Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/07/18
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]"Think about it. If you bought your Leica in Japan, deal with the Japanese Leica distributor. He is the one who has a financial interest in the deal! " I hope you don't believe that Leica USA makes all the money and that Leica SOLMS makes less or even no money ? Leica Solms owns Leica USA... and as I noted, also owns, in most likelihood, Leica Japan. Same is true of Nikon and Canon, with the same bizarre warranty story. "Put yourself in the position of the authorized importer of any product, in any country. Someone buys the product you sell in another country. This means that you make no money from the sale. Yet he asks you to pay for his repairs. Would *you* pay for his repairs in this situation?" Agreed, but this is the logic I have heard used to justify local P+L centers. This could easily be handled under a worldwide accounting system for repairs' billback. Within one company this is easily handled with todays' computer and communication technology. That was not true say 40 years ago. The Europeon approach to local sales channels is to set them up as separate P+L centers..... regardless that they are owned by the main conglomerate. Locally policies such as warranty, prices, advertising, etc are decided. Japan followed that model. At the end of the accounting games, the sales dollars are all reflected to the parent. The parent should control all policy that is a worldwide issue... in this case, warranty and sales price. Under the principal of world wide pricing, all the grey market games would end, the customers' price would be really close throughout the world, and warranties would be worldwide. I am looking for improvement of customer satisfaction. Worldwide warranties and worldwide pricing are ways to improve. Thank You Frank Filippone red735i@worldnet.att.net