Dealer Discount

richopp,

Thanks. It is interesting to see how things work on the other side. I am just not sure why a manufacturer thought it was fine to call people home (I assume it was before cell phones) and ask how much they paid for what. Or someone calling you at night to ask what is going on with their equipment. Different times, I guess.

I was prompted to ask what you would do if someone walked in, the way I would,  by benjie's statement a few posts above. He thought the salesperson would not take me seriously and would say anything to get rid of me. I think I also became a jerk somewhere in that statement because I would ask straight forward and not negotiate afterwards. Maybe the most important aspect for me is skipping any further discussion and surprise about price. MSRP is fine with me, but further push-pull games are not. Which is what this thread really started about. In reality, I never thought of asking for discount on electronics or expected it existed.

Of course, a good advice is always welcome but these days that is lacking wherever you go. Some of the experiences in audio stores are baffling although it is not limited to audio stores.

@glupsonI hear you.  I was in a shop yesterday that used to be next to my shop in the '70's.  They sell lighting--lamps and shades and stuff like that.  Some is very expensive, some regular.  The owner is still the same person--out of town right now--but the lady there and I had a great talk about the old days.  She said some of the other shop owners from that small center still drop by every now and then.

THEN, she told me she had to call the cops 3 TIMES last week due to a-hole customers who broke merchandise, cursed, yelled, went nuts in their store.

I reminded her that yes, they moved to the next town (Delray Beach) north of Boca, but many of their customers were BOCA people. I laugh at them now since I am not in business, but the reality is that SOME of them are so amazingly nuts that they believe they are entitled to anything they want anytime they want at any price they want. 

Imagine owning a LIGHTING store--not really very controversial, right??--and having crazy people for customers that make you have them arrested for shopping!!

My take is that their belief is that God put them on this planet to get ALL THE MONEY and then make everyone else bow down to them.  I don't know--but I do know I am moving an hour north as soon as my house sells.This town went from a small, quiet resort/vacation town to something I don't recognize, and I lived on the island of Palm Beach for a number of years, where people really ARE wealthy.  Most there do NOT behave like Boca people...I have no idea why.

Keep working with your dealer and I am sure you will get the better prices as time goes on.  If your dealer is a high-end one, he or she probably has your best interests at heart and will do whatever is possible to keep your business and have to talk t others about it.  We NEVER advertised--did not have to due to word-of-mouth.  Funny how that works!

Cheers,

Richard

An example of discounts for less service is Cary Audio.  Go to their web site and check out how much the price of a 5K piece goes down if you accept lower warranty and replacement options.
I know they are not retailers but just an example of how businesses work.

Ask any BMW dealer, they will tale you that the worst unwanted customers on the planet are 3 series customers.

They can’t afford the cars but want to look like they can and do.

so they treat the dealers ans staff like crap, demand far more than they are entitled and on and on and on.

The best customers, the BMW dealers say...are the 7 and 8 series buyers.

They can actually afford the cars and tend to be excellent non difficult human beings.
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Audio is an enthusiast market. Which means it is an ’audio crack head’ market’

In reality, no one can afford crack, it is all about the high.

Audio is about the musical high.

Teo, on in this case, me (Ken Hotte) wanted to call the Teo GC Ultra Cable, for the humor of it alone.....The ’43’. I’ll explain why.

In audio, you end up with people who constantly ask for the most amount of audio crack they can get for the amount of money in their pocket. Or some version of that story.

So someone comes up to us and asks for how much cable can they get for the $43 worth of wadded up bills they throw on the counter in front of us. "How much audio crack will this get me?" is the actual question at hand.

This is so prevalent that some companies make their fortunes off of it. Art Dudley complained about it once, re cables. He was talking about a company that had so many cable lines, like seven or eight (each with speaker, balanced, digital, and RCA cables) that they could fit to any audio crack customer and vacuum every dollar available off the table.

Art hated this (for the right reasons IMO), as it was for filling in the holes to take all the money and also to serve as a form of market denial for other cable companies and to make sure that the dealers could get to vacuuming up every last cent that was up for grabs, simply by being a dealer for this brand. In the end, it has nothing to do with the value or the quality of the given cable product..

Part of this ugly scenario, was all about servicing the audio crack needs.

the other part is the one about wanting discounts left and right. that is the other kind of response in the audio biz and then the idea of overpricing so that discounts can be given and the deal looks good on paper, and the dealer makes tons of cash, but in reality it is overpriced lower quality audio gear or cables. The deal is paper only. paper only. And the buyer got ripped off.

This is going on right now, with one particular cable brand of renown. Dealers love that cable brand as the margins are huge. this huge margin also conditions the customer to the idea of huge discounts on cables, cables not made by the given ’huge dealer margin’ brand’. It also helps pay for constant full page advertising. So the reviews are flowing, etc and the customer of the sub par cables..pay for it all.

Your best cable value comes from the smaller companies, NOT the established giants, ok? NOT the established giants. The eventual millions in advertising to keep the hype up...was pulled out of the customers and did not go into the product.

The customer does not understand this and the dealer sure as hell ain’t going to tell them about it! the net effect is the huge margin causes the dealers to congregate around the one brand that is nothing special in audio quality, outside of that huge margin.

This denies market share to companies with REALISTIC dealer margins, and additionally denies market via the customers who won’t buy the other quality brand..as they are expecting huge discounts on the cables that don’t have huge (unrealistic) margin built into the pricing.

A good friend of mine was the Florida sales rep for a few high end companies.  He showed me his invoices.  The dealers paid 50% of retail, plus 10% shipping on small orders.  I sold my system and bought his demo pieces.  The 38 year old collection is still working perfectly on my television system.  He did make me go pay retail from one of his store for a cartridge, pre-amp, and head amp.  My buddy got great in store discounts on SAE.  None of it survived 10 years.  I was lucky, but i quickly learned that the generally non-discounted stuff is much better.  What I always wanted to know is why some very wealthy people insist on the power play of being a dick to dealers who are bothering to even talk to them.  If you have a lot of disposable income, don't be a dick.   I was in retail.  Not one person with a Titanium AMX card ever gave us any argument about price.  Many Lambo drivers did.