What You Sacrifice By Working with a Bad Vendor

There are certain vendors we prefer not to work with and it’s not because the items aren’t our style or because we don’t want to buy a product a client has requested. It’s because working with some vendors just isn’t worth the headache for all the parties involved. 

For clarity, when I say vendor, I mean any company that we’re purchasing a product from on behalf of the client. We purchase any proposed product for our Comprehensive Design clients, in order to be able to track the item, deal with anything that arrives damaged, and in general have the ability to solve any issues that arise more efficiently. Anyone with a trade account usually has more leverage, especially when communicating with customer service. 

In my experience, if a product is WAY cheaper than anything else of a comparable style or features, there’s a reason why. Think of it from a business standpoint. If the product looks the same, but costs significantly less, in order for that company to be profitable and sustainable, they need to cut elsewhere.

Quality Control

We once ordered a recliner from a vendor (who shall not be named) for a project in Florida. The first time the client tried to use the chair, it didn’t work. That tells me that the chair left the manufacturer’s warehouse damaged–that’s a lack of quality control. Defective products should not be sent out of a warehouse. We requested a replacement, the replacement was also damaged. Then, the vendor sent out two technicians to fix the recliner and neither of them knew how to fix it!

Long story short, we ended up with a very frustrated client. She eventually received a recliner that worked, but it took months and months to solve this problem. Unless a client is willing to pick a completely different product, we’re beholden to the solutions that the vendor has available. But if their product and staff training are sub-par (see below), well, there’s only so much you can do. 

The amount of hoops we had to jump through to get a recliner (that actually reclined) to our client was absolutely ridiculous. 

Terrible Communication (or lack of communication altogether)

Imagine having a kitchen cabinetry delivery in the calendar for over two months, delivery day approaches, and we even get confirmation on a delivery window at least 24 hours prior. Then the day comes and the vendor calls that morning and says, “oh yeah, your cabinets aren’t coming today.” WTH? Even worse, imagine waiting hours past the delivery window (delays happen, we get it) and calling the vendor to see what’s going and THEN being told that the cabinets aren’t coming that day. 

Both of these scenarios have happened, unfortunately. These occurrences lead to very un-fun conversations with the client. It also makes the contractor understandably frustrated, because now their construction schedule has been significantly delayed and that will influence the scheduling of future projects. Not only that, but now they will take every new delivery date with a grain of salt. 

Poor Staff Training

Tech support is who you call to troubleshoot any issues with the installation of any kind of fixture or appliance. Before we specify either, we like to check the specs and installation instructions to make sure we’re not going to create any issues for the general contractor. 

I can’t tell you how many times we’ve called tech support to confirm something and they tell us something that contradicts what we’ve read in the spec. We end up needing to call the manufacturer multiple times to talk to different people to find someone who has enough competency in the product for us to feel comfortable specifying it. 

When a company offers a cheaper product, that means they’re often making less profit on it. Sometimes that means staff training suffers. It can also mean that there’s a high employee turnover, meaning that many people in tech support have no idea what they’re talking about—troubling to say the least. 

The best companies train their staff well and have great employee retention so that you end up talking to someone that’s worked with the product for 5+ years, not 3 months. 

Customer Service

If you can’t already tell, terrible customer service is a nightmare. As such, this is one of the main reasons why we’ll stop working with a vendor. If they can’t help us solve a problem with a product that my client has paid for, we’re not interested. Typically, the higher end the product, the better the customer service experience. Good customer service is something that a company invests a lot of time, effort and money into and it often shows through clear communication, quick troubleshooting, and doing everything in their power to make their customers happy. 

In every single one of the horror stories listed above, the product was one of the cheaper options. As with many things in life, you get what you pay for–vendors are no exception. Going with the cheaper option is sometimes okay with things like decorative accessories, but you’re taking a risk with items that need to be installed or furniture that you intend on keeping for years to come. You may be paying a lower price tag, but the trade off could very well be your sanity.