You can't put a price on service

[Dave A]

It's said that money can't buy you love. Perhaps this story will prove it's true.

I've been costing out putting together a pretty special rig for a very particular application which has some pretty wierd requirements. Now there are two main subsystems, one which we guestimated would take R500k to R1 million, the other we guestimated at about R10k.

So we started hunting down the expensive subsystem first, a week ago. Although this particular piece of kit is unusual, we new exactly where to go. Somewhat surprisingly, despite the fact that they reckoned they new exactly what we needed and could throw options down like confetti at a wedding, I've yet to get a clear spec of the kit they're proposing and a firm quote. At this stage I'm still sitting with a verbal estimate around R600k with nothing in writing and no specs on the kit options to assess suitability.

I only started on sourcing the second subsystem this morning. I called on a retailer who couldn't help me but put me straight onto their supplier. Their supplier identified the exact gadget I needed within 5 minutes of me explaining the application, but can't supply me as we aren't a retailer. However, they got a retailer to contact me to facilitate the sale. From the start of my quest to receiving final quote for the complete subsystem including specs and attachments took less than half an hour. And the quote came in at under R2k.

So for a purchase of R2k I got great service. For a purchase of R600k (or thereabouts) I'm starting to wonder who's ass I'm supposed to kiss before I may have the privilege of paying them some money.

[Jaq]

Perhaps the guys supplying the R600k equipment also have a supplier that can be contacted direct......and perhaps they can refer you to a better re-seller, or supply you direct.
(suppliers are unlikely to let something like dealer-registration stand in the way of a 600k deal)