<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by hbiss:
KLD that's great. Sounds like you are doing good installs and keeping your customers happy.
My point about the 624's is that they are at one end of the spectrun compared to the other Panasonic products, I fully expect to see them sold at Home Depot if they are not already.
The very reason that most of the KXTA 624 systems you see that look like crap is because anyone can buy them as well as the fact that these are very often sold as "plug & play" over the internet.
You are so correct. It may be like throwing a deck chair off the Queen Mary but I will never do business with any of those internet companies that will sell to my customers at the same price I pay. They are the competition, they cut into all of our profits and I will not support them.
-Hal
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I wholeheartedly agree with you on that. There are so many companies that absolutely prostitute themselves into selling at such rediculously low prices that they couldn't possibly make any profit, short of a few hundred dollars. I guess they can afford to do this because they don't provide any real support, installation or service. Who is left stuck, the end user the customer.
We used to be Comdial dealers from 1990 to 1998. There was a company in Virginia, Chesapeake Communications that sold us Comdial Inntouch systems for less than I could buy them from Graybar or North Supply. They were brand new. I believe what causes them to sell so low is that there are different levels of dealerships and different discounts offered by the manufactures based on the volumes they sell. They can't maintain their "elite" dealership status by just selling what they install. They couldn't install and service all those systems unless they hire 20 telemarketers,10 salespeople and 10 installers and hit the market around the clock. Therefore, they sell the largest volume to other companies in order to get the low prices for their installs. They don't even care if they make a profit.
We used to sell about 7 Inntouch Comdials per month for over 8 years straight here in South Florida. Then Comdial discontinued the system and came out with the new Inntouch Concierge, which was a great system but required certification. When you have installed that many systems what could they possibly teach you. We even solved their gliches that their own tech support couln't solve. We stopped selling it and Comdial practically went out of business a few years later.
The problem that is created is that ignorant end users and unknowledgeable installers give Panasonic a bad name. The features don't work properly and who does the end user blame: themselves or their installer or Panasonic. Panasonic. (That system is a piece of shit is commonly uttered). They tend to run a much tighter ship on the TDA products which allows you to benefit if you are certified. You have to register the serial number with Panasonic. We have installed a few and it is an incredible little system.
The problem they have is that they have no local training (at least for us). They should have some on line training courses or have it available in more cities. Every Panasonic we have installed we have not touched or serviced in years (they are rock-solid systems if installed properly).
