I ended up buying from the LDS - here's why...

[Addict]

I gave my LDS an opportunity to match LP before I bought.

Here is my shopping list:
2 Titan LX regs
2 Low Profile Aqualung Octos
1 Pro QD+ BCD
1 Diva LX BCD

I ended up buying from the LDS. They came within $500 on the package, and ended up throwing in:

2 AOW classes and materials ($500 value)
1st year of servicing
Unlimited free use of their pool (for practice, or just to blow bubbles)

With that, and the addition of having the full warranty, I feel it was pretty fair. The only problem is that I have to put off buying computers for a month or two, until I scrounge up the money.

All-in-all I was pleased with the efforts that my dive shop put into making an equivalent deal, even though I feel some of their representations may have been misleading.

I really appreciate everyone's input (Genesis, Mike, etc..), as I am now not quite as naive, and you all allowed me to understand different aspect of the deal - so that I could compare apples to apples

 

[redacted]

It's good to see an LDS deal with the reality of internet competition using the resources it has. I can only hope more follow this example.

 

[MissAmberDiva]

Sounds good to me!

 

[Genesis]

glad you found a resolution that works for you.

However, don't forget in the future that you were lied to. While this is not necessarily fatal to a relationship with a business, it does mean that you must be on your guard from then on, because you have established without a doubt their willingness to twist the truth for their own profit (and to your detriment!)

I have and continue to do business with people who have done this to me in the past, but I never, never forget how I was treated, and my guard is set to "full alert" whenever I do anything further with that organization or individual.

The good news is that you learned without taking a big whack to your wallet.

 

[dcostanza]

Good morning,
Congratulations on having a LDS willing to work out a deal where everyone is a winner. I attempted a similiar approach with a LDS and they looked and treated me with contempt and disgust that I would even think of such a thing. How brazen of me...That's why I don't deal with them anymore ( as well as to tell anyone local about their antics ) but that's another issue....

I do hope this is the beginning of a new era as to how LDS will be conducting business as well as contending with the increase in the large number of internet dealers...

Best Regards
Don Costanza

 

[MikeFerrara]

I'm glad it worked out for you. I sure don't like to see training given away to sell equipment though. I would rather sell equipment at cost and get paid well for training. Training is where the work, skill and dedication are required. They give it away like candy to visiting children. It can't be very good if they value it so little. Really good training costs to provide and should be valued and payed for by the student. Giving away my advanced class would be insanity.

 

[Addict]

Mike,

The reality of it is this:

The LDS made about $600 PROFIT in the deal due to the price fixing inherent in LDS's. Out of this $600 profit, they chose to provide the materials (probably a total cost of $10 wholesale: $120 retail) and the service involved in the class.

So either way, they made the profit - and are providing a no-out-of-pocket service for me - to gain my business and beat the internet pricing.

They would have made a profit even if they MATCHED LeisurePro's pricing - it was the manufacturer that prevents them from this match.

Either way, I see it as win-win.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Addict,
Your dreaming. LP prices wouldn't cover my costs to buy and ship the stuff. In some cases LP and especially diveinn sell the stuff for less than I pay for it. And...the materials for an advanced class cost me way more than ten dollars. They are scratching to survive the only way they know how and it doesn't work any more. I was not kidding. I would much rather give the equipment away. Price fixing by the manufacturer has nothing to do with a dive shop's overhead. Think about what should go into a good advanced class and what it would cost to provide. Maybe I'll start a thread. diveinn or lp can somehow get and sell large quantities of things I can't get at all and sell them for very near dealer cost. I can't control that and I don't have the recourses to compete but I refuse to let them lessen the value of the training I offer. They have no product with which to compete. You can buy a bushel of potatoes for whatever someone will sell them for. They may have to sell at a loss to avoid a bigger loss or to gain market share or whatever but to get trining from me it costs what I charge. They can't mass produce it of obtain it grey market.

As I see it, undervalueing training to sell equipment is why we have such lousy training. If you get it for free at best you get a minimum wage bumb teaching it. Take a look, thats pretty much what we have as evidence by all the silt trailes anywhere there are divers.

All your shop occomplished was to use their training expertise (assuming they have any) to make money for the equipment manufacturer. It cost big money to get and keep a dealership, for this one needs to make a reasonable profit. It cost money and much work to provide good training, one should also make a reasonable profit for that. If your shop gives you a good class they will have alot of work and expense in selling that little pile of junk. There is no profit in that.

 

[Genesis]

its the total package that counts, not the individual components, if you were going to buy all those components anyway.

If I want Items 1, 2, 3 and 4, the bottom line to me as a customer is the number at the bottom of the page for all 4.

How you, as a merchant, massage the numbers so that the bottom line number ends up where it needs to be is irrelavent to me.

I'll relate a story from last fall that will, I hope, make my point.

I decided to buy a new truck during the 01 "give the money away for three years" financing games all the majors were doing.

I settled on the vehicle I wanted, and then proceeded to shop every dealer within 100 miles of my home for that truck.

It finally came down to one dealer with the "best" price.

I showed up to close, and they tried to tack on a "document" charge - I had explicitly told them "this must be the bottom line number, with only tax, title and plates allowed to be added" when we dicussed the deal previously.

They said their "document" fee was non-negotiable.

I told them that my bottom line number was non-negotiable, and I didn't much care how they got there, so long as the state got their tax, title and license amounts that they legally had to receive.

The result? Rather than have me walk out the door they adjusted the purchase price of the truck by the amount of their "doc fee" so that the botom line number was exactly as we had agreed.

Did they "gave away" something on the price of the truck?

Not really.

The "doc fee" was utter horsefeathers. It was pure padding and profit; their actual effort in preparing the documents for the sale was all of 5 minutes, since the computer printed out everything and all I needed to do was sign them.

So, if you looked at the "deal", you'd say that I paid "X" for the truck. In reality I paid "X + doc fee" for the truck, because the doc fee was simply an attempt to nick me for another couple hundred bucks - an attempt that, for me at least, failed.

What Addict did is exactly the same; he didn't really get the training for free - what he did was get the product for less. The dealer adjusted his invoice to match the numbers, and did so where he could - by counting the training as "zero" (when it really isn't anything of the kind.)

This, by the way, is why you, Mike, should be violently opposed to the price-fixing games these manufacturers play. It forces dealers to do exactly what you claim is wrong to stay competitive, and backs YOU into a corner by debasing the sale of STAND ALONE training (such as you would prefer to do)

Even if you refuse to carry brands that insist on overt price-fixing, you are a victim of the practice and the damage to your competitive position remains. You cannot escape it by refusing to deal with those brands, because the impact in the marketplace is that your training ends up "effectively" worthless.

 

[MikeFerrara]

BIG POINT - If the manufacturers want quality training by good instructors to sell their equipment they will have to change something.

The manufacturers want the benifit of our name, sign, long hours, babysitting, compressor and years of training and experience to sell their crap at a rediculas margin (for us, a negative number). We assume all the risk (and work). As far as I'm concerned, Buy the stuff from LP, When and if you have need of my services we can negotiate a price.