Loyalty - are my expectations too high?

[Lucan Unlordly]

We supply trophies and awards to clubs both online and locally.

In recent weeks at least 2 local customers have successfully bought supplier direct. They serve the same marketplace as us but with a completely unrelated product, heavy exercise equipment and water coolers! They are, at the moment anyway, buying purely for their own clubs use. Should I be seriously issed off, because I am, that suppliers will put the blinkers on when opening new accounts or are my old school expectations for a bit of loyalty too high? I can deal with the customers. They will still have to buy some stuff from us and at the moment, bring their own Tea, stand outside in the cold when they collect and xxxx off with a full priced invoice paid on collection.

Rant over. Have a nice day?

 

[Chris Ashdown]

The answer is Yes, loyalty does not checkmate business sense or the ability to buy from other suppliers

 

[Ozzy]

Maybe I'm old school too but I agree with @Lucan Unlordly ; I tend to be a loyal customer and I want to be a customer someone wants to deal with. I'm happy to pay a fair rate for a fair service, but if I find I've been fleeced/taken advantage off I don't look back with zero time for discussion.

I kinda do expect the same from my customers too, but that isn't always the case.

I've just typed all that and then a thought pops in my head that sometimes a business, perhaps early days, pennies are so tight that looking to save a shilling here and a penny there is necessary - perhaps.

 

[fisicx]

Or maybe it’s someone different doing the ordering and they just did a google search.

I’m never loyal when buying online. I rarely use the same people twice - usually because I can never remember who I got it from last time.

The only exception is screwfix because I can do click and collect and be there and back in 10 minutes.

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

The only loyalty is to my business.

Whilst I prefer to support local businesses and stay shopping with them, for a few percent, I am not bothered. When £££'s are at stake, I buy the best value I can.

Business is different nowadays, especially when dealing with employees - they tend to go for the route of less resistance (to them) i.e. online. Clients cutting you out of the loop to go direct is a sad reality that some businesses will make sales any way they can.

 

[UKSBD]

I've drop shipped a product for 20 years.

Manufacturer/supplier has always been happy supplying me

A number of years ago their main rival started selling very similar products direct, which meant my prices were a lot higher than theirs

I knew then it would only be a matter of time before my supplier had no choice but to do similar.

They previously never dealt with the public but in last 2 or 3 years started to.

I was still selling their products but costs were increasing all the time and I was so uncompetitive now I barely sold any last year.

I knew this was coming and in fact told them 3 or 4 years ago I was surprised they were still selling to people like me.

All fair enough, but middle of last year I was placing orders and told there was a 4 week delay, this went up to 6.

Eventually I told a customer about the delay and to go and try and order it direct on their website and let me know how they got on.

They placed the order with no delay

Loyalty means nothing, it would have been nice if they were honest though rather than just telling me things were out of stock, when they were selling them direct.

I've now stopped selling the product but instead send traffic to their rivals via AdSense and affiliate links.