Ingram Micro - boy do they need some healthy competition

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damianf

39 posts

Geek

#162107 4-Sep-2008 14:09

My favourite encounter with Ingram so far - we had this switch:

http://www.3com.com/products/en_US/detail.jsp?tab=prodspec&sku=3C1671600&pathtype=purchase

Drop-shipped to our customer. It arrived without a power supply, so we let Ingram know and they promised to get back to us ASAP. Time passed so we rang them and it turns out that their product manager had emailed 3Com asking them to confirm that it is supposed to have a power supply before doing anything about it.

Call me cynical, but if you were as bereft of a clue when you are supposedly product manager for this range, then you'd really have to ask yourself if you were in the right career, huh?

crapinator

51 posts

Master Geek

#162129 4-Sep-2008 14:38

LOL what sort of powered product doesnt come with the power supply ? n00bs.

My Favourite one that still makes me chuckle,

A customer was wanting a CAD capable pc, so I found a nice lenovo machine, it only had 2 gigs of ram, apart from that it was well specc'ed. The customer wanted 4 gig so I called ingram and spoke to the IBM product manager to confirm how many ram slots the motherboard had, the product manager apparently spoke to IBM and confirmed there was 4 and the 2gig that was in it was 2 dimms.

Something told me not to trust the product manager and I trusted my instincts and ordered 2 X 2gig dimms, sure enough the pc arrives and only has two slots... n00bs!!!!

I sent the product manager an email and advised her she was wrong.... Never got a reply to that.

fatjoez

153 posts

Master Geek

Trusted

#168755 3-Oct-2008 09:22

I wanna add my own 2 cents in here

As someone with experience in I.T. Retail I'm all too familiar with pricespy & competing organisations who are content with setting up an Ingram Micro account, a website, and displaying all of Ingrams products at COST+$1 (I am not exaggerating here)
I have no sympathy for you if you're running a business with 0 stock,as you're probably exactly the kind of organization I just described.
To the person who said holding stock is not an efficient use of company money, get off it
Computer Hardware is still very much a retail industry and if people want to run website businesses which are essentially mail order catalogues, undercutting everyone else then to be honest they deserve a few late deliveries

Going very off topic here but I think the biggest problem with the computer industry todayand the reason why there's not as much money in it anymore, is because..
There's no PRICE regulation
Any joe bloggs can setup an Ingram account, website & sell at ANY price
If these people would all play fair and sell at RRP, then we'd have more winners than losers...

damianf

39 posts

Geek

#168757 3-Oct-2008 09:31

Hi Joe, I can't say I disagree with you, but not all of us are retailers - in fact I'd wager that most of Ingram's customers are NOT retailers and hence we don't carry stock of anything but the most commonly sold items.

This post is more about Ingram's useless service anyway. We find them appallingly useless and totally disinclined to give a toss. If we were as useless then we'd be devoid of any customers whatsoever.

Unfortunately we're forced to give Ingram our custom and put up with their hopeless service as they have a monopoly on the distribution of many products.

Cheers,
D.

amanzi

Amanzi
1293 posts

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#168765 3-Oct-2008 10:28

fatjoez: I wanna add my own 2 cents in here

As someone with experience in I.T. Retail I'm all too familiar with pricespy & competing organisations who are content with setting up an Ingram Micro account, a website, and displaying all of Ingrams products at COST+$1 (I am not exaggerating here)
I have no sympathy for you if you're running a business with 0 stock,as you're probably exactly the kind of organization I just described.
To the person who said holding stock is not an efficient use of company money, get off it
Computer Hardware is still very much a retail industry and if people want to run website businesses which are essentially mail order catalogues, undercutting everyone else then to be honest they deserve a few late deliveries

Going very off topic here but I think the biggest problem with the computer industry todayand the reason why there's not as much money in it anymore, is because..
There's no PRICE regulation
Any joe bloggs can setup an Ingram account, website & sell at ANY price
If these people would all play fair and sell at RRP, then we'd have more winners than losers...

You seem to think that Ingram's customers are all dodgy web retailers. I don't have any sympathy for them either, but lots of Ingram's customers are in a similar situation to me in that we're IT vendors with a customer base running a wide-range of hardware and software. Carrying stock is not an option for most vendors as you can't forecast what hardware you'll need access to.

muppet

2570 posts

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#168769 3-Oct-2008 10:52

crapinator: LOL what sort of powered product doesnt come with the power supply ? n00bs.

Devices that can take an AC or a DC feed. You quite often have to buy the power supply as a separate line item. Power cords are often separate too, depending on the product. (I'll pass on the obvious retort here)

Example 1
Example 2
Example 3 (3Com!)

Audiophiles are such twits! They buy such pointless stuff: Gold plated cables, $2000 power cords. Idiots.

OOOHHHH HYPERFIBRE!

Simonm

181 posts

Master Geek

#168839 3-Oct-2008 16:27

****.

Placed order at 11.30AM (a reasonable hour). Goods not arrive next day. Goods are on our daily order report.

Ring, find out that the items were not invoiced untill 6.30pm. Well after the delivery collection times.

By giving the above details, someone from Ingram will probably know who I am. But at this point in time, I just dont care.

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richms

28176 posts

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#168858 3-Oct-2008 18:20

muppet:
crapinator: LOL what sort of powered product doesnt come with the power supply ? n00bs.

Devices that can take an AC or a DC feed. You quite often have to buy the power supply as a separate line item. Power cords are often separate too, depending on the product. (I'll pass on the obvious retort here)

Example 1

Example 2

Example 3 (3Com!)

Power adapter was on the list on the site of whats included, so it should be included.

IEC and figure-8 cables I can understand not shipping them. Infact if they stoped the crazy goings on of making AU/NZ specific packages with the cable then I am sure things would be cheaper.

The thing is, you order thru them because they have stock, so you dont have to carry stock. If your gonna carry stock then it makes more sense to parallel import things, especially when the list price with the clowns for a small turnover company is higher then retail in the states.

Richard rich.ms

Simonm

181 posts

Master Geek

#168914 3-Oct-2008 21:48

damianf: Hi Joe, I can't say I disagree with you, but not all of us are retailers - in fact I'd wager that most of Ingram's customers are NOT retailers and hence we don't carry stock of anything but the most commonly sold items.

Your correct enough. Most are not retailers, but based on volume I would assume retail chain stores make up for a large part of Ingrams revenue.

Funny thing is one day I had a 5minute or so chat with Jay Miley (NZ Manager) but I couldnt quite give him the earfull he deserved as I had a customer with me.

fatjoez: Ingrams products at COST+$1 (I am not exaggerating here)

Cost plus $1, thats a pretty good margin for some of the online guys!

Heres how it works for some of the bigger online players:

They do enough volume of product to earn them rebates on products. Say Product X is worth $200 dealer buy, and the rebate is $5. They sell it online for $197. They make $2, and people who dont do volume but have an ingram account by at $200.

Same thing happened with EEEpcs (I think) . You could pay say $500 for one, or $450 each if you brought 5.
Online shops brought 5 and started selling them for $460. Average joe reseller ends up paying more.

Thing is, Ingram knew this was happening for a long time, and have only just started to fix it.

fatjoez: To the person who said holding stock is not an efficient use of company money, get off it

Agreed. Esp when Ingram cannot be relied on to ship, how are you going to replace a failed switch/router/pc part etc?

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