Ron Bramlett here from Mustangs Plus again. I just got back from the Knott's Berry Farm Show and it was a great show! Sorry for not responding sooner but I really didn't know if I should or not. This is not the most friendly place for me to be. But I have thought it over and I want to make this one last post. I'm sorry it's going to be so long but it has to be. I've read all of this thread and all of you have asked some very good questions and made some very good comments. First of all, I do not know of any of the employees here at Mustangs Plus knowing of this thread except for one. And I'll find out from him if he has posted here. Even so, I don't think he has. On customer service, last year we had a salesman whose best friend passed away. In fact, it was another employee here at Mustangs Plus. Because of the loss of his friend, his mental state was so bad that we had to take him off the phones. But we had to have just cause to do that. Employers just can't remove someone from thier job unless they can prove that they're not doing it correctly. If you do, you can have a very costly law suit on your hands. In my opinion this salesman wasn't intentionally trying to be rude to the customers. But, as we found out later, he was. It took us getting complaints from customers in the form of emails and letters to show to him before he could understand that his greif was pouring over into his job. How many people did he talk to? I don't know. But I do know this. Months before, when this same salesman had found out that he and his wife were going to be parents for the 2nd time, I received nothing but praise from the customers he helped in the weeks to come. My point is this. Any of us, any parts supplier, can have great salespeople one day and a problem the next. Most people don't let their personal lives effect their jobs. Others can't help it. Our customers are our best way of getting the feedback we need to make the adjustment. If nobody complains, it takes us longer to know there's a problem and deal with it. Believe me, no business owner that I know of wants people dealing with the public who make their customers mad at them. But, on the other hand, our salesman get asked some very strange questions. Once, I was passed along a call from someone wanting to know the exact size of our 620 coil springs. I spent several minutes on the phone with a 620 coil spring and a measuring tape before I found out that the customer did not have a Mustang. In fact, he was a Chevy man. He was looking for a spring for the diving board on his swimming pool and had seen a picture in one of our ads. No sale on the spring. Sometimes, the calls are funny. On the other hand, the verbal abuse some of our salesman have taken for not knowing the answer to some far out question like the one above is unexplainable. But it happens more than you think. And it can effect the salesman for awhile. And that brings us to this. Someone mentioned recording the sales calls. As much as I would hate having to do that, I am considering it. Besides sending the wrong siginal to our employees, that we don't trust them or that they are doing something wrong, it's another expense. Not just the equiptment. That's the cheap part. To get any benifit out of the equiptment, you have to have someone listen to the tapes. This means another non-producing employee on the payroll. Non-producing employees are those whose jobs don't bring money into the company but take money away such as janitors, bookkeepers, ect. Don't get me wrong. They are just as important as income-producing employees but you have to keep the right ratio between them or the business suffers. Then there's meetings with the department heads about the tapes. Then meetings with the salesman which turn negative, most of the time. And so on and so on. What does this do to prices? You either have to sell more product, make cuts somewhere else or raise prices. And that brings us to this. Many of you have said that Mustangs Plus is the most expensive. Some of you apparently hate us for this, but I fail to see why. You're free to buy from anyone else so why the hatred? The fact is that yes, we are the most expensive on some products, but on others we're the lowest. So is every other vendor the highest and the lowest on something. It just depends on which products you need, or want, at the time. But I can say this. A lot of the products out there are not the same quality as we sell. I say this as a fact because from time to time we buy products from the other companies so we can see what they are selling and compare our products. So on many of the products, I know what's out there and what the quality it is. If it's Scott Drake, or one of a hundred other vendors, then the price comes into play because it's the same product. At that point, the closer the vendor is to you is important. Mustangs Plus is on the west coast. For someone on the east coast to order that product, they're better off with a more local company. Faster service and less shipping. Same product, better deal. There's nothing wrong with this. I understand that Mustangs Plus can't sell every product to everybody. If there was only one supplier, there would be no hobby. But there are other aspects that also apply. Many times, we bring a product to market by working on it for months with a manufactor and when it's done, we list it in our catalog at a retail price. The next month, it can be in someone elses magazine ad for a few dollars less than ours because they can buy it from that manufactor the same as we can. This has happened to us for years and years and will continue to happen because we are always looking for new products to sell. In fact, it happens to every parts dealer that brings a new product to market; not just to Mustangs Plus. I choose not to play the "Drop The Price" game because in the long run, it can hurt the production of those products. The Total Control fiasco is an excellent example of this. When it gets down to where the people who do the advertising can't make a reasonable profit on something, they quit advertising and selling that product. Then, production either stops or the price goes way up. Can some of you remember ordering Total Control products from them but they could not send them to you? Total Control kept dropping their prices and litteraly sold themselves right out of business. And that's ashame. Terry and Diane are good people who should be millionaires instead of losing everything that they owned and having to sell their company for pennies on the dollar. That brings us pricing so let's talk about price increases and surcharges which cut margins which are what companies like Mustangs Plus work to keep in line. Right now, gas and steel prices are going through the roof. More and more companies are tacking on surcharges to ours, and everybody else's, bills. We pay the freight bills to all our shipping companies and then we receive a fuel surcharge for every package we send out. Can you imagine if we, meaning all the vendors, sent our customers another invoice for products that they had already paid for? On top of that, we get price changes from our suppliers all the time as they try to keep up with their cost which keep going up because gas and steel prices continue to rise. We try not to pass these on until the next catalog but our suppliers make a phone call or write a letter and the price goes up. So what, you say? Every vendor is in the same boat, you say? True. But it's a leaking boat that is, at some point, going to leak all the profits away from some. We have to set prices and hold them or it hurts the hobby. If we were to adjust prices downward, and everyone else did the same, many of the products you take for granted would dissappear. If it means that we have to hold the price and let everybody else be lower priced than us, then that's what we have to do. One of you said that I'm an enthusiast and you're right. I love cars. Period. But I'm also a businessman who has a responsibility to all the empolyees of Mustangs Plus. I have no desire to have the biggest company; I do have the desire to have a stable company. By running a stable company, we are able to plan for the future, pay employee benifits and bring more and more products to the Mustang hobby. Almost all of our employees have a family to support and look to Mustangs Plus for their welfare. When you buy from Mustangs Plus, you are helping all of them and their families. We don't hire college kids to answer the phones, process the orders, or work in shipping that are not going to be here in a month. But not everyone knows everything about Mustangs, as I don't either. I get several calls a month from people looking for answers I don't know. And I've been at this for over 25 years. Another thing about pricing, since it seems to be the single most important focual point for some of you. We could not be the cheapest on everything, even if we wanted to. Someone will always drop the price to make a sale. If price is the only thing you shop for, you'll never build a good customer relationship with any one company. And in the long run, that can be a lot more beneficial to your pocketbook than saving a few dollars on the parts you buy. I'm not just saying that for Mustangs Plus' benifit. Every vendor you order from deserves the same. One last point and I'll be done. Mustangs Plus deals with thousands of 1965 to 1973 Mustang owners each month. We ship thousands of packages each week. The letters and calls I get praising Mustangs Plus far out weighs the letters and calls I get with problems. If we are not deserving of the praise and are deserving of the problems, I will make sure it is fixed. But I have to know of the problems before I can fix them. As I said before, I'm not hard to find. You can call me or leave me a message and I'll call you. Understand, if you do business with our company and have a problem, we'll get it fixed. If we're given the chance. Every customer is important to us, especially those who need our help to solve a problem. Sorry for this being so long but in reality, it's just the tip of the iceberg. I could go on and on but I'll stop here.