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There's an additional factor in all
of this D2A/Chelton mess that so far hasn't come up in the on-line
discussion. I've been involved in two or three businesses over the years,
and in the course of conducting those businesses have dealt with dozens, or
maybe hundreds of other businesses of all sorts. Until I became involved
in aviation, I had never heard of vendors demanding 100% payment in advance, as
D2A was in habit of doing. Perhaps as a consequence, some of their
secondary dealers, like Lancair Avionics, followed the same policy.
This is certainly not a normal business
practice, and says something uncomplimentary about our intelligence as aviation
consumers. In the real world, if I had demanded 100% payment in advance
for my products (without even giving a delivery date), I would first have been
laughed at, and second, run out of business in a hurry. Imagine going into
a Ford dealership and having the sales manager tell you to pay them the full
price now, and they'd deliver the car whenever they got around to it. The
normal mode for a business is to use its own cash float, or lacking that, a line
of credit to finance the purchase of parts, development costs, and all the
rest. Normal terms are net 30, or in businesses where there is a lot of
one-time commerce without a built-up relationship of trust, perhaps C.O.D.
In either case, the vendor delivers, then the buyer
pays, not the other way around.
Why is this relevant? Well, if we had
all been operating on that basis, and D2A failed to deliver products, they would
not have been paid in advance for them, and we as consumers wouldn't be left
holding the bag. The problem is that when a vendor has a unique product
(or thinks it does), and makes such a demand on the buyer, the individual
wanting to make a one-time purchase has little leverage. The ones who
really let us down are the shops that place multiple orders, like the various
panel builders that have been alluded to in these on-line discussions, and
certainly including Lancair Avionics. Had they insisted on a more
business-like arrangement, we would all be in better shape. Perhaps it's a
little bit of poetic justice that these are the shops who will be left holding a
really big empty bag, though I take no pleasure in pointing that
out.
A reasonable deposit can perhaps be
justified, although when the item is an off-the-shelf, stock item, it's hard to
justify even that. (Think, Lancair's engine payment policy.) For
most of the things we buy, there are choices of vendor, and we'd all be better
off to deal with the ones who adhere to normal and reasonable business
practices. They've been worked out over a very long time, and usually for
good reasons, of which we are now being reminded.
Jim Cameron
Legacy, N132X reserved
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