Quote:
Originally Posted by Strange Brew
Well we can up with scenarios until we are blue in the face. I have no idea why there is an 18 month lead time for a hot tub but that was pretty nice of the customer to allow the business to keep his money for that long until the hot tub market turned around.
I feel like you are focused on customers screwing over small business. Well I have no idea what business you are in but do you supply warranties to your customers? If your cost of providing service under that warranty goes up unexpectedly, are you no longer honoring it or asking for more money?
To me this isn't randomly digging in, it's respecting a relationship predicated on people keeping their word.
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I mean, if you don't understand this is the crux of the whole problem I'm not going to waste another minute discussing it with you.
The supply chain is currently fataed. The hot tub company wasn't setting out to take OP's deposit money and then roll around in it Scrooge McDuck style for 18 months. I'm sure they expected the sale to wrap in one or two months like it always has for the last 30 years. Instead, they couldn't get the product that they rely on to to sell in order to make money to put food on their table.
Events totally out of their control conspired against them (and OP) to prevent the conclusion of the sale for a year and a half. To add insult to injury, when the hot tub did arrive, their cost on it was higher than their expectation of the cost and their margin was negatively affected. This, after a year and a half of not being able to get the products they rely on to make a living. A small business needs to go into triage mode at that point. I mean, pissing off a few customers is a hell of a lot easier than laying off all your staff and closing your store because you couldn't figure out the result of selling at a loss.
In a situation like this, in my experience, a higher proportion of people will understand the circumstance and not suspect you of trying to cheat them.
But you have no idea why there's an 18 month lead time? Good grief. Have you been asleep for the last two years or something?