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I'm looking for a Falcon iDCS 18D phone. Is any vendor better than another? Are there any I ought to avoid?

CAV

All the Samsung supply situation is supposed to change on Jan. 1, 2006.

All dealer contracts are void as of that date and new contracts have to be signed.

Supposedly Samsung will be selling only to "Master" dealers, but who knows what deals will be hard and fast and what allowances will be made, and how long the "real" rules will last if things don't go smoothly.

You may just want the phone or you may want to buy the phone from someone who can give you adequate support. If you are a trained tech and have manuals then the cheapest place is fine.

I don't know who all is going to be a "master" dealer other than Avid, in Dallas, and who advertises on eBay.

Samsung always said that they were going to have "exclusive" product to protect the dealers, but many, many dealers were selling to anyone because they needed to keep the quarterly numbers up to keep the discount level up.

If you sign up with a "master" dealer like Avid, you have no minimum amount of product to buy, you get tech support from them, and I would presume you would be an "authorized" Samsung dealer.

Please understand this is not an advertisement for Avid, they are quite simply the only one I know of that has signed on to the new Samsung disribution scheme.

The product never was "exclusive" to Samsung dealers and if a dealer advertised wholesale prices to get the discount level up, Samsung did a "wink, wink, nod, nod" and said that by law they couldn't do anything to a dealer while Toshiba was turning off grey market dealers. At least this new scheme of distribution will be open and above board. There will be big stockhouses ("master" dealers) and anyone can sign up that has a pen.

The good of this is that techs who just can't keep up with the growing use of IP networking can buy from a distributor and have them modem in and do all the programming.

The bad part of this is that anybody who wants to buy a phone system can sign up as a dealer, buy one system, have joe shmoe do the cabling and have the distributor modem in and do all the programming. Instead of selling phones, some people will be lucky to get cable pulling jobs.

It will also be interesting to see who gets the leads that come into Samsung. Management needs to move the most product to keep their paycheck. If they tell leads that they can buy one system at wholesale and have it remotely maintained, they are more likely to have that lead buy a Samsung system because the local installers markup is eliminated. Who knows what will happen, we will just have to wait and see.

It will be interesting to see how it all plays out. I'm just about to retirement age, so it will be either opportunity or woe for the younger people in the industry. Time will tell.

Cav,
There are dealers on this board including myself that can help you out.

go to the samsung site and find a vendor in your area. But like the bunny said we are all changing to a new business model so if you can wait I would until after jan 1 but if not then any local vendor should be fine unless you need tech support, then I would contact one of us for a ref.

Thanks Wrichey. Of course there are people on the board who can help you with tech support and I am not trying to steer you away from or to anyone.

There is going to be a major change in five weeks on Jan. 1st and it would be a good idea for the people who are going to be "master" dealers to speak up and say so. If there are going to be other people on the board that develop some alternate line of supply and want to sell product then they should speak up.

Samsung has gone a far way from the 816 product and the digital product with VOIP and networking has gone past the ability of most people to as Sid Welvang said in class 21 years ago, "Read the print and you will know how to do it."

The days of being able to read a 1A2 tech sheet and do anything are over. The days of being able to read a Samsung DCS manual and do everything never were there as some programs and their manual pages were not enough to do the job, that why tech support was there. On your own you can't read the manual and set up all the networking.

Its nice to have support on the board, but if you don't line up with someone who can give you more tech support than would be reasonable on this board then you can be in a world of hurt.

There are product lines that I have always bought from some other dealer because it was critical for me to be able to place a call and have them want to help me because they were making money off my purchases.

Many times I could have gone to the Mart or Gear and bought something a little bit cheaper, but I wanted the dealer who gave me tech support to make a profit so they would be in business and be happy to support me if I got stuck on a job.

If you know everything, buy from the cheapest person around, do it all yourself and never call for support. If not, buy from someone with whom you establish a relationship based on mutual benefit.

I certainly did not mean to imply and I hope no one took it that way, that you can't find good people on this board from whom to purchase equipment.

What I intened to explain was that you need to establish a relationship with someone who can give you the tech support you may need based on the profit they make selling you product. No one wants to give hours of tech support to someone who buys one circuit card every other month and expects tech support on the two dozen cards they bought every month from someone else because they were cheaper.

With this change to "master" dealers, if you want to service Samsung product, you ought to be aware of what is happening and line yourself up with someone whom you expect to make a profit on your purchases and from whom you expect to get tech support.

It has to be good for both of you if it is going to be good for either of you, that is how ethical people conduct business.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by CAV:
[QB] I'm looking for a Falcon iDCS 18D phone. Is any vendor better than another? Are there any I ought to avoid?

I can help you with product now and after Jan 2006.
Where are you located?