The Aqualung Discussion [ Moved ]

[Brandon]

This is why I say this is mostly a US market issue. The fellows down south can see an actuall cost saviongs to buying their gear on line. They don't have the exchange, added shipping, duty and brokerage to eat up thier savings. Once we get more online dealers in Canada we might see the same issue arise here with much more prominence. But as the sitruation exist it's not the issue here as it is down south.

Perhaps this thread was not an appropriate place to start this discussion?

It seems that your only way of linking your argument back to the original subject of this thread is that it happens to involve Apeks equipment. The rest is just you explaining why you buy from your LDS - a topic that has been discussed, debated, and flogged to death in hundreds of other threads.

Granted, maybe your post was meant to tell us that the gray-market and price fixing issues were less of a problem in the Canadian market. Great, I'm happy for you, but they are a real problem in the US market, and that is why these threads were started.

This thread is being watched by the dive industry... when it launches into tangents like it has for the last 20 posts, its no longer productive.

-B.

 

[homo maris]

Not necessaruly in this particular case. The "value" to me does include the trust factor, but also the warranty factor parts for life (reg sets x 2), the fact that I don't have to send my regs through the box grinder of the postal service for repair or service, the fact that if something did go wrong and as a result of a service technician error I ended up hurt or killed, action could be taken that would have a realistic chance of going through (no multiple jurisdictions to go through.).

These are the intrinsics that I calculate the value of a purchase upon.

I actually had the opportunity to buy my regs "new from an online source" (cheaper than from my LSD), "used from another local diver" (again cheaper), but still opted for the "new from my LDS route"(more cost up frint, but will pay off over time). The long term cost benefit of using the authorized LDS still worked out to my benefit over the life of the regs.

Consider this:

I bought my reg setup NEW from my LDS because of the same reason you stated. My LDS was Dive Sports ... now I cannot get service with them because AL cancelled their dealership. I have the lifetime warranty but I cannot get service anywhere ... except by mailing the reg to AL in CA.

I NEVER expected that scenario when buying from my LDS. I thouhgt I was safe, that I would continue to get the awsome service from Phil. I never expected that the manufacturer would interfere. Now my only way to get service is to do it through AL in CA (no verifyable track record) or through an LDS I do not trust.

I should have bought it online because AL has no power over online shops.

 

[Storm]

Perhaps this thread was not an appropriate place to start this discussion?

It seems that your only way of linking your argument back to the original subject of this thread is that it happens to involve Apeks equipment. The rest is just you explaining why you buy from your LDS - a topic that has been discussed, debated, and flogged to death in hundreds of other threads.

Granted, maybe your post was meant to tell us that the gray-market and price fixing issues were less of a problem in the Canadian market. Great, I'm happy for you, but they are a real problem in the US market, and that is why these threads were started.

This thread is being watched by the dive industry... when it launches into tangents like it has for the last 20 posts, its no longer productive.

-B.

Agree and I apologize. The whole bash the manufacturer thing may have hit close to home for me as they happen to be my manufacturer of choice, just like Larry et all are your retailer of choice, I felt the need to voice my opinion, which happens to run contrary to the concensus in this thread. Also, from an outside view it appeared to be a lot of a waste of energy or at the kleat an exercize in futility. These multi-national corporations have client bases way outside of the sphere of influence of this site, and the folks who hang out here, (no offense intended, but not all international divers hang out here.) so the effectiveness of a boycott or protest may also be negligable.

Anyway, fight the good fight folks, I'll keep my nose out of it. I like their one product line(Apeks), and will not take my business elsewhere to appease a group who feel they have been wronged while I feel I have not been. I'll stand by my LDS purchase even if I take a bit of an upfront hit in the pocket book.

Consider this:

I bought my reg setup NEW from my LDS because of the same reason you stated. My LDS was Dive Sports ... now I cannot get service with them because AL cancelled their dealership.

It took two to tango. I submit that Phil also shares some of the responsibility for your perdicament, it was after all his initial actions that contributed to the cancelation of the dealer authorization, no? I mean the manufacturer didn't just suspend Phil's dealership just for the fun of it. The two parties couldn't resolve their issues and one took harsh (perhaps overly harsh) action.

I feel for you as you are caught in the middle and hope things work out for you.

Peace to all.

 

[homo maris]

Brandon,

From what I've been told, and read both here and elsewhere, online dealers cannot provide the lifetime warranty on Apeks regs direclty they have to do some sort of shell game to achieve this as it's against the authorized dealers agreement to post the prices online etc...etc... Some do skate around this, but it's a skate, a dodge, and that in itself draws doubts as to whether or not the warranty will be honored down the road. When a guy on the internet says don't worry we'll do this shuffle, and tell that lie then you'll get your warranty their ethics come into question, and thus all of their ethics come into question,,, including the honoring of warrantees etc.

Storm

Your argument does not stand logically.
The lifetime warranty is for parts only and not labor. It covers about $20 of parts (wholesale) each year you service your reg. If you save $200 by buying you reg online and invest the $200 you save it gives, you still save over the lifetime warranty. At 5% interest your $200 become $923 40 years later and you had to buy only $800 of parts (40 years at $20 each) so you STILL have saved $123 over the lifetime warranty deal and you STILL had the LDS you trust service the reg.

Also, please note that nobody here is questionning the quality of AL gear or Apeks of Suunto. I own Apeks. They are awsome regs .. that is if I can get them serviced the way I need ... otherwise they are expensive paperweights. I want an awsome reg AND I want to get it serviced. I can now do that with Oceanic or Poseidon but no longer with Apeks.

Ask yourself this. How long will your LDS continue to be an AL dealer? What is your option if they stop.

 

[Storm]

Storm

Your argument does not stand logically.
The lifetime warranty is for parts only and not labor. It covers about $20 of parts each year you service your reg. If you save $200 by buying you reg online and invest the $200 you save it gives, you still save over the lifetime warranty. At 5% interest your $200 become $923 40 years later and you had to buy only $800 of parts (40 years at $20 each) so you STILL have saved $123 over the lifetime warranty deal and you STILL had the LDS you trust service the reg.


Adding your edit


Also, please note that nobody here is questionning the quality of AL gear or Apeks of Suunto. I own Apeks. They are awsome regs .. that is if I can get them serviced the way I need ... otherwise they are expensive paperweights. I want an awsome reg AND I want to get it serviced. I can now do that with Oceanic or Poseidon but no longer with Apeks.

Ask yourself this. How long will your LDS continue to be an AL dealer? What is your option if they stop.

I have 2 complete sets of regs including two full secondaries (no pared down octos) and two first stages. 15 per secondary pack, * 4 = 60.00, + 19.00 per first stage * 2 = 38.00 Total = 100.00 (give or take a buck or two.) This is all a side discussion as fairbanksdiver has sais perhasp we should split it off and let the OP subject go forward.

Both my wife and I dive and we use the same gear. We also prefer to have full secondaries not a secondary and a pared down octo as we donate our primary.

My tech is associated with the LDs via contract, He is an autorized tech, and doesn't sell gear..he also is an avid Apkes diver....I'm covered trust me.

You don't know my personal situation or my gear so your math is off base for my circumstances.

 

[homo maris]

Back to the topic...

It took two to tango. I submit that Phil also shares some of the responsibility for your predicament, it was after all his initial actions that contributed to the cancellation of the dealer authorization, no? I mean the manufacturer didn't just suspend Phil's dealership just for the fun of it. The two parties couldn't resolve their issues and one took harsh (perhaps overly harsh) action.

This is a very interesting point you make. Phil acknowledged in the previous "yanked for fear of lawsuit" AL thread that he knowingly breached the AL dealer policy. Phil had said that he believes that AL products are the best and that in order to sell them and compete he had no option but to discount them below what was allowed under the policy. He said that he did that in part because the Leisure Trends market research reports he received from AL monthly indicated that AL products were sold consistently below the minimum price agreed in the dealer contract. He said that if AL knew through that report that their products were consistently sold for less than contracted then Dive Sports, in order to compete, had to do the same – which he did. He also assumed that because AL was over years doing nothing to stop others from selling at a discount he would be left alone. He was wrong. AL only penalizes the big guys, like the TV mobster Tony Soprano.

I agree with you I think that Dive Sports bears half the responsibility for the cancellation of their AL dealership. But then why am I not equally upset at AL and Dive Sports? Why will I still do business with Dive Sports and not with AL? There are two reasons, one based on Phil's outstanding customer service and the other more philosophical.

1. Dive Sports acted in the best interest of its customers by providing superb service at a low cost. Their action jeopardized their economic subsistence (i.e. they knew they could loose the AL dealership) but they regardless acted in the best interest of their customers. This is what we desire from our LDS. I am a customer. I like it when the dealer is on my side and still makes a living. It builds a relationship of trust. Trust is essential in Scuba diving. It starts with trusting that the manufacturer has good quality control, then it continues with the dealer having a good service department and then it finishes with a reliable buddy. Anything short of that puts our lives at increased risks. Phil at Dive Sports knew that well. He sold the best equipment, at the best price, with the best service – too bad he did not provide buddies as well

2. I believe in a free global market, a market where price is determined by the unregulated interchange of supply and demand rather than regulated by manufacturers and government policies. This desire to have a free market is embodied in US Laws that prohibit restraint of trade or monopolies (e.g. Sherman Antitrust Act). It is also fundamental to capitalism. The increase in market transparency brought by the Internet is rapidly causing all industries, no matter how closed and proprietary, to behave as free markets (e.g. witness the change with insurance companies due to the transparency brought by Geico and Progressive). As a diver, I would like the market transparency enabled by Scubaboard and many other online forums to influence stubborn manufacturers (i.e. Scubabpro and AquaLung) to lessen their restrictive regulations and let supply and demand define the scuba equipment market as opposed to manufacturer policies. Numerous manufacturers such as Oceanic or Apollo are already changing this industry – they are run by smart business people. It is only a matter of time for it to happen because increasingly there are less quality differences between regulator manufacturers.

Take the 16 muscle regulators tested by Scubalab (http://www.xsscuba.com/downloads/muscle_regs_11_05.pdf), The highest scored 20 and the lowest 16 out of 20 an insignificant 4 points difference. A far as max RMV the top regulator scored 81.6 and the lowest 75, again a meaningless difference to most divers. It means that no matter what manufacturers advertise, there is no meaningful performance difference between top regulators. The meaningful difference is all in fair price and reliable service from the dealer! When reading advice in the regulator section on Scubaboard (e.g. http://www.scubaboard.com/showthread.php?t=146556) it is clear that serviceability ranks #1 over performance. That means manufacturers need to maintain a network of broad-reaching dealers, like Scubatoys, Dive Sport, etc. in addition to localized ones. The bigger the reliable dealers’ network reach, and the smaller the price differences between them, the larger the potential market for regulators.

Free advice to manufacturers: don’t worry about controlling the end price, let supply and demands do it (save costs in negotiations and lawyer fees). Instead, please create a standard ranking of the quality of dealers (e.g. from 1 tank = mediocre to 5 tanks = outstanding), perhaps based on a standard customer satisfaction survey included in warranties, and only nurture those, like Dive Sports, Scubatoys, Splash Dive Center (VA) and many others, who provide a spectacular and safe customer experience.

 

[Whitelightnin]

I have to say that I would have done the same thing as Phil. If a customer brings me a price off the internet & asks me to, I will match it. If it causes me to sell below the minimum allowed price, so be it. The customer comes first. ALWAYS!!! To run a business any other way is suicide. If a manufactor decides to pull my dealership, I will simply pick up another line. My customers do business with me, not with the manufactors. They do business with me because of the customer service. Not because of the product lines I carry. have had customers ask for Aqualung & I simply tell them why I don't carry that line. Aqualung won't let me sell at a price that is competitive with the grey guys. I won't carry something that I can't be competitive on. I have not lost a single sale yet because I don't carry Aqualung. They ALYAWS have simply bought a brand that I carry. Aqualung is cutting their own throat with this BS policy. When they bleed to death, it will be their own fault. They know it is wrong but don't care. They think they are invincible. We'll see.

James

 

[The Chairman]

My apologies...

I attempted to split the two discussions: the original topic from the hijack. Unfortunately, I completely and irrevocably obliterated the hijack unintentionally. If you feel you need to continue the hijack portion, please start a thread in site support. Again, my apologies for hitting the wrong key at a critical juncture.

 

[aquaoren]

LOL, but of course...

 

[Storm]

homo maris;
First off you make some valid points and I generally maintain that neither party in a dispute like this is totally innocent.

1. Dive Sports acted in the best interest of its customers by providing superb service at a low cost. Their action jeopardized their economic subsistence (i.e. they knew they could loose the AL dealership) but they regardless acted in the best interest of their customers.

And exactly how does getting their dealer license, and thus the ability to provide continued service to their AL clientele, suspended help their Al clientele. There is also the smell of retailer market share protection going on here. While Phil has said that he was standing up for his clients, his in-ability to compete was also costing him sales and that was eating into his profits. So while I can agree that a certain amount of the motivation for his actions was based on what you refer to as “best interest of its customers” it also has to do with money and his not getting the sales that ended up going to the grey market. Let’s keep it in perspective shall we. Phil is not being a martyr here, he’s attempting to protect his clients AND his profit margins.

2. I believe in a free global market, a market where price is determined by the unregulated interchange of supply and demand rather than regulated by manufacturers and government policies. This desire to have a free market is embodied in US Laws that prohibit restraint of trade or monopolies (e.g. Sherman Antitrust Act).

Please no not try to quote me US law and then try to convince me that US law protects free markets, and that free markets are the basis of capitalism. I live in Canada. Our trade systems and competition laws are similar. I’ve also seen the effect of US law as it pertains to free trade and free markets. The US has routinely ignored court rulings against them in various trade disputes so while they claim to support free trade and free trade agreements, they routinely ignore them when their best interest, and not the customer’s best interest, is adversely affected. There are many levels to price fixing ranging from manufacturers price fixing to market board price fixing, to national price fixing (duties and tariffs). In essence, capitalism, as practiced in the US, and Canada, is based on price fixing, to one degree or another.

There are other incidents of manufacture price fixing in the US markets. You already have reached, in many product markets, retail saturation so manufacture price fixing is one of the tools used to keep markets from devaluing. The auto industry comes to mind; as does the home appliance market. Agriculture market boards fix prices and quotas to maintain supply management and market value as does other natural resource based markets.

In the same breath that you would cry against price fixing and in support of free markets, you would also cry about third world manufacturing creating unfair pricing when compared against US based manufacturing. Then you would also cry out against the factories moving out of the US and the loss of secondary industry which is controlled by the free market. Before you jump onto the true free market bandwagon be prepared to accept all the facets of it.

I agree the internet has opened many markets previously closed to the retail market, and some transparency has been realized but it has also lead to an increase in the market necessity of caveat emptor.

My father often said “you get what you pay for”. Deal shopping is all fine and good, but if you expect something for nothing you end up paying next to nothing for something of less over all quality. (Quality includes service support, warranty, trust, etc). Paying a few extra dollars for a quality item from a dealer that I want to deal with is not a big thing for me; nor is it a big thing for many other buyers out there who still prefer to use the Internet for information, and keep their spending local, hence AL will probably not give this as much attention as folks here seem to think. I’m not saying it is right, just a probability.


Peace

The customer comes first. ALWAYS!!! ...
have had customers ask for Aqualung & I simply tell them why I don't carry that line.
...They ALYAWS have simply bought a brand that I carry.

James your whole paragraph is entirely contradictory. If the customer comes first, then the brand they are looking for is what you should be ordering. The first time a reatiler tries to sell me a "line that they prefer to carry" over the product that I wanted would be the last time I walked into their shop...period.

You're confusing good salesmenship with the customer comes first attitute of good customer service. If that works for you all the best...it wouldn't work for me.