Until We Meet Again....

This week our company may have to bid farewell to a good customer of 25 years.

We don't want to. He's making us.

We believe we make some of the best products in our industry. (We're number 1, by long shot in all our markets). For one of our products, the "industry life expectancy" is about 15 years. No one services their product beyond that timeframe (except us, if we can still obtain original parts).

Our customer has been using our product for a decade longer than that.

Fact is, that it's time to replace, not to repair. The original replacement parts for the device were discontinued by our vendor almost ten years ago. There are no original replacement parts in existance.

In these trying economic times, our intrepid customer has found a third party supplier who will manufacture replacement parts (but for some strange reason won't install them). Instead he suggests that WE install 3rd party parts in OUR equipment.

For many reasons, this isn't a good idea.

1. We don't want to assume ANY liability for untested parts made by someone else.
2. We know the 3rd party vendor's quality on other parts (and they are inferior to ours).
3. They could potentially cause a cascade failure of other components.
4. We don't want to put our good reputation at risk.
5. Probably the best reason of all - we don't think the 3rd party parts will work and the customer could be throwing good money away.

It's like a patient arriving at the hospital with an artificial heart he purchased somewhere and asking YOU (the surgeon) to install it, so he can save some money.

Not very likely.

No logical argument will work. Our customer feels that he is being let down or worse yet, "forced" into making a replacement purchase - all because a third party competitor, unrealistically got his hopes up.

And so, it is with heavy heart that we say goodbye to our good customer - at least for now.

After he learns his lesson with our competition, I'm pretty sure, he'll be back.