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This one's an oldie. It comes from my hobby shop days.
Since I haven't posted any stories from then in a while, I'll give a little brief background. My store specialized mostly in HO & N scale railroading and plastic model kits. We did NOT do much R/C (and nothing at all for R/C cars). There were, however, two other hobby shops local to us that DID specialize in R/C. In fact, one of the two we had a very amicable relationship with and we would frequently refer customers to either other.
The other one....not so much. The owner of that shop was something of a sleazebag. Now, in the hobby industry - at least at the time - very few manufacturers sold directly do retailers; they only sold to distributors. And even if they did sell direct to retailers, the retailer would have to pay the same price they would at a distributor.
So the sleazebag owner of the competing shop decided to try and fool a certain Japanese company into believing that he was a distributor so he could cut out the middle man and get his products for less money while marking them up to full retail price of course.
Fraud, anyone?
Ultimately, he did himself in by claiming that MY store was one of his "customers." What he didn't count on was the account rep calling us to confirm, only to be told that not only was this guy NOT one of our distributors, but we didn't even deal in their R/C products! Our owner also told them he was a retail outfit and NOT a distributor, which got the scammer's account closed.
This of course meant we were assholes. It actually got to the point that if we referred anyone there, we'd have to warn them not to say we sent them LEST THEY BE THROWN OUT!!!!
My uncle - who helps manager the store I used to work at - is actually BANNED from this other store whenever the owner is in, simply because he has a grudge against our owner for ratting him out.
Honestly, the guy should grow up and be thankful [Japanese Company] didn't file suit
Since I haven't posted any stories from then in a while, I'll give a little brief background. My store specialized mostly in HO & N scale railroading and plastic model kits. We did NOT do much R/C (and nothing at all for R/C cars). There were, however, two other hobby shops local to us that DID specialize in R/C. In fact, one of the two we had a very amicable relationship with and we would frequently refer customers to either other.
The other one....not so much. The owner of that shop was something of a sleazebag. Now, in the hobby industry - at least at the time - very few manufacturers sold directly do retailers; they only sold to distributors. And even if they did sell direct to retailers, the retailer would have to pay the same price they would at a distributor.
So the sleazebag owner of the competing shop decided to try and fool a certain Japanese company into believing that he was a distributor so he could cut out the middle man and get his products for less money while marking them up to full retail price of course.
Fraud, anyone?
Ultimately, he did himself in by claiming that MY store was one of his "customers." What he didn't count on was the account rep calling us to confirm, only to be told that not only was this guy NOT one of our distributors, but we didn't even deal in their R/C products! Our owner also told them he was a retail outfit and NOT a distributor, which got the scammer's account closed.
This of course meant we were assholes. It actually got to the point that if we referred anyone there, we'd have to warn them not to say we sent them LEST THEY BE THROWN OUT!!!!
My uncle - who helps manager the store I used to work at - is actually BANNED from this other store whenever the owner is in, simply because he has a grudge against our owner for ratting him out.
Honestly, the guy should grow up and be thankful [Japanese Company] didn't file suit
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