On a completely unrelated note, have you ever had a supplier refuse to waive such a ridiculous fee, in such a ridiculous way, as to completely shoot themselves in the ass, and potentially lose hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of business annually? I had a vendor refuse to waive a freight charge at 97% of the cost of the goods purchased, because they didn't have any stock in the material in their local warehouse. They have it in other warehouses in the company, and they have weekly transfer trucks running between their warehouses, but because they didn't have it locally, they want to charge us $188 freight on a $196 order, and they refused to back down. So tomorrow I get to explain to them just how foolish they're being, when I tell them that we will be moving ALL of our business (about $300k - $400k a year) to other suppliers who are dying to get our money, unless they'd like to revisit that little decision one last time. Especially since they came in last week begging for more of our business.
A long time ago, I used to do all of the purchasing for
Metro Networks, before it merged with Westwood One, and before it was sold to Clear Channel. I did about 90% of our purchasing through Mac Warehouse (we were primarily a mac shop) and it's sister company Micro Warehouse. I spent probably 4-6 hours a day on the phone with my rep, cutting up, shooting the shit, and, of course, buying equipment for our 1800 or so radio and tv affiliate offices. I got to know her so well that when I was near her area on a business trip, she drove the hour it took to come see me, and we hung out for a day and had a pretty good time.
Now, it was a trick talking to her, because the reps didn't have personal lines. They were on random phone rotation. But I knew her employee id # and would ask to be transferred to her extension (which was the same) when I called. I never talked to anyone else, because she was an awesome rep and went out of her way to earn my business.
This went on for about a year until my rep got a new boss. The guy was trying to flex his managerial muscle to show his new employees that he was the boss, and he banned her from talking on the phone with me. I was to use whatever rep came up in rotation when I called. So I got his number and called him directly and had it out with him. Of course, he didn't want to give me any respect because I was a 22 year old kid, so I told him "bottom line--if I can't talk to my rep when I want and for as long as a I want, I'm taking my business elsewhere". He laughed and said "Hah, we have you listed as a small business. Sorry to see you go, but do what you gotta do."
Now, we were only listed as a "small business" because the company was privately owned as a sole proprietorship at the time, and David Saperstein was very secretive about how much money he made and didn't disclose it to anyone--so they put us in the lowest tier. That said, I purchased nearly 4 million dollars a year worth of equipment. So I told the guy "Tell ya what. Why don't you look into my purchase history, and when your boss calls you into his office and asks why our sales have dried up, you give me a call and we can revisit this discussion. You have my number."
Two weeks later he called me asking me what he could do to get me to reconsider. He actually sounded shaky and close to tears. I made him get my rep on conference call, made him apologize to me and to her, and told him "if you want my business, I'm going to spend as much time on the phone with her as I want. If I want to blow an entire 8-hour day talking to her, that's what it's going to take. We cool?" We were.
I felt like such a stud after that phone call
