Last week I scheduled an appointment with one of my prospects to go see a Plockmatic Booklet Maker in action at an existing account. The existing account is one of those accounts that, how can I say, was a little tardy on keeping up with agreements and had to go and find supplies and service somewhere else if you get my drift.
I finished the demonstration (signed the order after the demo) and then went off to thank my account for the time they allotted me in their office and use of their system. We got to talking and my client asked, “Do you know where I can get some OEM toner for the system?”
I responded, “What’s wrong with your current toner provider? The client went on to say that they were buying toner from ebay for the last year or so from one source and that source had dried up. Apparently, the person or persons supplying the toner had been stealing the toner and selling it on ebay. They got caught by the U.S. Post Office and now face at least two Federal crimes, one for shipping across state lines, two for using the U.S. Post Office as well as the crime of stealing the product in the first place. Odds are this person or group of persons may go directly to jail. As luck would have it my client had no idea they were receiving stolen goods, seems like they are off the hook.
Which leads me to ebay, there’s no way to tell if you are buying stolen supplies that are posted on ebay, and when the price seems to be to good to be true then the product might just be stolen. Consumers seem to be so caught up in getting the best price for a product or service and where does that get them? Saving $10 for a toner cartridge that lasts 10,000 pages equates to one hundredth of a penny for each page. We all know copiers need to be maintained and repaired often, yet end users will buy copiers on ebay only to find out that they need to spend additional dollars to set up the system, replace what is missing and deal with many issues since there is no service records/history that come with the unit.
Two New Yorkers recently got nabbed as toner thieves. One stole more than $1.5 million worth of the supplies and the other pilfered more than $375,000 worth of supplies.
The thought of a cheap price is long forgotten after poor service.
Good selling!
