Awesome customers
- Thread starter A1cbr
- Start date
- Status
Cow
Senior Member
- Location
- Eastern Oregon
- Occupation
- Electrician
Gift card to a nice restaurant? Sports tickets?
masterinbama
Senior Member
- Location
- Huntsville Alabama
Depends on how often they call you. If the are customers that call quite often I give them a discount towards my normal service call rate on their next call out.
zog
Senior Member
- Location
- Charlotte, NC
I take my best ones fishing in the mountians every year. Hard to go wrong with a good bottle of scotch too.
I like the bottle of scotch myself.
I was the recipient of a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue for manufacturing a custom transformer in a week for someone who had an emergency breakdown in a building in NYC. You could have knocked me over with a feather. It is still in my curio cabinet unopened as I never have known a bottle of booze to be that expensive. The needed the transformer so bad that they flew two guys out rented a U-Haul and drove it back.
"Gifts" can place people in a very awkward position though because it may imply payola. In my case it was a complete surprise which was not based of a continuing relationship. I set up a distributor which a significant order with some walk in switchgear because they were the only ones with a half of brain not to screw it up. They presented me with a gift certificate at a clothing store.
I have to consider that accepting these gifts would not influence my business relationship with them. What you never want to do is to consider such gifts as payback. But, who?s to say that the people that you do business can't become good friends. Shouldn't that be the goal? Relationships are extremely important.
zog
Senior Member
- Location
- Charlotte, NC
Agree 100% with everything you said, you do have to be cautious about any gift, giving or recieving. JW Blue is my usual, in fact I have 2 bottles here right now that was delivered to me by my real estate broker as a thank you, will be bringing one to my poker leauge tonight.
petersonra
Senior Member
- Location
- Northern illinois
- Occupation
- engineer
I would be cautious about gifts though, especially to people in large companies. virtually all have policies against employees receiving gifts of any value from suppliers.
zog
Senior Member
- Location
- Charlotte, NC
Yep, don't want to do that, never send anything to anyone that makes purchasing decisions.
Rewire
Senior Member
- Location
- Lake of the Ozarks
I would be cautious about sending booze you could be placing your customer in an akward position make sure they drink before hand dont send booze to a recovering alchoholic and dont send chocolates to a diebetic. We usually send popcorn tins that way if they dont want it they can regift it
gadfly56
Senior Member
- Location
- New Jersey
- Occupation
- Professional Engineer, Fire & Life Safety
If you're a sole proprietor, I don't see a problem taking any gift, however exotic or expensive. If it's not your sandbox, though, you do have to be mighty careful. A nice bottle of booze might become a door prize at the company Christmas party, for example. We get boxes of Dunkin' Donuts, chocolates, etc on a semi-regular basis. They go out on the break area counter, first-come first-served.
Fulthrotl
~Autocorrect is My Worst Enema.~
- Occupation
- E
there is absolutely no problem with gifting good scotch to an alcoholic.
just don't buy swill.
several reasons:
if they are drinking, they will drink it and appreciate it.
if they aren't drinking, they can pass it on to someone who does drink.
for that reason, don't engrave the bottle of blue label. makes regifting
awkward, unless the engraving reads "for emergency use only".
if it "tempts" them by simply being there, then they need to look at that.
the obsession to drink has not been removed. that is neither your concern,
nor responsibility. in that case, your gift to them is that you have
demonstrated to them in their own experience that they aren't as well as
they'd like to think they are.
i've been sober a while. when i was five years sober, my
mother, who watched me almost die 4 times as a result of drinking and
drug use, gave me a bottle of early times, and two shot glasses for a
christmas present.
it was the perfect gift, for a number of reasons.....
when i opened it, i was speechless in surprise
it was something i wouldn't have bought for myself
it is something that will last a long time (i still have it)
every time i think of it, i'll remember who gave it to me
for the record, however, i hate early times. don't buy cheap whiskey.
i'm still puzzled about one thing tho.... why two shot glasses?
i know that the cap on the bottle is so i don't spill it on that long trip
between the liquor store and my car, but what are the glasses for?
and why two? did you think you were going to get some of this?
please. spare me.:dunce:
randy
02.29.84
Rewire
Senior Member
- Location
- Lake of the Ozarks
there is absolutely no problem with gifting good scotch to an alcoholic.
just don't buy swill.
several reasons:
if they are drinking, they will drink it and appreciate it.
if they aren't drinking, they can pass it on to someone who does drink.
for that reason, don't engrave the bottle of blue label. makes regifting
awkward, unless the engraving reads "for emergency use only".
if it "tempts" them by simply being there, then they need to look at that.
the obsession to drink has not been removed. that is neither your concern,
nor responsibility. in that case, your gift to them is that you have
demonstrated to them in their own experience that they aren't as well as
they'd like to think they are.
i've been sober a while. when i was five years sober, my
mother, who watched me almost die 4 times as a result of drinking and
drug use, gave me a bottle of early times, and two shot glasses for a
christmas present.
it was the perfect gift, for a number of reasons.....
when i opened it, i was speechless in surprise
it was something i wouldn't have bought for myself
it is something that will last a long time (i still have it)
every time i think of it, i'll remember who gave it to me
for the record, however, i hate early times. don't buy cheap whiskey.
i'm still puzzled about one thing tho.... why two shot glasses?
i know that the cap on the bottle is so i don't spill it on that long trip
between the liquor store and my car, but what are the glasses for?
and why two? did you think you were going to get some of this?
please. spare me.:dunce:
randy
02.29.84
no matter what the subject their will always be one person who will take the opposite veiw.
Dan
04/06/91
readydave8
re member
- Location
- Clarkesville, Georgia
- Occupation
- electrician
I don't agree.
bradleyelectric
Senior Member
- Location
- forest hill, md
because if you come up with a good reason to drink it there are a lot of us that deserve to know what the reason is. the other shot glass represents the rest of us that are in your same situation. Never forget that.
Maybe not aways but often times there are those who are authoritative and no matter what will have a different view and the issue. They mill always find fault with it. These are ften people that make yu mant to gag. They are the ones that are big on themslves and and are not shy making it very obvious that have all of the best answers. You know, people that are not fun to be around because it will be certain to correct you any way that they can.
Fulthrotl
~Autocorrect is My Worst Enema.~
- Occupation
- E
oh, ok. i'd just pass the bottle......
FWIW, i have a number of good reasons to drink.
i never had to come up with them, they came pre installed.
that may be a fundamental difference between you and i.
you need to know why we are drinking. i just needed to
know *what* we were drinking.
but thinking back on it, an interesting breakfast "back
in the day" one saturday morning was jack danials, ice cream,
and magic mushrooms... with the mushrooms the first
course by half an hour, for obvious reasons.
then we started up the race bikes and rode from just
outside barstow, up to big bear for lunch. you can get
away with some things when not on a public highway.
that was during my Hunter S. Thompson phase.
it didn't go very well for me.
oh, ok. i'd just pass the bottle......
FWIW, i have a number of good reasons to drink.
i never had to come up with them, they came pre installed.
that may be a fundamental difference between you and i.
you need to know why we are drinking. i just needed to
know *what* we were drinking.
That reminds f the good old days when my outside sales engineer had a well stocked bar in the lower right had file drawer of his desk. Please be assured that we didn't regularly use that resource on a regular bases. It was reserved for those hectic days when you had been working your butt of on a proposal or project and just before you are ready to leave to go home you decide to go to the fridge and get a glass of ice go back to your desk, pour some chavez regal, JWR, JB, over those rocks and sip on it. It was just one but sitting back with your feet on the desk talking some trash talk was relaxing to say the least. If it happened once a month it was a lot and certainly not done on a regular basis and very seldom having any more than one.
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