ricks@iscuva.ISCS.COM (Rick Schaeffer) (11/23/88)
I have a dealer problem that I'd like to get off my chest. NOT the kind of dealer problem you might expect, however, and I hope I will be forgiven for taking up NET bandwidth with this note/flame. You can hit "n" if you are not interested. The dealer of whom I am speaking has been DROPPED as an authorised Amiga dealer! Since he is, by far, the most supportive dealer in the area I am baffled and upset by this. Here are the facts as I know them: A customer was sold an Amiga 2000. Later, at a user group meeting, this customer was told that he should have gotten an Amiga 2500, so he called the dealer the next day and DEMANDED a 2500. The dealer, of course, told him that the 2500 was not yet available. The customer then demanded a full purchase price refund from the dealer. The dealer pointed out that the customer's A2000 could be upgraded to the same level as the A2500 by purchasing the 68020 board and other parts that make up the 2500 but the customer still adamantly demanded either an A2500 or a full refund. The dealer refused. The customer then apparently called Commodore and complained to Max Toy. The next thing the dealer knew about it was a call from his regional distributor and a subsequent letter informing him that he was no longer an authorised dealer!! Now then...I am sure that there are probably other factors involved here but this is the sum of my knowledge of the situation. The dealer in question...Amazing Electronics in Spokane Washington...has been quite successful with the Amiga and I am having real trouble understanding the logic of cancelling his dealership! I want to make some strong points in his favor (hopefully, Commodore is listening!) that whoever made the decision to drop him might not be aware of: 1. Amazing Electronics was virtually the *sole* Amiga dealer in Spokane for quite a while. Other local stores carried the Amiga for a while after it was introduced but quickly dropped it. 2. Amazing is *still* the only dealership which really SUPPORTS the Amiga! The others leave it gathering dust in a corner while they concentrate on selling PC clones. They seem to make almost NO effort to actually SELL the system and few, if any, of the salesman are even capable of running the standard demo programs! None of them provide third party support...ie: you can't buy a disk controller for your Amiga 1000. Most of them only stock games...few will help in acquiring things like ARexx. 3. Amazing is the only dealership that lets you actually try out software (on premisis only, of course) before having to purchase it. 4. Amazing subscribes to almost all the public domain libraries (Fred Fish, Amicus, etc) and keeps literally hundreds of public domain disks available for copying by customers. The only requirement is that you buy the blank disks from him and do the copying yourself...on HIS machine! 5. Amazing's owner and all of it's sales personnel actually USE the Amiga. They keep up with the state of art in Amigadom and stay competent with the machine. In short, they are knowledgable about the Amiga and work at staying so. The bottom line on all of this is that I, for one, am an extremely satisfied customer of Amazing Electronics. I personally know several other satisfied customers and know of only this one disgruntled customer! So why was my dealer dropped??!!!?? Commodore may have gained one satisfied user by this action but they have SURELY LOST many more. -- Rick Schaeffer UUCP: uunet!iscuva!ricks ISC Systems Corp. ricks@iscuva.ISCS.COM Box TAF-C8 Phone: (509)927-5114 Spokane, WA 99220