Water Softener Settings & Salt/Brine Grid Question.

[ByteMe]

Dittohead,

With all due respect, your statement is only about 50% correct. With that said, it is as everything in life much more compliated. Even our supreme court has gone back and forth on issues concerning this. In the 90's I worked for a big company that was sued and lost on exacty this issue (the issue being whom the manufacturer would and would not sell to because of "protected" territories).

For anyone that cares to read more;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resale_price_maintenance

It looks as if since 2007, the supreme court has allowed more of this price fixing idea. As far as "standing by their contracts", I think it shows they are too lazy to address the real problems that would result in making even more sells.

But let's get back on subject, this is a water softening section!

Do you have a document that explains the technical advantages/disadvantages of using a packed resin bed?

[Gary Slusser]

Ok, it seems to be as I expected. I have run into this exact issue with another large (Billion) dollar manufacturer.

The manufacturer tries to fix the problem of complaints from end users by stopping a segment of the sales and also complaints from other sales/service companies. This segment being internet sales. From what I have seen there could be a very good court case if any of the internet sales people cared to pursue it.

Clack is a family owned corp founded in 1946. They are huge in manufacturing and distributing all types of products and materials for all sizes and types of water treatment and very large in blow molding parts.

I was told that the owner said he didn't care how much business he lost in valve sales, he wanted the complaints etc. to stop. They thought initially that they may lose about 300 valve sales a month. My primary supplier actually counted 375 to 400 lost sales per month based on their internet dealers' sales history. And that was based on only 75% of their total number of internet dealers. So I don't know how many they came up with as a total.

I have no idea how many distributors were selling to internet dealers. I knew of a number of drillers and plumbers that switched from Autotrol and Fleck to Clack valves because of the positive information about Clack valves on the internet. And by 2010 most all internet dealers had started selling Clack.

Most local dealers seem to not have web sites so it's hard to get much of an idea of how many sell Clack but I hear from people that have bought from local dealers some are calling it a Clack, and hasn't sized or programmed their valve correctly. And some are selling to DIYers.

These "other" sales and service companies are only doing what human nature makes them do. All of us work to protect ourselves. It is human nature to try to eliminate competition and hence protect ourselves and family.

Would you rather have a bad reputation and make some money or an excellent reputation with selling nothing?

Applying that to dealers...

I never worried about competition, just my reputation with my customers and prospective customers. I learned about the competition's products and compared what I was selling to theirs and explained the differences to my prospective customers and became as different from the competition as possible. I became their competition.

I explained every facet of the equipment and the processes. That was very different than the competition. Being different included repairing a lot of equipment the competitors wouldn't even think about; including their older equipment. I also did a lot of troubleshooting over the phone. That really brought me a sizable service income, mostly from word of mouth referrals and that made me a lot of new equipment sales and decreased my advertizing needs.

One of the good things about this free market is that us end users and massively influence this. If you disagree with a companies policy, don't buy from them. A letter telling them so can also help. I guess I won't buy a Clack and should send a letter to Fleck. Yea I know, a fart in the wind.

I have had many people, customers and others, email and call Clack to tell them how unhappy they were with the decision to stop internet sales but it has made no difference as far as I know.

[Gary Slusser]

Clack made a good choice when they went after the companies that were not following their contracted rules.

Clack did nothing to contracted "companies" except to threaten them, their distributors with "the valve" contract, of not being allowed to sell their valves if they didn't stop drop shipping.

The problem was the distributors' dealers that didn't know what they were doing, or didn't care that they were selling equipment without doing proper sizing or programming and then refused to help their customers that then contacted Clack for help.

We have had to cut off several companies, and honestly, good riddance to them. These companies would constantly try to send end user customers our way for technical support, or they would try to send them direct to Clack.

You do not sell to dealers so I take it the companies you mention are your distributors or field rep companies.

Just like Culligan, Kinetico, Rayne, and many other water systems companies, their equipment can only be sold and installed by licensed dealers. If Culligan catches a small dealer selling their stuff online, the supply chain gets cut very quickly.

Culligan is a franchise, Kinetico uses exclusive territory dealers, as I think Rayne does. There is no licensing, just approval or disapproval by the company of the applicant that wants to be a dealer for them.

Do you think Kmart can sue Gucci to get their products into their store? Not likely.

Clack has no dealers and no stores and they do not sell to the public or to anyone that does sell to the public so you've used an entirely lame example.

This is all a dead issue anyway, this was over a couple years ago, and Clack has done extremely well since then, far better than they did prior to this decision. And they dont care about someones website bemoaning their decision, actually, it is quite the opposite. They probably use it to their advantage if it is ever even brought up. It shows that they stand by their contracts.

They stand by their contracts... wrong.

I can send you a copy of the part of their 2000 contract that dealt with them allowing internet sales. And until you read it, frankly you don't now what you're talking about.

They had no contracts with any independent dealers (local or internet) that sold their valves purchased from a contracted Clack distributor. We aren't talking about any national brand company that sells through their exclusive territory or independent dealers like Hellenbrand, Water-Right/WaterCare, General Ionics etc. etc..