot of luxury items do it, a lot of specialty manufacturers do it, but if the widget itself is competing for market share, it is almost impossible.

13

I did post, did I not, that I receive the identical Excel spreadsheets to those given to The Biggies that list all parts, items for sale, List Price, Dealer Cost and MAP’s for everything"? Yes.

Volume is irrelevant. I was offered the chance to sell, I sell. According to my contact at Widget Company, I’ve sold more than any other individual dealer in the USA so far this year and it ain’t quite fourth quarter yet. I do see your point about how a huge volume dealer might have a different price structure. In this business, this is not the case.

I know. I have proof, I’ve sat with the owner of the entire company, with the head of the Widget division and with the money people. Beacuse of some other things that I do, I also have frequent conversations with employees of Widget Company who deal with Reps and Dealerships. I get told things. Because they know I don’t repeat.

So, I know without doubt that there is but one single price sheet. But I can see why you mentioned this. And- if there were multiple pricing brackets based on volume, the head of Widget Company would not have reacted as he did when I emailed him about Rat #1.

He immediately called the VP in charge of Sales, who contacte that Rat, and had them revert to standard pricing. :slight_smile:

14

Are they selling more volume? Because I think I’m missing something here. WCo sells you a Widget for $69. You sell it for $100, making $31 profit. But you can “let it go” for $85, netting you $16. Assholes, Inc. sells them for $70, netting them $1. You could do the same (if you violated the agreement), but you can’t live on a mere $1 profit. Is that the same $1 that Assholes, Inc. can’t live on either?

A win for you! Great! Of course, now Assholes, Inc. is making even more profit. But at least they’re sharing it with you. :slight_smile:

15

Illegal in this State (CA) and it should be illegal in every state IMHO. If you don’t like them selling at that price, then sell for less or suck it. “Boo hoo, I can’t compete with someone who can sell for less”. :rolleyes:

16

-smile- There’ll be no sucking in this thread, we’re talking commerce here. Not blowjobs.

-rimshot-

Look, they make money, I make money. The point is that policy is ( very much legally ) set by Widget Company. If they took the gloves off, and let folks sell for whatever they wanted to, yeah I’d likely drop my prices too so I was competitive with those whooooooooores who are dropping the price in violation of aforementioned policy.

tdn, I cannot do the same as Assoles Inc. is doing, because I am bound to the same dealer agreement they are.

The difference is, they’re wilfully breaking it. I ain’t.

The fuckers. ( just to keep it in the spirit of The Pit. )

17

Really? Do you have a cite for that? On what basis does CA interfere in the private contractual relationship of two business entities?

18

Anti-trust laws.

http://www.lectlaw.com/files/ant15.htm

“However, a seller of a
product may not by contract or coercion set the price at which the buyer
may resell the product. Such resale price fixing is always illegal
whether or not the price set is reasonable. Mailand v. Burckle (1978) 20
Cal.3d 367, 377.”

19

Hmm, this is interesting; from a UK perspective I’d always envied some of the USA’s anti-trust laws (or at least what I’d understood them to be), and was quite surprised, reading the OP, to discover that contractual price-fixing was allowed at all. Is DrDeth’s CA law at all common? I’d sort of assumed that was the status quo across the US.

Not that I’m particularly commenting on the OP’s example; just from our point of view, in which the courts have previously banned stores from selling imported goods at less than the original manufacturer would like (Levi jeans, in the main), it’s always been really quite attractive to imagine a world in which price-fixing wasn’t actually judicially endorsed.

20

Nice selective quoting there, DrDeth. Let’s look at the whole section, shall we?

Bolding mine.

The bolded section, and the rest of this quoted section, suggests that there are, in fact, circumstances in which the seller may enforce minimum resale prices. The “rule of reasom” test seems rather complicated, but it seems that arrangements like those described by the OP are allowable as long as they pass that test.