Middle Men

Under no circumstance that I can think of is the Middle Man useful. I dont mean the middle man that buys from the manufacturer and sells to the consumer, I mean the other middle men, the middle men that end up wiggling their way into deals they have no purpose in and only causing unecessary stress and tension in all parties involved.

We work with a chain of car dealerships, we install and repair all of the autoglass they have. They offer customers warranties and when their customer comes back we are called upon to fulfill their warranty. They get customers for all kinds of things because this isn't just a car dealership, they are also somewhat of a home depot. People bring in all kinds of shit and they forward it to us, they use us for what they don't do or don't know how to do. They are great customers of ours, we do everything for them wholesale but we still make a little money off of them. However! I dont understand why they wouldn't just refer a customer to us instead of squeezing themself inside the deal. If the customer was already theirs and they have an obligation to them then fine, I get that.

When Joe Shmo calls up with no attachment no warranty no nothing and says, "Hey, I got this window for pickup camper shell that needs new glass in it."...They coulda just said, "Sorry we don't do that, but the guys acrosss the street do that, here is their number *****". But noooo....They take the info down, and even take the frame. They bring the fram to us and say, "This needs glass.", "Oh, what kind? Color? Thickness?", "Just put whatever is supose to be in it back in it...", "Alright, ill call you when its ready, prolly bout two weeks out.", "K".....

So we clean, straighten, prep the frame and make a pattern, we send the pattern to the manufacturer and order black colored 1/4" tempered safety glass-the shit that is supose to be in it.

Suddenly, a few days later some unknown human being calls us up and asks us if he can pick up the back glass...we are confused of course, like who the fuck are you? He says he is the guy that called the dealership that called us, he is a body guy who was hired to fix it by the actual owner of the camper topper...

My first thought was, "That poor fucker is getting fucked by so many people."...

The unknown body guy asked why it was "taking so long", I told him we had to send in a pattern and were waiting for the material to install it, he SCOFFED! Said, "oh no no no, I just wanted some kinda Plexi in there, I didnt want anything expensive."...

To that I was just at a loss for words....I pretty much said, "Well you can take that up with the dealership, they told us to order what was supose to go into it, so we did, Plexi is not standard issue in autos ever, besides, we stopped putting plexi in vehicles a long time ago, major liability for us- we used to do as a favor to people for a temporary fix cause its better than cardboard but not much more expensive...those people let the temporary fix be permanent and when their back glasses started flying out onto the highways 6 months later guess who got blamed for it? Ya, so we dont put plexi in automobiles."...He seemed pretty pissed AT US! Can you say midirected anger?!

Today he called again and cussed me out for it not being done, tomorrow will be week two that we have been in possession of the frame, we get our tempered order every other wednesday...we are perfectly on fucking schedule. This guys is like, "Well I never wanted tempered, wah wah wah, I wanted plexi, can you just put plexi in it so we can get it today?", "I can put Safety Laminate in it not plexi, but you are still going to be responsible for the tempered that is coming tomorrow.", "oh no, just cancel it.", "Oh no, you see its already made, its on the way.", "Well the gal is leaving for Washington tomorrow, and- I guess im fucked. Thanks.", "Sorry guy, we did exactly what we were told to do."....Click.

MIDDLE MEN!!! So many things irritate me about this, number one, im so tired of Auto Body guys posing as Glazers. You dont know what the fuck your doing, stick to paintless dent repair and send the breakables to us! Stop hiring it out under your name and taking the credit, everyone knows, your not fooling anyone. Then! If you are goign to contract your own job out, how bout picking someone who can actually do it instead of pretty much hiring yourself again but someone else....Cause that other person you just stuck into the mix, ya they called us! You could just called us....Im half tempted to call the bitch up that owns this camper and being like, "WTF is wrong with you woman, your realize by you calling the wrong person you have just paid for 4 different companies to get involved with this little shitty job.? Here is our card, use it."...This job cost about $10.00 to make, the manufacturer charges us $50.00, we charge the dealership $130 after installing it, the dealership chrages the body shop $180.00 the body shop turns around, hands over the finished product and charges the consumer $250.00....Too many middle men.