Cheers/Jeers - Does this serve a purpose?

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Like it or not - it's the "big" (I use that term loosely because there isn't a supplier of pen kits that I know of who would qualify as a big business in the real sense of the word.) guys who make the market.

They set the benchmarks. I, and I think most of the other small vendors, look at them when we're setting prices.

We get a sense of what's selling by seeing what they're pushing in their catalogs and web sites.

We base our offerings on where we can 'beat' them. Because for all of the complaints about PSI - I don't sell a thing unless my price is competitive with theirs and usually mine has to be lower.

They are filling the orders of tens of thousands of purchasers - we little guys would all drop dead from exaustion trying to keep up if they disappeared.

They created the market that your favorite small, personalized service vendor is operating in. I personally like to be able to say "PSI charges $$$$ for this product and my price is only $$$"

They are not your enemy, they are your friends.
 
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If we took shipping & delivery time off the board, how many of these "Jeers" focus on the quality of the products?

I like that point.

In fact, the quality of the product is probably more important to me than a couple days on the delivery cycle.

(and I have remarked here about speedy delivery)

Even item quality itself can not be attributed to the vendor unless they themselves makes it. However that being said, cases like exclusive right to marketing, supply and the like is a whole new ball game.

I recently, read past 60 days, made an order for some item and it took 45 days for me to receive it. I also can order waterstones from japan and they will be here faster than an item shipped from next state over. Neither of those is a reflection of the supply company.


What the jeer/cheer should be is more of a running tally of good to bad feedback. By posts alone with out some rating system is almost meaningless other than to rant and blow steam off. It should not be that difficult to add some type of rating system like that to IAP.
 
A rating system would be like the doctor asking you to rate your pain betreen 1 and 10. Some people have a very low thresold for pain, others can take a lot of pain, so your 10 and my 10 may be very different. Jim S
 
A rating system would be like the doctor asking you to rate your pain betreen 1 and 10. Some people have a very low thresold for pain, others can take a lot of pain, so your 10 and my 10 may be very different. Jim S

That is why you have specific questions that you ask and not vague generic quesitons like the 1-10 scale for pain you mentioned.
 
If you really want to know how a vendor stacks up - go to the penturning forum and ask "Any of you folks ever do business with the Kludge Komputer Korp? If you did, how was it and how good are their products.? You'll get more answers than you know what do do with and they will be pretty candid.
 
It's like any other section of the site, if you don't want to see ramblings, don't go to casual conversation. If you don't care about metal lathes guess where you don't go. There may be a section you really enjoy that someone else wonders why even have that section.
 
I think the forum serves a purpose. I've used that information to choose particular vendors. And to answer the original posters questions, even though a lot of people bash PSI, I still shop there for some things because my personal experience with them (before even joining IAP) has been good, and their prices are good for the items I buy there. I put my personal experiences over forum ratings. I realize that most people (myself included) rarely give feedback for basic good service. A lot more will post a complaint even over the slightest issue.

I agree an overall rating system whould be a better indicator. Not sure how to make that work. Maybe a poll can be set up for each vendor and each user could "vote" a rating for vendors they have used. Make it so the votes are changeable so if the vendor starts to slip or improve people can update their rating. One thread/poll per vendor and new threads/vendors could be easily added.
 
Any rating system suffers..

if it does not represent COMPLETE activity. As pointed out earlier, PSI can have the best overall performance by percentage, but even if the few unhappy souls can make life appear worse than it is.

A rating system in order to be useful would have to reflect some rating value for ALL activity.
 
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