Stoking the fires

Pretty standard clause on most all dealerships, cars, appliances, anything.... It stops a big dealer from tanking a small dealer by selling at a loss long enough for small dealer to fold, then jacking the prices way up because they are now the only competition.

And yeah, a dealer that didn't know that? And a new account? Pass the marshmallows.

Sounds like grounds for an antitrust lawsuit.

I have heard this from several distributors. What's happening is larger distributors that held the majority of market share are getting upset that Stern is setting up smaller distributors that they have to compete with. Some have some clout with Gary and have complained about it. They can no longer make a thousand dollars on a title-Boo Woo. I purchase my machines for a couple hundred over invoice-which is how it should be. Now Stern is becoming the price police and trying to maintain their primary distributors margins. It may be time for Stern to go direct-prices keep going up and up-people are getting upset. MAP pricing is like a car dealers MSRP. OP a way to get around it that some distributors are doing-charge what you need then give away some swag-like a free shaker with purchase(;

You can actually sell them for what ever price you want. It's against the law for Stern to mandate what price you can sell them at. What they can do is tell you what the minimum advertised price (MAP) can be, but you can actually sell it below what you advertise it at.

Obviously an advertised price has to have the rules enforced. You see "Call for price!" all the time for all sorts of things.

Yeah, MAP is an interesting concept. I purchased a TV from best buy a few months back and it was one of those, you cant see the price until you add it to your cart. This is because MAP, they can not advertise it at a lower price, though they can sell it at a lower price.

That's adding "value", a good competitive technique.

You do realize that Stern doesn't like to be called out publicly or any little criticism and I would bet by posting this they will retaliate or pull your distributorship. Hell, they even remove little posts on facebook when they don't like the smallest criticisms.

Yeah well, Rlevin ain't exactly a newcomer when it comes to sticking his nose out into a fire... lol..

He may not have many posts here, but is well known on KLOV.

MAP pricing is everywhere. Some policies get ridiculous. You can "sell" them for whatever you want, you just can't advertise them for whatever you want. That is all the MAP policies mean. It is against the law to force you to sell something at a set price.

Fortunately (if that were even something Dale was concerned about) he didn't call them out or criticize them.