<VV> Was Re:5th degree... Now Vote with your feet.

[RoboMan91324@aol.com]

Yes, Mark, I agree that a good way to have influence on vendors is to let 
them know that they are losing business.  However, the message must get through.  
If one of our group walks out of a Costco or Wally World, they lose the sale 
on those tires or battery but does that message move up the chain?  The clerk 
probably doesn't really care about the "Corvair trade" and just moves on to 
the next in line.  He won't keep track of lost business and file a report to the 
marketing department.  You need to ask for the manager before storming out.  
He just might care enough to pass the information up the chain of command.  To 
be really effective, a letter of complaint to "Corporate" should be sent.  If 
they know that they have offended a number of customers who will take ALL of 
their business elsewhere, they might modify their methods.  Tell Costco that 
you will be letting your membership lapse and picking up a membership at Sam's 
Club or elsewhere.  This is especially effective if they can check your 
records and see that you are a good customer.  Sometimes, they will even send a gift 
certificate or voucher to keep you happy.  Most customer oriented businesses 
know that someone who cares enough to write a letter (or even email) is 
someone who will really take his or her business elsewhere and also complain to 
others.  Yes, the legal folks at corporate drive these sort of things but 
ultimately, the companies are driven by profits.  If they realize that they are losing 
more because of a particular policy than they would lose without it they are 
likely to change it.  By the way, this holds true for politicians as well.  A 
complaint phone call has lower priority, an email has more and an actual 
letter by snail mail holds the highest priority.  Obviously, silence carries very 
little weight.  The only difference is that a phone call can be very effective 
if you are trying to solve a specific problem and not trying to change policy 
as we are discussing here.

Just my opinion.

Doc
~~~~~~~~
In a message dated 1/4/2005 3:41:17 PM Pacific Standard Time, 
virtualvairs-request@corvair.org writes:

> Message: 8
> From: "Mark Noakes" <mark@noakes.com>
> To: virtualvairs@corvair.org
> Date: Tue, 04 Jan 2005 15:37:49 -0800
> Subject: Re: <VV> Re:5th degree...
> 
> vote with your feet while you can...don't do business with vendors that 
> don't sell what you want or put restrictions on it.
> 
> Mark Noakes