Thought you all might want be interested in reading this information about Yamaha....

[Vdrummer]

I didn't read all of the DCI posts (there are quite a few of them) but why did Harry C. lose the dealership? The letter Harry presents from Yamaha says it was "edited" by him. What was "edited" out of the letter?

If it's because he didn't sell enough of their drums to warrant their maintaining him as a dealer and representative for their company, I can't blame Yamaha for dumping him. Every dealer has to commit to selling the lines they carry. The discount rate they receive are based entirely on their sales. If he doesn't believe in the line he'll certainly do better selling the products of companies he likes.

[Plaid]

Vdrummer, I think it was just more a matter of them not liking how the Yamaha rep dealt with the whole situation rather than sales and such.

[Vdrummer]

I see. I read a bunch more of the posts to try and make sense of the story. As I now understand it one of the big box chain stores got his dealership axed to reduce competition. Unfortunately, that does happen. A GC, or SAM ASH or MARS (not anymore, of course) can keep small dealers from obtaining a line (or even get one taken away). Keep that in mind next time you shop at one of those chains.

[Plaid]

*UPDATE*

I emailed Yamaha inquiring about a set, and got a response, which was a relief since I thought I would never get one. Jim Haler sent me the response, and when I told him that I had heard that Yamaha was not highly regarded in the customer service area, he responded with the following:

"I joined Yamaha in March as the new Product Specialist after 11 years in retail. I have experienced some of the same problems from pretty much every company at one time or another. I also know how important great customer service is, so one of my goals in my quest to make Yamaha a better company is to offer the best service I can. I go to great lengths to provide a high level of service to everyone that writes(and that's a lot of e-mail as you can imagine). Feel free to write with any questions and I will do my best to provide the answers."

This is certainly encouraging!

[Derek DeFields]

Like I said, Jim is the man! [img]cool.gif[/img]