Ok, I thought I would add my .02 just like everyone else. Here is how I see things.
While spreading rumors is not a good thing to do if you have no basis on which to stand, I feel that Heather has at least some ground to stand on with her comments. She has spent what I would call a considerable amount of money on Calmini products, and it is also fairly clear to see why someone would think that the Suzuki market would be worth pulling out from a large perspective. Suzuki is obviously not making anything, and hasn't for some time, that would warrant hard-core off-roading IMO, so there is no new market. When you add that with the fact that these trucks aren’t' getting any newer, so the market will eventually shrink, one could reasonably see why you would want to pull out.
While perhaps part of her statements could have been left off, or perhaps worded slightly different, I don’t think it warranted the response she received. The response was handled COMPLETELY wrong. By going into a name bashing routine by someone that had negative comments ONLY PROVES THEIR POINT MORE.
There have been several people on here that have said his response was completely reasonable. I really fail to see the logic in this; forums are a public setting that hundreds if not thousands of people can see. Move this scenario to another setting, let's say you are up on stage demonstrating you product, a person expresses their opinion in the crowd, you stop the demonstration to ask them if they are stupid, bash their character, their background in an extremely childish manner all while still on microphone in front of thousands of people. How many people do you think are going to walk out on you, and with good reason at that? The general thought would be "These people are |removethispart|@ssholes, screw this". This is no different. This is a customer that has spent considerable amounts of money that expressed their opinion or what they believe to be the truth that very few know at all, I wouldn't know if she was a credible source of truth, sure I have seen her on the forums and everything she has said in the past has been legitimate so I have a basis for believing her, but take the handful of people that said they had never heard of Calmini that were new to the game that could easily brush off what she had said, but now that YOU publicly bash and degrade her, YOUR name is tied to Calmini, YOU are the one that has damaged getting any future or further business with these people, not her. Myself personally I have never even heard of pirate4x4 and would have never seen the comment if you had not replied in the manner you did. In fact it wasn't until your response that the general "mass" in the post say they would not purchase anything from you, and then to come back a second time and not only not apologize for flying off the handle but to bash yet again...it is a sad day in the consumer world when an owner of a business thinks that is anywhere near reasonable.
An appropriate response would have been something as follows:
"I am sorry you feel that way, if there is anything we can do to help you or mend our relationships with our customers we will do everything we can. Let me assure you that Calmini has no intention of getting out of the Suzuki game, and we are striving to come up with new innovative products daily and working diligently on catching up with the backorder of products we currently have. Please accept our apologies for any problems this may have caused. If you have any questions please contact me directly at ______ "
