A warning to dealers..

[Bob Marino]

 

Here is a PM I sent to a customer about a week ago -  he gave me permission to share with Forum members.

I wanted to PM  you about the MY CHOICE thing before I write another response on the FOG. I very much appreciate a customer wanting to have this option and I take very, very seriously anything that limits or negatively affects their buying experience from me. And of  course, the overwhelming amount of customers, like yourself are honest people, who would never think of using this program fraudulently. However, it seems there are a tiny amount of people who have discovered this program and this has enabled them to blatantly and successfully steal from dealers. We have discussed this with our rep at UPS and for now, having that huge loophole of not even informing or getting the dealer's permission, needs to be closed, so in affect, we decided - with some hesitation to block that program.

The rate of stolen tools, in this case  XL's, at this point is literally unsustainable. It's somewhat akin to having a major renovation to your house with a half dozen people having your keys and months after having finished up, you find something stolen and the next month another item stolen and so on. After making a report to the police, you'd change the keys. Right now, some people have that key in hand and I must change the key.

  Best Regards,

Bob

As an aside, about a week ago, I received a phone call from another Festool dealer whom I have known for many years. Of all things, he asked if I were having an issue with credit card fraud! Nope, he did not read the posts here on the FOG, this was totally out of the blue.  In almost every one of the  (6) instances he mentioned, the item stolen was the XL. He has since tightened up some security (holding orders over a certain amount, calling for some verification, etc.) and has not had a problem since. He uses FedEx, but was also unaware  - of the customer redirect program. He's checking with his FedEx rep to see if that was the vehicle used to enable the fraud and will get back to me on that. He thanked me for that heads up.

As mentioned here by myself and others, the dealer was left on the hook for the XL's and had zero help from the credit card companies. This lack of assistance in reporting to the authorities fraud and criminality is in my opinion and should be a criminal offense in itself. At the very least, they have (along with programs like MY CHOICE) enabled the thieves and helped to make credit card fraud the problem it is. Sometimes, its the simplest of things (reporting the details - where the stolen item was delivered to, IP address, phone numbers, etc.) that can have the most dramatic of effects.

Bob

 

[Tinker]

Quote from Bob Marino >>> As mentioned here by myself and others, the dealer was left on the hook for the XL's and had zero help from the credit card companies. This lack of assistance in reporting to the authorities fraud and criminality is in my opinion and should be a criminal offense in itself. At the very least, they have (along with programs like MY CHOICE) enabled the thieves and helped to make credit card fraud the problem it is.