Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: An email I received from IVIE

This is topic An email I received from IVIE in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Frank Dubrois (Member # 3042) on 03-26-2007, 01:47 AM:

I try not to judge a company unless I have first hand experiences. I saw the new IE-45 and thought it to be quite the interesting tool, so I sent them an email asking about availability and cost. After my 4th email of not receiving a reply, I told them how unhappy I was not getting a reply and that if this is the way they treat their customers BEFORE they buy their product, I can't imagine the way they service their customers afterwards. I was pissed. I sold my IVIE and vow to never again look at their products. The following is the response I got from from IVIE after my 5th and final email:

quote:
DELETED

So....in a nutshell, they are GLAD I don't own their product anymore, and they would be UNHAPPY if I did own one. Is this the new face of IVIE? If anything, this should serve as warning to anyone considering purchasing anything from this company as they would be just as happy, or happier, if you didn't.

IVIE..... [fu]

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 03-26-2007, 02:00 AM:

.you should have talked to a supplier or a tech on this before getting all pissy and butt-hurt like a mad cow with PMS in not getting an immediate reply(ies) since the pricing is sometimes done through a dealer not from the manufacturer.

There are tons of alternate ways to get info on a product than reacting to the immediate conclusion of poor QC to the customer

..and they prob have a phone number to call them as well for the info needed. Emails sometimes gets lost in the traffic in a lot of these places, or they other matters to attend.

Also, with his reply, you must have said something to trigger his response (granted, not the best response to come from a manufacturer) with possible reactions and emotional contents that you stated in your emails to this company ... it take two to tangle here ...

Posted by Jeremy Weigel (Member # 4208) on 03-26-2007, 02:11 AM:

The respondant may be a disgruntled employee who's looking to screw the company by diverting potential sales and ruin it reputation. I would personally keep that email; call to speak with someone above their pay grade and inform them of the extremely poor customer/sales service that was given. If you still get a rather poor response then it may indeed be indicative of their current corporate atmosphere, although I find that highly unlikely; but you never know...

Posted by Christopher Seo (Member # 7) on 03-26-2007, 03:30 AM:

FWIW, the (minor) correspondence I have had with the Ivie rep from the above email tended to be on the dry side.

Posted by Joshua Waaland (Member # 287) on 03-26-2007, 05:40 AM:

I would go over his head if I were you. We have had sales guys at our company that would show up at customer's places completely drunk. My old boss (now my peer since he was demoted for just this kind of thing) would yell at customers all the time on the phone. You just never know what is going on at this joint.

It could also be that he is just overloaded with work and needed to vent (albeit not the best way). I am in sales at my company and we have all been overloaded this past year with all the business we are getting. They even split my territory in half and I can't keep up sometimes. You tend to get a lot of tire kickers and you need to weed out the bad leads and not waste as much time on the them. I used to drive myself nutty trying to help everyone and would get so frustrated because I couldn't. I have learned how to identify who is a tire kicker and will waste my time. I am not saying you are a tire kicker, just how he may be looking at it. He may have identified you as such and has bigger fish to fry at the moment. I agree this is not a good way to do business but he may have too much territory to cover and doesn't have a choice.

A tire kicker will call you wanting loads of information either faxed or e-mailed. Then they call you 5 times and talk to you for 45 minutes asking you tons of questions. He will of course want you to come do a demo at his place 5 states away which means shipping the machine at a cost of several hundred dollars each way. Then you have to waste a week of your sales and family time to go out and demo the machine for him and rack up airfare and expenses. Then he will try to break you down on price and they always give you the good old, "I plan to buy _ more in the future" to get you to continue to waste your time with them. Then in the end if they do buy anything at all they just buy one unit at a discount and you have to chase them around for 6 months trying to get paid. Hardly worth your time.

The other type of customer is the guy who has to get the job done asap and calls and asks a few questions about the machine. He is motivated to buy since he is paying guys to stand around and has acres of steel plates stacked up behind his building he needs beveled. He is the guy who buys 3-4 $25,000 beveling machines over the phone without ever asking for a discount. These are the guys you have to take care of. They pay the light bill. I have had 3 of these in the past month.

I just say all of this to help you see why he was such a jerk to you, not to justify it. I am NOT saying you are a tire kicker or that you did anything wrong. He was obviously out of line in his reply to you. He may just be an asshole or he may have been totally stressed out and snapped. Either way it wasn't good for his company or you. If you call and talk to his boss maybe they will do something about it. [thumbsup]

It took several of our customers talking to us about the drunk salesman before he got fired.

[ 03-27-2007, 04:03 PM: Message edited by: Joshua Waaland ]

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 03-26-2007, 05:50 AM:

quote:
they call you 5 times and talk to you for 45 minutes asking you tons of questions. Then he will try to break you down on price and they always give you the good old "I plan to buy many more in the future" to get you to continue to waste your time with them. Then in the end if they do buy anything at all they just buy one unit

Man, can I relate to that! I can't tell you how many times that has happened in my trailer-production business! I can't figure out if they just get-off wasting someone else's time, or if all the attention makes them feel important.

Btw, where's Ivie located?

Posted by Joshua Waaland (Member # 287) on 03-26-2007, 05:56 AM:

Tim,

If I only had a dollar for everytime it has happened to me in just over a year in sales. Let's just say I would have a nicer screening room than Brad does. [Big Grin]

Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 03-26-2007, 10:04 AM:

Guys; that is the nature of sales. In the cinema industry, we take everyone seriously until they declare themselves. Louis

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 03-26-2007, 10:35 AM:

Not defending his email. But email can be an extremely ineffective way to conduct business. Sometimes it's just better to pick up the phone.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 03-26-2007, 01:06 PM:

Guys, Like I said in other posts regarding IVIE... they are not the company they once were. They nused to be very customer oriented with a customer first attitude. That has long since disapprared... along with their quality products of yesteryear. Today you coldn't give me an IVIE product for free.

Mark

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 03-26-2007, 01:46 PM:

Please see rule #6. Don't post private email messages without the permission of the sender.

Posted by Frank Dubrois (Member # 3042) on 03-26-2007, 02:46 PM:

I forgot about that..sorry...but still, my summary of his email sums it up. I just have this feeling that IVIE isn't exactly overloaded with people trying to ask them questions as they do have a lot of different offices. Is sending 5 emails too many? Maybe, but then look at it from the consumers side: Should I have to send 5 emails to get information about a new product they are trying to promote? I looked around the internet and couldn't find anything on the unit...now I don't care to even look.

I now must agree with Mark...IVIE is a poor company. I'm not sure what position Bill Raventos holds within the company, but if its anything higher than custodian, then that company is headed for trouble.

quote: Monte L Fullmer
Also, with his reply, you must have said something to trigger his response (granted, not the best response to come from a manufacturer) with possible reactions and emotional contents that you stated in your emails to this company ... it take two to tangle here ...

I simply told him that this was my 5th email to his company requesting information on his new product, but due to lack of response, I will buy an RTA elsewhere. Maybe it was the "I'll buy elsewhere" that irritated him? Who knows, who cares, my point was that this is no way for a business to respond to a customer. Whether he was extremly pissed off, having a bad day, or simply doesn't like his job, thats just no excuse....in my opinion. No biggie, I just wanted to share IVIE's current state of mind.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 03-26-2007, 02:59 PM:

Frank,

Its obvious that you didn't post the entire e-mail and summarized it and I think you did everyone here a BIG FAVOR by posting what you did. There are others on this site that could also be taken by what is left of IVIE.

Mark

Posted by Frank Dubrois (Member # 3042) on 03-26-2007, 04:04 PM:

Mark,

I did post the whole email, but it was deleted. Rule #6 I guess. It was posted word for word and I hope at least some people got to read it before it was deleted...I doubt very much if IVIE or Bill would give me permission to post it. It would do absolutely nothing positive for their company.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 03-26-2007, 04:24 PM:

I must not have seen the whole thing then. But at any rate I think those that might otherwise be interersted in IVIE equipment will get the jist of this thread. Indeed they are worse than a used car dealer!

Mark

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 03-27-2007, 02:59 AM:

This is a somehwat bizarre thread. I have had good and bad experiences with a lot of manufacturers, but one can't hold it against a company in general or one of their products in particular if a misunderstanding (like this appears to be) occurs.

But Ivie is one of the companies with whom I have had nothing but the very best experiences. I didn't see that email before it was deleted. Maybe Frank wants to share with us what he wrote to them to get that response?

But I have a dozen or so emails here that I got from them, most of them from Bill, which are all very friendly and professional, and in which all my questions and suggestions about the IE-33 were answered and commented on in great and exhaustive detail. I also talked to Bill and other people there on the phone a number of times, they were always very friendly and took the time to answer questions and listen to suggestions, too. I was one of the early customers for the IE-33, and it did have some problems at the beginning, and they corrected basically all of them and kept adding features after I had got it, that's why there was so much communication. I was just very interested in sorting theseproblems out and getting a thorough understadning of how the unit works in order to exhaust its many potentials fully.
Every time I called, there was someone (usually Bill) who had time to talk to me, and if not, then they took my number and always called back within just a few hours.

Anyway, even if misunderstandings occur, it is not very professional to take that personally or hold the kind of emotional biases against a company that some here feel the need to share with us. I don't think it's very technical either.

About the product, what I already partially said in the other recent thread, even though there were some bugs at the beginning and the iPaq and its memory loss problems were a little annoying, so it wasn't the best idea to run it on that platform, te IE-33 has served me very well over several years and on many occasions.

The analyzer itself is very versatile and exact. It has been thoroughly tested by a number of professional institutions in Germany, they go about stuff like that very technically an thoroughly not based on if they like the manufacturer's people or not, and their generally very positive reviews were more of interest to me than who is working there now and who isn't (apart from the fact that I had excellent communications with those who do work there now, see above). The included Type II microphone isn't the exactest on the planet, nor is it claimed to be (part of the Type II specs allow for a certain rolloff of frequencies above 10kHz), but you normally don't use it for our purposes anyway, and even if you are in a situation where you might want to use it, you can take that int account. The whole specs with the X curve and all that aren't that exact anyway, there is a margin there, it's not a "spot on" measurement. There are too many variables involved in that anyway.

For analog A-chains, it works fabulously well, and you can also use it for SPL measurements, phase checking, and a number of other applications, as well as room EQing with a multiplexer such as the USL.

I got the new IE-35 but haven't played with it a lot yet. In a few weeks, I will have opportunity to compare it myself to an R2 and maybe also D2. The software is basically the same anyway, the differences are the Dell Axim X51v platform it runs on andthe new jacket design. It makes a very solid impression - most of the jacket itself is actually metal, and it has an extended life battery included in the basic package. It's pretty heavy for such a small device, but I like that, because it feels (and is) less plasticky. I look forward to working with that.

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 03-27-2007, 09:11 AM:

I wonder if they lurk here?

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 03-27-2007, 11:35 AM:

quote: Michael Schaffer
The analyzer itself is very versatile and exact.

Er... ah... I seem to remember Heir Guttag said in some other thread said he found it to be not so exact.....

quote: Michael Schaffer
Anyway, even if misunderstandings occur, it is not very professional to take that personally or hold the kind of emotional biases against a company that some here feel the need to share with us. I don't think it's very technical either.

Michael, I have had a number of varying bad experiences with IVIE over the years going all the way back to when I was doing this work in the Modwest area. These range from calling for simple technical quastions to replacement parts. Would you also like me to introduce you to others that have had similar experiences? I'd be happy to do so.

Mark

Mark

Posted by Joshua Waaland (Member # 287) on 03-27-2007, 04:28 PM:

quote: Louis Bornwasser
Guys; that is the nature of sales. In the cinema industry, we take everyone seriously until they declare themselves. Louis

I am well aware of that. I speak with all of my customers and answer their questions when they call me about a product. [Wink]

Our business is somewhat different. We have three guys covering the entire country. Our industry simply won't support more salesmen when the economy is down and we have two other major competitors. So when times are good like this we are very overworked and time constrained. Our business cycles about every 3 years. If we hired someone we would barely get them trained and would have to let them go.

When I started in sales in January of 2006 we were starting a record breaking sales year. I had thirteen states stretching from Wisconsin to Texas and everything in between. With that much territory you can waste 2-3 days a week just traveling. As a new salesman I simply could not do it all. I tried though because I am a people pleasing type of person.

It didn't take me long to figure out I was wasting valuable time on people who were just using me. They would use me to justify buying my competitors products by having me write out quotes for them or bring equipment to them for demo. (Our product is a higher priced but higher quality product like a Cadillac compared to a Chevette. Unfortunately many purchasing agents like the price of a Chevette better and have the final say.)

I only need to speak with a customer once or twice and I can usually see where they are going with it. Of course, when they sense that I know what is going on they always revert to the "We plan to buy 10 of these" statement. I have been there for 8 years and I used to talk with customers daily when I worked in the office. I used to believe that statement, but after hearing it hundreds of times since then I know that 99.99% of the time it is bullshit. In a perfect world with infinite time I would love to help out everyone that calls, but I simply cannot. Especially not in busy times like these. We beat our monthly sales goal for March by 2.5 times already. We are just trying to keep up with the folks who are placing orders. [thumbsup]

[ 03-27-2007, 09:16 PM: Message edited by: Joshua Waaland ]

Posted by Frank Dubrois (Member # 3042) on 03-28-2007, 01:43 AM:

quote: Louis Bornwasser
Guys; that is the nature of sales. In the cinema industry, we take everyone seriously until they declare themselves.

A response like that to a potential customer is NOT the nature of sales. Lets not mistake that...

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 03-28-2007, 10:49 AM:

I'm not exactly a huge buyer, so I try not to ask too many questions of a potential supplier unless I really want to buy their product. If the product is an unfamiliar one, I might e-mail or call once and ask for information. If they blow me off because I'm a single screen, I'll never bother them again. But, I might not always be a single screen, so it's in their interest to at least answer my question.

Unreplied e-mails are just not acceptable. If I don't get a reply within a couple of days, I'll figure they just aren't interested in me and go elsewhere. So it's in a business' best interest to make sure all e-mails get answered, and promptly.