Especially not about this.

+1, let's go back to the Home Showroom thread. It's kinder, gentler, and needs more pages ;)

Well, welcome back :) Getting sucked in to a good argument is easy to do ...

Sorry to be late to the party but as a lawyer by education I can assure you Termul's situation is not considered intellectual property. I would have found a comparable seating configuration from another company that had all the lights and bells that Fortress had and offered that solution with all the reasons why the seating was comparable and hopefully a better price. The seating supplier mishandled the situation and should have disclosed to Termul immediately they would not be offering him a dealership based on an existing dealer relationship.

You guys still talking about this? :-)

13 pages in 3 or so days. 
That's got to be some sort of record.
Not that it's got 13 pages -- but that no one threw god, politician or profanity into the mix and got this thread closed. 

We never sent him any paperwork, not a dealer application, not a retail price list, so he never filled anything out. At no point did we ever discuss any pricing not dealer or retail, margins were never discussed as well.

For Mac Burcs: I believe Turmll mentioned in his last post the designer gave him a drawing with all the specifications. On the drawings we provide along with our quotes it identifies who the dealer is.

It is really surprising to me that there is any uproar over this manufacturer trying to protect their dealer. I would expect people to come out of the woodwork and sing their praises.

In situations like this I use an idea of what if everyone acted like this:

If everyone acted like terrmul (in this situation) we would all go around copying exactly any quote that fell into our lap, where would that leave our industry?

Then we have fortress, what if every manufacturer acted like them? They come across a quote that every acknowledges was copied. They contact who made the quote and who they have a relationship with rather than negotiating with someone who just gave them a copied quote. If every manufacturer did this where would we be?

Which World would you rather live in?

This is my last post in this thread by the way, I am not looking to make enemies.

My one cent:




Protecting your dealer involves calling to ask a existing dealer if they are okay with a new dealer being set up in the same area, and this is generally done only in a "protected" area.

I will assume this is not the case here.


Fortress sales could have, upon recognizing the quote, immediately informed Terrmul that they could not justly set him up as a dealer for this specific quoted sale and left it at that. I don't think there was any need to call the existing dealer after that action was taken, so I will find some fault on that account.

Unethical?

Not really.

No enemies here. Just simply a discussion that has gotten heated. But to say he has stolen a quote is simply untrue. Especially given Fortress never provided him any info. I would have done the same thing as Terrmul and HAVE done this in the past. If a client wants something, I'm going to try to make it work for them! For the record, I'm leaning toward Fanboy :)

I don't think he would be this mad if he were told from the beginning he could not become a dealer and Fortress was willing to help him fulfill the ID's requests. I don't care either way but it still doesn't add up.

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED: FORTRESSGATE

A little off topic, but not really...

We are a Fortress dealer, BEAUTIFUL seats, and a great company to do business with.

I didn't read that post. Can you quote it from this thread and point it out?

Just so we are clear here are you saying that you actually created a drawing for the dealer based on specs he gave you? Up until now there hasn't been anything posted describing a document other than "exact specifications" which could obviously be the "5 seater" that Anthony mentioned or an actual configured product with a drawing.

I find it hard to believe that the OP had a document with another dealers name on it...tried to get the sale...didn't...then complained about it online.

Never mind... I found it. Here it is.


So here he states he received a drawing from an ID with no pricing or other info. Nothing about another dealers information. "From Fortress".

Did you tell the OP that Fortress doesn't supply non dealers with drawings when you spoke to him? Or was he supposed to know that? Seems like you could have put an end to this the moment he called by saying "Where did you get that document? We only provide those to dealers."

The manufacturer's response sounds very logical and appropriate.

Its fine to protect dealers and no one in this thread (are you even reading the posts) has bashed them for that.

The problem I and others have is the underhanded way they went about it. Today its fine but what about tomorrow when you have a 100k product sale for a product you aren't a dealer for and the manufacturer decides to send that info down the line to an existing dealer? This was the part about other shoes and feet mentioned above.


What you meant to say is "if i assumed everyone acted like terrmul".

All these pages later you are still incorrectly assuming.


Who acknowledged it was copied? So far we have the OP stating he received info from an interior designer. He never mentioned it was a drawing or a quote. We have cmont who was the dealer who the ID tire kicked to death. He has absolutely no way of knowing if the OP got his hands on a document he provided. And the manufacturer who mentions "exact specifications". Exact specifications is a very long stretch from "a document we produced for the dealer with the dealers information on it".


Too late. Im blogging about you tonight and there is nothing you can do about it!

what the hell are you talking about? there is no model, configuration or colour info on the web site, there are some family of products and some pics of some configurations of each but all the pics have several models. Also did you read what I quoted that he said? he admitted that he thought (past tense)she got the info on the website.