Idiots buying water softeners on Amazon.....

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Master Plumber Mark

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I get a call a few days ago from some pushy kind of guy wanting to know what it would cost to install a fleck water softener he bought on Amazon... The parts were being shipped to him and he thinks he got a deal at under 600....

I tell him to send me some pictures and I will give him a ballpark estimate to install your unit with no warranty what -so -ever....

I look over what he sends me and I tell him probably between 500 and 600 dollars....
Then the haggling begins..... I must give him a deal because its the only way he can justify getting something from Amazon in the first place.....

We go round and round and he thinks I am coming out to his home this morning to install his junk for 400 and he has a few other things he needs to be tossed into the deal I dont know about yet.......:cool::cool: He acts all huffey and sort of feels taken aback because I wont just jump at the chance to do the work.......

anyway I tell him I will come out to his house this afternoon to look over his mess and then I go to AMAZON and see that they have other dumb-asses in our town who will professionally take out and re-install the fleck unit for a minimum of $475.00... This is for a straight replacement only and you wonder what extras are tacked onto this installation you dont know about??...

I am going to have to cut into the system and build up the whole thing......


I have to go out and look at this just for the hell of it .....

their is a class of people who think that they are getting a deal on AMAZON on this cheap Fleck junk, even though their is no one in town who will back up the product down the line....

We could have installed a MUCH better CLACK unit with a full warranty for what near he is going to have to pay ....

So let the haggling and bickering begin......
I will probably walk away from this and tell him to get some handy man from Craigs list
















 
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Master Plumber Mark

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probably gonna get a bad review on google.... went out to his house to
find that the unit came in pieces that needed to be all put together...


then he says he would like me to repair his tub drain upstairs and install some sort of
automatic sprinkler valve on the water line going to his hose bib...
he wanted to rig up some kind of sprinkler system..?? I was supposed to do these
two extra things -----of course that would be for free to "sweeten the deal" ------

I decided to tell him to find someone else....and politely left....

cant wait to see the review I get....


 

ditttohead

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Shouldn't you be able to see their reviews before you ecide to go out. Any douche who consistently gives bad reviews... no one will tough them or if they do, the price will simply double. I don't deal with the Yelp/review stuff, but can you see how they review prior to going out to see them?

The Fleck valves are fine, it is the garbage they they put them on. The cheapest junk tanks from China, low grade resin, riser screens that you can crush with your hands, riser tube from home depot, brine tanks with $1 safety floats... and regarding Ama***… I stopped buying anything from them a couple years ago when I saw them sink a couple of my friends businesses. As soon as they started selling decent numbers through Ama***, they found out that they were being sold against at a lower cost by Ama*** who simply started buying direct from their manufacturer. They literally beat them by $1 and put their own search results at the top.
 

Master Plumber Mark

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I have heard that with the new generation fleck valves sold on
amazon you almost need to take a class to learn how to program them correctly
---- that is what someone more in the know has griped
to me about them.....

Yea, I did notice the riser screen was extra light,
and it sort of felt like it would break in my hand....


I KNOW you are 100% correct about the Shitty resin that comes
with this unit... probably a low grade #5 resin like you get in the Whirlpool
or GE units...... I might as well be talking to a cow trying to convince
this guy the unit is basically dog-shit... he is just gonna stare at me chewing
his cud....

I had no intention of putting this thing together or getting
involved programming the unit in this hell hole.....

you cant really monitor yelp or google for the odds of someone
who constantly gives bad reviews to look out for.. its impossible.....

nothing has been posted and I not going to lose any sleep over it..
 
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ditttohead

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We need to lobby yelp and google... have a reviewers average review score available like it is on EB*Y before buying from someone. Too many millennials feel empowered by giving bad reviews...

 

Terry

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The following script is from "Amazon" which aired on Dec. 1, 2013

Jeff Bezos: You gotta earn your keep in this world. When you invent something new, if customers come to the party, it's disruptive to the old way.

Charlie Rose: Yeah, but I mean, there are areas where your power's so great and your margin, you're prepared to make it so thin that you can drive people out of business and, and you have that kind of strength. And people worry: Is Amazon ruthless in their pursuit of market share?

Jeff Bezos: The Internet is disrupting every media industry, Charlie, you know, people can complain about that, but complaining is not a strategy. And Amazon is not happening to book selling, the future is happening to book selling.

Dave Clark: Anything you want on, on Earth you're gonna get from us.

Charlie Rose: Anything you want on Earth you're gonna get from us?

Dave Clark: Yeah, that's where we're headed I believe.

Charlie Rose: So you sell this at break even?

Jeff Bezos: We sell this at break even and then we hope to...


Yes.................And then what. How does anyone else compete with a business that is going to sell everything on Earth at the break even point?
Amazon contacted me years ago asking if I would continue doing what I've been doing for 33% of what I had been getting. They weren't asking for a 5% or 10% discount, they were wanting a 200% discount on my earnings. I turned them down, and I now sell much less than what I had been selling, but at least I keep the margins where I can still make house payments in Seattle. I buy my camera equipment locally at Kenmore Camera, a very nice store, and buy locally all the time. I support my local business anyway I can. I get calls from around the country, and always advise them to buy from the local people there. Support the people you attend church with, the parents on your kids teams, the others you are doing business with.
At the time of the interview in 2013 Jeff was worth 25 Billion. It''s now 141.1 Billion.
My net worth has gone up a little, mainly because housing has gone up so much here. But it's not like I can sell and take that profit, The replacement cost to stay in the area keeps even that at Zero growth.

I saw the original 60 minute broadcast.
They have edited out some of the conversation. I was shocked watching it that night, and the next day they had deleted some of the conversation.
 
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Terry

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Mark, I think it's good to share the wealth. Meaning, let us have work we enjoy and work that allows us the pleasures of life that come from work we enjoy. Please don't hook me up to a plow I haven't chosen to work behind. Let me choose my path, not the one left to me by someone selfish.

 
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Master Plumber Mark

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I totally understand....but just like when we were talking last month
--people like Jeff are sociopaths or much much worse...

and its not enough for old Jeff just to win.....
but everyone else must lose....

crushing the little guy is part of the fun of winning for jeff...
he probably got off as a child by stepping on ants or frying them
with a magnifying glass....
 
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