CE Pro April 2024 - 4

From the Editor
by Arlen Schweiger
Dealers Dish on Where
Suppliers Fall Short
" I don't want
to be a total
Debbie Downer,
but I'm also
aware (and have
been hearing this
refrain for years)
that integrator
feedback always
carries weight
with suppliers. "
OUR APRIL ISSUE is always among the
most anticipated of the year. It contains our
annual Quest for Quality Awards, now in
their 14th year.
These awards are special because they
are based solely on integrator votes and
feedback. But while we poll them on the
best manufacturers and distributors in the
custom integration industry, we also give
dealers a chance to provide - anonymously
- insights and complaints about what the
suppliers can do better.
I don't want to be a total Debbie Downer
for the industry, but I'm also aware (and
have been hearing this refrain for years) that
integrator feedback always carries weight
with suppliers. So here, with vendor names
withheld, here are some verbatim responses
(lightly edited if necessary) to that question.
" Very slow response times now. Ridiculous,
over-priced shipping charges! "
" Several firmware issues that took them
months to acknowledge were a problem. "
" Product is just flat-out unreliable. Support
is weak. Their solution is to just send
another when that most of the time doesn't
appear to be the full problem. "
" You can't reach them and when you do,
they are not helpful. They seem to be making
a lot of mistakes lately and I don't see us
buying more from them. "
" Warranty is useless. Took over two
Arlen Schweiger is
Editor-in-Chief of
CE Pro. He can
be reached at
arlen.schweiger@
emeraldx.com and
@ArlenSchweiger
on LinkedIn.
months total and at least eight labor hours
of trying to deal with their 'support' to get a
$100 defective product replaced. "
" Unreachable and had very poor communication
and resolution path. "
" They could not send repair techs to do
warranty work on over two dozen [products]
that we had waiting for warranty work.
Many hours were spent getting case numbers
for each. They eventually told us that
no authorized warranty tech serviced our
area. We were then told they would simply
4 | CE Pro April 2024
send a truck and do a one-to-one swap
with each warranty covered [product]. This
never happened. "
" There are too many restrictions for ordering
equipment directly; minimum purchase
requirements make it nearly impossible to
obtain equipment; nothing is ever in stock! "
" They are never hitting promise dates and
often have quality issues that then affect
their partners to hit accurate lead times. "
" Website sucks and tech support is spotty
at best. "
" Layers of bureaucracy, drop in quality of
product over time, had many technical issues
with many lines of products they knew were
component related and announced they
would pay dealers time to swap out faulty
production runs, then withdrew that offer. "
" Support is atrocious. It's like pulling
teeth trying to get an answer and it is near
impossible to get support while on a site.
Has really impacted our ability to sell their
products. They have become a trainwreck. "
" Zero communication, extremely slow
shipping, and misleading sales practices. "
" They do want to deal with the smaller
dealers. They dumped the smaller dealers
and forced us to get product through a 'middle
man' distributor which inserted a major
price hike (markup profit for the middle man)
after years of dealing directly with them. "
" Constant pricing changes on everyday
items; when you ask why the pricing has
doubled or tripled, they say it was a system
error and they will fix the issue. Then the
http://www.cepro.com
CE Pro April 2024

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of CE Pro April 2024
