Predator - Pay More, Get Less?

[beav99_4life]

Personally i think their cues and shafts are all junk anyways and furthermore wouldnt spend 2cents for anything they sell period......
If you cant play with a regular american made cue you should take two weeks off and "QUIT" the game for good...........................

Wow, i'm currently working on my Master's degree in business and have found this thread very interesting, especially that the originator of this thread has not posted anymore responses. But the statement above is absolutely absurd. I'll tell ya what, get the entire country to stop buying foreign made products and only buy American made, see how long the economy goes without collapsing. Before making an outrageous statement like this, how about you take an economics course or two and learn what the free market is, a theory that the US loves to shove down everyone elses throats.

 

[John Barton]

Predator's warranty has nothing to do with original purchaser. If they are going to start changing the warranty on their product by limiting it to the original purchaser they are going to have one hell of a lawsuit on their hands. Plus their Product's image will become tarnished with the policy change. Top-cue makers use the partials to make customer requested shafts. The makers are the original purchasers. This arguement could go on forever, but the bottom line is Predator needs to re-think their game before it hurts them in the long run.

After checking their site it looks like they have ammended their warranty to state original purchaser. Never ceases to surprise me how companies alter warrantees to suit their greed. As I hope you can tell by this post edit that I remember the original warranty claims, and they never included the terms original purchaser.

Well a warranty that transfers should only apply as long as a legitimate paper trail exists.

I would think that a Predator cue that is new and is given as a gift to someone else would still have the warranty intact.

In fact, as long as the cue's pedigree can be confirmed it should not matter WHO is using it. But I would be hesitant to allow a warranty claim for a cue which could not be traced back to a dealer somehow.

When I bought my last car I had to send in a form to show that I was the new owner so that the warranty would transfer easily.

Getting back to the topic though - there is no way on Earth in my opinion that Predator has ANY CHANCE of dictating to private individuals what they may sell their property for. None. They can make contracts with their dealers where the dealers agree to abide by their policies but they have zero control over people that they have not contracted with.

IF a person or company acquired their Predator cues through legal means then they have every right to sell those goods at whatever price they wish too. Predator should take it up with the dealer who sold those cues.

With Instroke I always had problems with some dealers who sold cases at much lower prices to trunkers who then turned around and dumped them on Ebay. At the end of the day though I had very little chance to do anything about it as I had no relationship to the Ebay sellers. All I could do is to handle it with my dealers and let them know that the supply could get tight if they didn't control the Ebay sellers.

In fact though, retail is like a jungle. Once you set the product free you have no real control over what happens to it. It's a losing proposition to try and control everything. Because truly what happens is that you alienate dealers and customers and force them to seek alternatives. The pool world is replete with stories of customers and dealers who didn't get treated right and so they just started a competing business and did well at it. So perhaps Predator is creating it's own competition even though it feels that it is doing what is right for it.

 

[barber23]

as well as taylormade, nike golf, callaway, sterns and foster mattresses the point of doing that is so that retailors wont whore out there product and cheapen the appeal

 

[TWOFORPOOL]

Predator - Pay More, Get Less

"What happened to protecting the rights of consumers and keeping with American tradition of a free enterprise system?"

Free enterprise system? Mr. Barringer please explain to me why there is a minimum hourly wage then? Same argument but the other side of the coin.

 

[John Barton]

Unfortunately, that's not correct. The manufacturer may choose something called unilateral pricing whereby every retailer selling the product must sell it for the price set by the manufacturer. Choosing to do so, and getting caught, violates the retailer agreement and loses the retailer the ability to purchase the vendor's product. Bose Corporation has done it for years, very successfully. None of their products are discounted anywhere. (Actually, if you see them discounted it's typically someone who acquired them through nefarious means, not a legit retailer, and you'll never be able to make a warranty claim.)

And it's perfectly legal so long as the manufacturer doesn't hold an overly abundant share of the market, typically >35%.

Brian in VA

I wonder what Predator's share of the laminated shaft market is?

Is there a benchmark on market share?

I agree that a manufacturer and reseller can contract to conduct business within the terms of the contract. If a reseller agrees then they should abide by the terms or not sell the product.

What we did with Instroke was to tell our of our dealers that they should not advertise the product at less than 20% but that they could make any private deals that they wanted to. We told them that IF that then led to the products being advertised below the 20% mark then we would have a problem. For the most part it worked out. I would NEVER tell a dealer that he MUST sell a product for x-amount. Just don't make up a banner with your blowout pricing.

It's true that Bose has been quite successful with their chosen distribution model. They however are not even close to the market leader in speaker and component sales and most of their products are sold through company owned outlets.

Personally I think that a manufacturer should seek to be cooperative with their dealers to find ways to promote and move the product without resorting to price cuts. Because threats only serve to send the dealer running to the competition.

However to each his own. I don't think Predator can afford to lose dealers. And they probably won't lose any of their bigger ones. But as Ben Franklin said, 'many small things make a large thing'. Time will tell.

I see it as opportunity to get some dealers.

 

[Pinocchio]

???????????

Their is a simple solution here. Don't buy predator products. They are nothing more than a glorified lucasi at 3 to six times the price. From what I can find out the new Willie Hoppe is made in the same factory as lucasi. Does anyone actually believe that this cue will ever have any collector value? Just another highlt inflated asian cue. I own 8 of the older pred. shafts an when I read something like this it just makes me want to flush them all.
Pinocchio

 

[John Barton]

Their is a simple solution here. Don't buy predator products. They are nothing more than a glorified lucasi at 3 to six times the price. From what I can find out the new Willie Hoppe is made in the same factory as lucasi. Does anyone actually believe that this cue will ever have any collector value? Just another highlt inflated asian cue. I own 8 of the older pred. shafts an when I read something like this it just makes me want to flush them all.
Pinocchio

This really doesn't have anything to do with Predator's quality. I am sure that they are making sure that the quality of their cues is every bit as high as anything else from anywhere else.

Some Meucci, McDermott and Adams cues have collector value.

Frankly though I am skeptical of ANY product that advertises that it "will become" a collectible. Not that Predator advertised the Hoppe Tribute as such, I don't know.

Each customer determines whether they receive the value they expected. Where it is made has or should have no bearing. Some blue and white pottery made several hundred years ago in China is the most highly sought after in the world. In some parts of China the pottery is made in the same manner today.

No cue ever sells for the sum of it's parts.

Concerning the value of a cue though I think Andy Gilbert summed it up best in the Action report podcast. He said that a custom cue should never lose value if kept in reasonable condition. Due to the limited nature of getting a custom cue one should always be able to sell it for nearly what the cuemaker charges or perhaps a little more. A production cue loses value immediately due to the unlimited nature of acquiring them. Same as driving a car off the lot. Buy a Ferrari however and you won't lose money as there is a long waiting list.

However the same was true of Meuccis and McDermotts when they were new. A $400 McDermott wouldn't sell for $200 used then. But now try and get into a D-19 for less than 600.

What is value however?

If a Lucasi or a Fury is loaded with inlays and has a sticker price of $500 then that's a pretty good bargain even if the cue loses half of it's sale price right away. Why? Because a comparably designed cue from a custom cue maker would probably cost upwards of $1000-$1500 or more depending on the maker. Some people can't afford that but they want the same look and great playability. So that is where brands like Fury, McDermott, Lucasi, and Viking to name a few come in. They fill that part of the market. If someone is buying a cue for resale later then they are probably better off to purchase a plain jane custom and keep it in good condition. However if they want a great cue in the $200-$700 range with all the decoration of cues priced much much higher then they are well served with the plethora of good cues from manufacturers both domestic and foreign.

There are lots of ways to figure value. The way that works best for me is whether or not I get the performance I want out of the item I buy. The less headaches and more enjoyment my purchase brings then the higher it is valued. I have spent a LOT of money on things that turned out to be worthless to me because of the associated hassles and conversely some of the cheapest things have turned out to be incredibly useful and therefore valuable to me.

 

[mercury147]

Personally i think their cues and shafts are all junk anyways...

That's your personal view, of course, but it isn't "the holy gospel", as well.

IMHO basically Predator products are quite overrated and I'm a little bit amazed about the waves this all makes. Many German Predator customers like to buy in the States for the simple reason prices in Germany are much higher. The ratio is almost 1$:1EURO buying from German dealers. I don't know how much Predator is involved in making these prices but it is a little bit astonishing in my view.

Are the prices on the US market higher now indeed? I can't see this. Has Predator increased the MAP or the wholesale prices? But honestly, does the greed for offering/finding the lowest price anywhere imply good quality. We might give it a serious consideration.

Don't take offence at my innuendo