Saturday, January 11, 2014

Wouxun

Ed shares some more of his thoughts and details of his experience working with Wouxun - including some e-mail exchanges. Based on what he reports, I don't blame him for wanting to move on. Forgetting for a moment the issue of a memory loss defect (no pun intended), it sounds like the business relationship steadily grew worse for multiple reasons. I'm curious if all the other sellers were required to handle warranty problems the same way. Also, I don't really understand the pricing policy strategy.

Have a read and I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

5 comments:

  1. "I'm curious if all the other sellers were required to handle warranty problems the same way."

    The answer is "Yes" (verified by me personally). That's not a sustainable business model, a valid reason for Ed to quit and the reason for me to write my last blog post.

    Ed writes: "honesty and integrity have come into question on some internet forums".

    I'm not sure if that was ever the case, but doubts about the scale of the problem arose quickly when other - sometimes much larger - dealers around the world could only report just a few failures on thousands of dual-band hand helds sold.

    Which leaves professionalism. If you don't like a manufacturer for whatever reason, move on, but don't lower yourself by putting peeing cartoon characters on your company website. This is childish and will work against you in the end.

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    1. In the south, you will find bumper stickers/window decals of Calvin defacing all sorts of logos: Ford, Chevy, NASCAR #'s, etc.

      http://nonstopkarate.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/peeing-calvin-everything.jpg

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  2. Interesting read, thank you for posting it. As a Wouxun owner (w/o any problem so far) I would like to see where this ends.
    I feel the need to point out that even if something is commonplace, this doesn't make it legal or even in good taste. Peeing Calvin stickers are also popular in my country (Chile, or the real south), but Mr. Watterson never licensed his cartoons for merchandising purposes. Any self-styled serious business should know better than trying some rabble-rousing with inflammatory images and comments. I have no doubts that Mr. Griffin experienced problems with Wouxun, but the entire piece seems over-inflated and fuzzy or even contradictory in details and time frames. His penchant for hyperbole is clear when he states exchanging thousands of emails with the manufacturer. That means at least 3 mails a day for 2 years non-stop! Especially since he mentions stopping any sort of contact a while back.
    Anyway, thanks for keeping us posted and hoping the dust will eventually settle down.

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  3. Just a lot of sour grapes really isn't it, and Wouxun may be the winners at the end of the day.

    73 G1KQH

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  4. If Wouxun improves their practices after some public exposure, Ed Griffin will catch some heat especially with those who already believe he's overcharging people. If they don't, Ed will probably still catch some heat, but Wouxun will ultimately lose out. The fact is Baofengs are 1/3 the price and not that far behind in quality. The AnyTones are similar in price, rival the build quality, and the manufacturer is more responsive to the market.

    Quansheng might e the winner here because Ed's basically right about their AnyTone radios being better.

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