Customers - Please think about helping us keep good relations with suppliers

**cornish_crofter** · 13-11-2008

To all customers.

Some of us are more than happy to help you out by negotiating deals for you at suppliers and passing the discount onto you.

Please be aware though that sometimes these negotiations are sensitive, as managers do sometimes push the boundaries to get a large order.

Let us sort it out for you, please don't go phoning other branches of the same supplier to match the discount without first talking to us.

This can cause friction between branches, and the fallout is on the poor account holder (me) who loses goodwill with certain individuals working for the supplier.

Recently a turn of events took place that involved me having to phone up a branch manager and apologise to him for losing him a large order in this climate.

**whitebeam** · 13-11-2008

You can't get blood out of a stone, Some people think you can

doug boardley · 14-11-2008

wise words cc, having sorted some tiles out for a customer recently she decided to have a price compare at other suppliers and found she could get them cheaper, fair enough, but, when she picked them up (I told her I wasn't getting involved) the price she'd been quoted was excluding VAT, so she ended up paying more in the end, my supplier and me did have a chuckle about this! I normally meet customer halfway on my discount and I explain that I want to save them money where I can but I do need to make something out of mats to cover my time spent sorting out/picking up materials.

**Dan** · 14-11-2008

That's what I like to hear. Somebody has tried to go above the tiler and ended up paying more. It is right though, generally the discount should be FOR the tiler not the customer, it's his incentive to shop there more, it's just the way times are at the moment in some area's the discount can be used to stop you loosing labour cash which is really your bread and butter.

Sorry to hear you had to apologise to another store, glad to hear the customer paid more as a result of the attempt to get better than a tilers discount.