Look at the way the satellite business operates!

We tell you that we have the equipment that you need, we both agree on a price and then to seal the deal we tell you to send 100% of the cost – IN ADVANCE.

For a buyer outside of the USA that is a scary proposition. In March and April of 2012 we sold $120,000 of used equipment to two customers in foreign countries, and both of them had to summon enough courage to send full payment in advance. For them, the good news was that we sent them the hardware that they ordered, and then we stand behind it after the sale. So not only do they get what they need, but they also get support after the sale. I would like to say modestly that there is zero risk when dealing with us.

Sadly that’s not true of some other dealers in our industry let me give you an example of how we were burnt!

The story begins in June of 2011 – this other dealer (who has been around for many years) told us that he owned a 400 watt TWTA with a new tube and new power supply and he offered it to us for $11,000, cash in advance. So we pay the dealer and we add a reasonable mark-up and resell it to a client in South America, but when it arrived in Colombia it only ran for five days and then crashed with a fatal error.

Back to the seller, what do you want us to with the broken TWTA?  He said send it back I’ll repair it or refund your money. Now fast forward nine months to May 2012, and we still have not seen one penny from him.

I’m not telling this story looking for sympathy, we’re big boys and we know that we lose some games. The reason for this story is to warn a satellite equipment buyer to be very careful who they trust, because there is at least one character who will take their money and run.

What about the Colombian customer you say? Well, we refunded their money in July of last year, two weeks after they shipped the defective equipment back to us.  As a reward for our promptness in April of 2012 they showed continued faith in us by ordering $125,00 of new equipment and yes, they did pay in advance, but they know that they don’t need to worry.

A final story about the bad apple; while wandering around Satellite 2012 with my friend Robert Coates of “New and Used” we bumped into one of the manufacturers and out of the blue he asked if anybody had seen “you know who” so I asked why, and it appears that he owes this company $16K and in further conversation we discovered a third company who is trying to recover payment from this same character.

So who can you trust? If you have any doubts, give me a call at 954 974 7144 and I’ll tell you what the industry is saying about them, and its a small industry, everybody knows everybody else.