Will distys fight for the channel?

Aurangabad

November 26th, 2007

Warranty yet again was the central topic for discussion at the IT Panchayat,
organized by DQ Channels and The DQ Week, at Aurangabad on 24th November 2007.
Manish Joshipura of Redington India, Kiran Morgaonkar of Ingram Micro, Ajay
Goenka of Rashi Peripherals and Milind Modi of Neoteric Infomatique made up the
panel of distributors facing the channel.

Partners said that often distributors shrugged off the responsibility of
offering post sales support saying it was the vendor's job. While this is true
of some vendors, they learnt at the IT Panchayat that there were some
distributors like Redington, which has created a services arm that looks after
support issues.

One reason why partners in the city were unhappy about the existing service
network is because often distys or vendors had their service centers outside
city limits. This meant that the customer had to pay octroi for bringing in the
repaired product back into the city, though it is not a new product.

To this, Goenka replied that Rashi would soon open a RMA center within the
city limits soon. Neoteric has an arrangement with Axioma for offering support,
while Ingram handled service on its own for some products.

Partners urged that distributors should campaign with the vendor for better
support infrastructure. Suhas Lanke of Hi-Tech Computers said, "If in some
cases even distributors are unable to honor vendor's service commitments, then
they should take this up with the vendor because ultimately such instances
affect the relationship between distys and the partner."

Sanjay Agarwal of Mainframe Computers spoke of a peculiar problem he faced;
wherein he was told that only Lenovo laptops bought from local dealers would be
serviced in Aurangabad. Lenovo laptops bought in Pune would not be serviced in
the city. He directed this question to Joshipura of Redington, Lenovo's
distributor. The latter pledged ignorance about this case and assured that he
would look into the matter.

With recurring services issues affecting their business, partners urged that
distys should have a dedicated person to look after service only in the city.
"Most of the time we hanker the sales guys to resolve our service issues,
but that is not his job and he is unable to do much about it," said Lanke.
But Morgaonkar remarked that appointing a person to oversee service and offering
service are two distinct things and can't be mixed.

Yet another instance of inadequate service offered came from Sameer Vitekar
of Memory Marketing India. He claimed for when it had launched its Xerox
printer, the vendor had assured of three-year warranty. Now, it has gone back on
its words and maintains that it offers only a one-year warranty. "Distys
should stop entertaining vendors who are not living up to their service
agreements," he demanded.

He also threw up the case of Asus where the company is virtually inaccessible
and has a very high defect rate. "Today Asus claims that some of its
motherboards are not in production and ask the customer to go for a upgraded
model. But then what about the CPU, which might not work with the new board?
Will Asus pay for the CPU as well? The other option Asus gives us is take 30
percent of the product's price as compensation which is absurd as my customer
will not accept it," Vitekar railed.

While the distys were not willing to take a hard lined stand of suspending
business with vendors who offer inadequate service, they did assure the channel
that they would try to take this feedback to the top management of the vendor
companies to bring about a quick change in policies.

But the point that everyone was missing is the even if a disty ever suspends
business with a vendor because it is not living up to its service promises, it
does not resolve the existing problem of the dealer who is still stuck with the
faulty product. The partners are holding onto a hope that things will change
with respect to service in the near future and then it will not be as difficult
doing business.