Never mind my last post. It appears you did catch the fact that someone may have been afraid to lose a sale.

This is fallacy. The numbers of fingers are only one aspect.

The reasoning behind the defense is another.

I can commend Fortress for wanting to and trying to protect another dealer from unscrupulous behavour. At the same time I can criticise them for the process.

But the other dealer dropping the price at that moment made the situation worse.

Termul then copies the other companies sold quote to the letter, not clear how he got it or if he had a hard copy or just part#s and color codes. He has stopped responding:(

I don't take calling companies un-ethical lightly. If you're going to be throwing around accusations like that you should be walking straighter than termil appears to have been.

Another possibility is that the interior designer used the fortress website to generate the alleged quote. He's probably busy walking the client through the brochure of another seating company :).

Which company? The seating manufacturer or the CI you mentioned in the post just above this one?

Since he stopped responding then you don't know if he 'copied the quote to the letter' or just had part numbers and and color codes. It's irrelevant because he contacted Fortress to get set up as a dealer, which is the proper thing to do.

I can appreciate that you are giving the benefit of the doubt to Fortress and holding Termul accountable, if not making assumptions about Termul.

But the fact is Fortress' salesman responded to Termul by blowing smoke, then called the existing dealer to make them aware, asked the dealer if it was 'OK' if the new guy became a dealer, then the existing dealer contacted the ID and lowered the price.

So it's sorta weird to focus and Termul and 'what did he know and when did he know it.'

I agree for the most part, but in my experience, if you are a full service company, I have found that what you need to do is mark your territory first. We are all divas and that is the issue. For me the bedroom, Mediaroom, living room.... they can be the driving force, But an HT I am the driving force since it is a room created for the AV and so part of the "equipment" that is our expertise not there's, and so they only get involved where we need their input (just like the client).



that is the issue none of us see any insider information being shared by fortress in this case. The seating might be considered insider info but how "hey ____ you know those seats you speced, someone else in your area asking if he can have the exact same ones" insider information? the only "inside" info that I see is the spec of the seats that was shared by the ID and turmul and even that I don't think it was necessarily out of line and could have been an honest mistake.

I look at it this way.

Fortress sees this process from time time - the dealer quote comes in, followed by a new ID or new AV request to become a dealer seeking the sale. If you were Fortress, who would you choose to offend - a current established customer, or the new guy who has yet to prove future sales.

Remember, the title of this thread is about ethics. Dealers have them too and they are not always an easy call to make.

So far he seems to have walked much straighter than Fortress and the other dealer, whether or not he ever responds again. I would hope you apply the same scrutiny to Fortress and the other dealer as well.

Notice that Fortress responded and added information but did not reject Termul's statements. They explained what happened and their position, fair enough.

The vigorious defense of Fortress has been based on 'they are loyal to their dealers' and questioning Termul's motivations and salesmanship. But there is a lack of acknowledgement of Fortress' and the other dealers actions from their defenders, unless it is a justification for it.

The justifications are, while noble concept, lacking.

If you read the OP, Turmil implies Fortress is un-ethical for clueing the other dealer in that he took a quote from them.

I have never dealt with Fortress nor do I plan to (I like the ones we use know and don't need more). I think this was just a bad situation, with minor mistakes done by several parties and possibly none of them did anything wrong (i.e. unethical). I just don't see what Fortress did as wrong or even as a mistake. That is why I defend what they did.

I just went on the fortress website, this explanation of the ID building the quote seems very unlikely unless they are a dealer.

Does Fortress have to offend somebody? You are right in that they see this process, probably more than time to time. Often enough to know what to do about it. It is tricky.

I think a reasonable solution would be to ascertain Termul's credibility as a dealer first. If he wasn't going to be a dealer, then Fortress can call Existing Dealer and broker a transaction with the New Dealer.

There's a couple of ways this could have been played out. So far it's been played out in a bad way. Termul has every right to be pissed, especially when the ID was called with a lower price.

This has more to do with ethics and less with money.

Yeah, it's possible that Fortress is desperate to close the deal that they offered a discount to the regional dealer because Termul entered the game, precisely because Termul was eliminated as a source of the furniture. It's far more likely though, that the regional Fortress dealer tried to seize an advantage and secure the immediate sale by lowering the price. If there are two dealers trying to sell a set of chairs to a client, and if I'm Fortress, I'm fairly confident I get this sale and there's no need to discount my price to either CI.

Again, from the client perspective (I've used an ID for ideas, not for decisions because I could care less what they think, I live here), for some reason the client selected Fortress. The issue is about who should get credit/profit from the sale. As a client, I don't really care - I want the chairs.

I hate hypotheticals but let's throw one out there to start a flame war. Let's suppose Turmul is the greatest CI in CA and has blessed Fortress with the opportunity to have Termul select Fortress as the seats of choice in this theater/room (we don't know precisely the destination of these seats). If Fortress had decided to let Turmul enter the game and compete for the bid, some on this forum would be skewering Fortress over that decision too.

Consider in a different way that aybe the ID is very crafty here and tried to start a bidding war. Possible but odd, though, as anyone with the means to hire an ID for a "new house" is not going to sweat all these details.

My main issue is the charge on "unethical" behavior. These words are thrown around without much thought. Back to basics - a company (Turmoul) contacted a vendor to buy product from the vendor. Vendor called an existing client company and inquires about a way to resolve a potentially sticky situation. Existing company said I won't play that game. Vendor says "status quo", I'm out, you guys figure it out. Is that really something that rises to the level of unethical behavior?

Feel free to pull your business from Fortress, complain, back Turmul, go against Turmul, blame the ID, blame the other Fortress dealer - shift the argument.

Let's face it, if Turmul was given the competing bid from the ID, that's between the ID and the other Fortress dealer because Turmul has no formal relationship with that other company.

Also, only the ID and Turmul know what they talked about. And again, no one knows except Fortress salesperson and other Fortress dealer what was discussed about Turmul as new competitor. We'll never know why price was dropped. If I were the other Fortress dealer looking at a nice sales margin, cutting 10% to close the deal might make sense. How concerned are you that the seats move to a different manufacturer and you get nothing. We don't know how this all happened.

For those reasons, leveling a charge of unethical behavior l by Turmul is a bit out of bounds. Sure, be upset, but carefully consider how you express your concern.

And focus your energy back on the client and the client's needs - not who gets the sale!

Jay