Hi,
Wow. I swear just the other day I went into a big company - Wal Mart, and it seemed like they enjoyed dealing with me as an individual.
Well, that might be an exceptional experience, given the general quality of Wal-Mart...
You're missing that Wal-Mart makes it
their business to deal with as many people as possible, at as thin a margin as possible.
The direct consequence is, they are quite harsh on their employees and suppliers.
Amazon is even more strict on that matter.
Maybe they were just being nice long enough to get me outta the store? But there were a lot of other individuals in there, at least that's what it looked like. But I could be wrong - maybe they were all with companies. 
I don't know, maybe I should test them out, you know buy a Payday candy bar and see if they sell me just that. What would they do, give me a lecture on how much it cost to stock little items. Perhaps put a minimum order amount like $20 worth of candy before I can buy it? I could even try that on their web store. I bet I can buy a minimum of what ever thing I want, as long as I pay to have it shipped. I bet I can. Because you know, it's already in the warehouse, so if I pay for it (which they make a profit on) and pay for the shipping, it's all good.
Likely, their average margins are set to turn a profit on the average customer.
How many customers does your local superstore serve? Hundreds at a time? Thousands per day? Hundreds of thousands per year?
The spite-purchase of one small item every time wouln't affect their bottom line. Averages matter. And the average person is going to go in there and buy at least $20 of stuff and food. Probably, the average purchase is $50 or more. The profit of maybe $15 they make on those purchases covers their costs.
Hmm. Matter of fact, (even being the lowly slime that I am - an individual) I've even dealt with major test equipment companies directly, such as Rigol, as an individual, and they even seemed to appreciate it. Matter of fact, Rigol made me a really good deal on a newer function generator because they had certain design flaws in the model I had. This dealing with them directly as an individual person - you know - a customer. Go figure.
Reflect on the
average customers for both of these companies:
Rigol makes lots of modest size sales (and, probably, a lot of sales to distributors, but also a lot of support to them and their customers). None(?) of their products are exceptional in terms of international regulations. It's valuable to them to maintain a good appearance, so that their products remain attractive and competitive. This includes supporting smaller customers -- who are likely to go on and make a few additional purchases in later years, or to recommend purchases to their managers.
On the other hand, Keysight makes products from entry level to enterprise. Their products comply with many regulations, including international arms agreements. Their average customer is corporate to enterprise, making large purchases (a $10k combo scope -- or a dozen at a time), through relatively complicated means (POs, credit, etc.). They are (probably?) expert at handling export and customs. These are all inherently high overhead procedures, and it wouldn't be unfair to suppose they offer their entry level products grudgingly, or preferably through distributors (who are set up to handle small purchases).
It is very much in their interest to keep customers happy, but if most of their customers are corporate, they only need to keep corporate customers happy -- company registration and accountants to handle POs are SOP in that case.
As for the e-mail thing... who knows. I know of a few companies that make their employees use GMail, if you can imagine being so cheap. They'd seem to have a problem with that.
Tim
Home
Help
Search
Login
Register
