On May 19, 2013 at 18:54, techvalley said...
Many people have spoken up and said they respected Fortress' decision, I believe others have left the thread not wanting to go against an established member.
I wouldn't be surprised if this was the only time a legit integrator stole a quote out of how many ID's, home owners or trunk slammers who attempt to order stolen quotes.
If you look at the way this company is shielding their dealers from the things that this forum constantly complains about, they come out looking fine. I'm sure they'll be picking up business off of this.
Keep in mind what started this ball rolling, Terrmul tried to order a stolen quote. Who wouldn't want to be shielded from that?
"It is a completely different matter when the designer (of an event, a prop or a unique piece of equipment) has not authorized this “sharing”. If you copy something exactly, without permission, that is stealing. Adopt it and adapt it."
You are either completely delusional or a total fanboy....but most ID's have more pull with a furniture company than an AV company would ever. You keep claiming he stole the quote when in fact the ID handed it to him and said this is what she wants. Terrmul has no reason to suspect that he was "stealing" the quote from someone else. I'm guessing the quote did not have the competitors info on it so how would he know??? Quit trying to keep this going! It's over and everyone has had their say.
The truth is that Terrmul was handed a furniture request and was hoping to become a dealer to fulfill the request. If it was handled better by Fortres than this would have turned out differently. Is it unethical? Probably not. Should they have asked Terrmul to partner up with the company he was "stealing" the chair order? Yes and if this was handled better, Terrmul could have charged MSRP and made the 5% the order was discounted, and the other local dealer could have still made the same profit they ended up with. I'm sure he would have been happy with $2000 and might have found a relationship with a competitor while keeping his client. I see Terrmuls point in that he doesn't want to lose a good customer he has built a 7 year relationship with. After the job is finished, maybe he would have decided Fortres is the cats a#$ and could have used his experience with their product to continue a future relationship and potential dealer account.
The part I find strange is that they had him fill out a new dealer form and then decided against it. The timeline of this seems a little off to me. Terrmul never mentions that they said no to his dealer request and yet Fortres mentions they denied him. I simple search of his area would have brought up the fact their is a good partner already present. Would they have changed their mind if his company was bigger???
In an attempt to help FortressSeating, since they don't seem to be doing it themselves, I've drafted a response for them to post :D.
"While my intentions were good, in retrospect I realize we should have handled it much differently. We're implementing a new policy because of this experience, and going forward all communications with existing dealers and potential dealers will be considered confidential to that dealer. I apologize and assure all our dealers and potential dealers that this situation won"t be repeated."
Classic!
