Sharp Practice?
I am a little cross!
It happens; I have a lot on my plate right now – am trying to complete my Masters’ dissertation by this weekend, organise milk – we are still looking for goat milk farmers – and generally catch up as I am very behind with answering people’s e-mails and getting things done: apologies all round. However….
I have just looked at a remittance advice from one of our large customers to see that they have knocked off £177 from their payment termed samples which I knew nothing about.
There’s nothing wrong with giving samples to our established customers to give to their potential new customers, I’m all for that, but £177? And without asking? That is more than some of their orders.
They have also faxed through a notification, the first of which I have ever seen, knocking another £116 referenced ‘samples’. We cannot afford to do this and it seems fairly excessive.
Again, I must emphasis that I don’t mind giving out free samples to good customers as this is the best way, getting people to try it, to buy it, so in principle, fine, but £293 is an awful lot of money for free samples and more, quite honestly, than we can afford.
Can I do anything about this, other than e-mail (I have) the buyer concerned? Should I be afraid of their power over us? Probably yes, but this is not a good message to give out to us little artisan cheese makers. £293 hurts.
Time will tell if this results in a marked increase in sales…..
What do you think?