Manufacturers in ANY business have a responsibility to their customers
to ensure that dealers are chosen carefully and held to high
standards. For most customers the dealer is the only part of the
corporation they ever see.

I agree completely. I have been a (new car) dealer. So, how do we judge a
dealer and his business? By the first high profile incident where some rude
salesperson or incompetant manager makes a critical mistake? Be assured that's
the incident the public *will* hear about. Or, do we take into account the
numbers of folks who go away quietly satisfied and happily return in a few
years to buy a newer or nicer model?

Think of the dumbest or most embarrassing thing you ever did. Would it be fair
to take that incident and use to characterize you, as an individual, for all
time? Or would it be more accurate to note that it was a tragic exception to an
otherwise fairly OK situation?

The builders do have a pretty good handle on who the truly rotten dealers are.
Their info may vary from an unsubstantiated, one-sided horror story flushed
down the Internet by a PO'd buyer with an obvious agenda.

On 07 Oct 2003 16:55:57 GMT, (Gould 0738) wrote:
The builders do have a pretty good handle on who the truly rotten dealers are.
Their info may vary from an unsubstantiated, one-sided horror story flushed
down the Internet by a PO'd buyer with an obvious agenda.

========================

I have this old fashioned notion that the standard should be somewhere
higher than "truly rotten". Just my humble opinion of course.

I have this old fashioned notion that the standard should be somewhere
higher than "truly rotten". Just my humble opinion of course.


Don't concentrate too heavily on my choice of adjectives. I believe the idea is
sound.

Every person and every business makes mistakes. It is normal to *include* such
mistakes when evaluating overall performance, but not good practice to ignore
all the positive aspects at the same time. If we extended the "negative only"
standard to every other aspect of life, no friendship would survive the first
disagreement, no job would last beyond the first mistake, and no marriage would
endure long beyond the honeymoon.

The individual boat in question was badly plumbed. Because it was *not*
consistent with the builder's standards it did not meet the customer's
reasonable expectations.
How amazing that John Q. Public sees this as a case that somehow *establishes*
that the builder's standard must be to misplumb the live well.

The unhappy customer was bitching *because* the boat was substandard, not
because it was representative of what most people should expect when buying
that make or model.




On 07 Oct 2003 16:55:57 GMT, (Gould 0738) wrote:
The builders do have a pretty good handle on who the truly rotten dealers
are.
Their info may vary from an unsubstantiated, one-sided horror story flushed
down the Internet by a PO'd buyer with an obvious agenda.

========================

I have this old fashioned notion that the standard should be somewhere
higher than "truly rotten". Just my humble opinion of course.