allen bradley hardware

rdrast said:

Just buy it at the cheaper price.
The whole "AB Distributor System" exists only to charge a high price for very little benefit.

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I could not disagree more. My company sells through AB distribution and while there are always exceptions, typically the distributor works very hard to not only make the sale but to make sure the application is valid and will actually do what it was intended to do. Rockwell holds their distributors to a very high standard and you get what you pay for. If you want it cheap then go elsewhere, but in the 20+ years I've been in the Industrial Automation world I've learned "cheap comes out expensive" almost every time.
Again, there are always exceptions out there but in general you are paying for high quality work and expertise.
As to "non-affiliated" automation equipment re-sellers, the company that I used to work for had several "encounters" with one of them (to be fair it wasn't ***********). They claim to be a factory authorized re-seller of our equipment and that they had "new stock" on the shelf. The problem was they weren't a factory authorized re-seller and had never purchased anything from us (so they couldn't possibly have new stock on the shelf). When we contacted them and told them to stop making the claims they basically said no. We looked into legal action but the cost was prohibitive. We also had a few occasions where someone would come to us looking for help with a product they bought from "them" and if it was hardware related (as apposed to configuration and/or application help) we had to decline to help. Again, cheap comes out expensive.
Just my 2 cents.

Firejo said:

I could not disagree more. My company sells through AB distribution and while there are always exceptions, typically the distributor works very hard to not only make the sale but to make sure the application is valid and will actually do what it was intended to do. Rockwell holds their distributors to a very high standard and you get what you pay for.

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Well, feel free to disagree. I had a quote to my distributor for about $200k. He returned with $170k. Identical quote to another supplier came back at 120k. I'm not even going to let the guy that is ripping me off re-quote that.

I will agree and disagree with Firejo and rdrast on this. I have had some of the best pricing and service from my AB Distributor. I will also agree that I have had some really crappy pricing and service from my Local AB Distributor too.

How can that be? I don't use my LOCAL AB Distributor. I use one that is out of state. Because of AB's Protected Territory business model I have to jump through some hoops to make that happen but it is worth it.

Rant Start:
I have worked in equipment distribution for almost all of my 30 years in Automation. Most of the manufactures we represented had "Protected" Territories. For us we tried to stick to our lane and deliver good pricing and service to our local customers. Our owner was a stickler on giving good pricing and great service. For other distributors it meant that they had a license to steal and jacked up the pricing all the while telling their customers that they "had" to buy it from them. Or it meant that they could discount their equipment to bottom dollar and sell it into our territory. They didn't have to support it because it wasn't their territory. That would end up falling on us. The factory would give us a few $$ commision for the sale into our territory but in no way covered our cost of the support.

I have to assume that the same thing goes on in the AB world too. There are distributors that do a great job and ones that do a **** job.

The issue in my experience is the "Protected" Territories. Having a protected territory just makes it so some people can be lazy and still get sales. It also keeps the good distributors from expanding and offering their service and pricing to other people. So nothing ever changes, competition does not force the bad distributors to get better or go away. The customers in that territory never get better pricing or better service.

Putting a "Wall" around a territory and "forcing" customers to by equipment from one source weather or not they have actually earned the business is a bad way to go to market IMHO. One look at this thread will tell you that.

Just in case someone from AB is looking at this post: I am the customer, I should be able to buy from whoever I want!!! Forcing me to do business with the people you choose (not who I choose) only makes we want to not buy your product. Is that what you really want?
Rant over.

As far as buying PLC equipment from non distributors. I only do it for demo or for customers that are looking for a good price (with their permission). I would normally never buy equipment from non distributors for a customers panel. If something were to go wrong I need to make sure I can get it replaced under warranty.

Price is not my biggest worry, In my end of the world you will need to have all critical components from AB in stock your self or you need to persuade the costumer to buy an extra complete PLC as a spare.

We have only two local sales offices in Denmark and are both just as bad in keeping modules in stock, so you are looking at a minimum of 2 weeks delivertime for must of the standard stuff, this is frustrating and it adds extra cost to my projects.

The delivery time is starting to get just a ****ty as the main competitor