Acer's mistake puts TN partners in a soup

N R Sethuraman

Chennai

March 11th, 2008

A mistake made in the invoice by Acer has created havoc among its partners in
Tamil Nadu. Desktop PCs of the model Acer Power 450 had been inadvertently
invoiced as not containing DVDRW. The price of the DVDRW, said to be Rs 2,000,
was not added in the stock-keeping unit (SKU) at the time of invoicing. Since it
wasn't included in the price list Acer now plans to recover the price from the
partners who sold it to the end-users. This deduction came into effect for the
machines, which were sold between November 29 and December 10, 2007.

An Acer partner from Madurai told The DQ Week on condition of anonymity that
this was purely the mistake of Acer. He opined that it was disappointing that
the partners were being victimized for no fault of theirs. "We take the
stock from Ingram Micro and sell it to resellers and end-users with a margin of
one percent. We were unaware that the machines had DVDRW in it. This model-AP450
used to come with different combinations," the partner informed. It is also
said that partners often don't even open the boxes and rely completely on the
price list provided by the company. "We never open the piece and just push
them to resellers and end-users. How can the partners pay for the company's
mistake? We are ready to give the address of the end-users to whom we have sold
the product and let the company get the remaining amount from them. It is also
very late to react on a mistake that happened three months back," said the
anguished partner. However, when questioned about the role of Ingram Micro, the
distributor, in this confusion, the partner ruled out the possibilities.
"If it would have been the mistake of Ingram, Acer would have gone to them,
else Ingram would have notified us. But Ingram hasn't been brought into the
loop, which clearly shows that it was entirely the mistake of Acer," the
partner clarified.

Dharmaraj, Partner-Director, Zigma Computer Links, Erode, said, "We are
billing around 200 to 300 PCs per day, with a margin of two to three percent.
And the cost of DVDRW alone would be just Rs 1,200. It is confusing why we are
being asked to pay Rs 2,000 and that too for their mistake. It is practically
impossible to get the amount back as a closed deal cannot be opened again for
any reasons."

This issue has been taken to Confed-ITA as well. Said PN Prasad, Secretary,
Confed-ITA, "Acer cannot penalize the partners, who are solely dependent on
the vendor. It is more hurting that the company is reacting very slowly for a
mistake, which has happened three months back." When contacted, S
Karthikeyan, President, Confed-ITA said that the association was trying to solve
the issue as soon as possible, "We have taken up the issue with the
Business Development Managers of the company and they have promised to take
certain measures to solve the issue. We trust their words and hope to solve it
soon."

When contacted, Acer refused to respond on the issue.