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PC vendors back to direct selling
With the start of the buying season among educational institutes, serious complaints are emerging from the channel about vendors going direct, especially in Tamil Nadu, where partners are still sour about the Elcot episode.
The group association in the state, Confed-ITA has received several such complaints and is planning to take them up with respective vendors.
Partners have complained that vendors are undercutting them to strike direct deals with schools and colleges for quantities as small as 40 notebooks. Discount offered by vendors to grab such small deals go up to 40 percent of the dealer transfer price.
In the process vendors are also offering customers up to 60 days credit, while partners only get 15 days.
Partners contend that they are losing customer confidence as students believe that the partners are fleecing them by charging higher price for a product as the vendor is offering lower price.
A couple of regional managers of PC vendors, Shadow spoke to, admitted that there have been instances of direct selling. However they said that they are forced to do it as their competition is doing it and if they don’t go direct and offer better prices they will lose out business.
 No to seminars where only veg meal is served
Shadow came across an interesting conversation recently while mingling with a group of partners, during dinner, at a seminar organized by a leading distributor. The group was cribbing about the lack of non-vegetarian food and cocktails at the conference.
"I will not attend any future events organized by the distributor, till they change the menu. While one can appreciate that the distributor is a vegetarian but that doesn't mean we have to suffer,” said one leading sub-distributor who had flown in from Bangalore to attend the conference.
In fact, he recollected another such episode: "Last year the (same) distributor flew 100 partners to Bangkok for a 3-day conference and not a single day alcoholic beverages and non-vegetarian food were served. In fact, the distributor flew along a special vegetarian cook from India to make meals."
What can one say? |