Read it and weep (UK)

[Brett Dikeman]

At 2:15 PM +0100 11/17/01, Phil Payne wrote:

>In spite of HUGE cash reserves, the UK Audi quattro Owners Club
>continues to nothing more than send the odd snob to the roof of a
>luxury hotel to swan it with the other snobs. Audi thinks the UK
>CLub is _WONDERFUL_ - because they never hear a peep of complaint
>and everyone in the UK is happy (indeed delirious) paying twice the
>price everyone else pays for Audi parts.

Sounds akin to why AoA just loves to hang out with Audiworld
staff(read the recent Len Hunt interview; I remember a sentence along
the lines of "we always get the chance to hang out with AoA
staff..."), but wouldn't give Dan the time of day at the NY auto show.

The new generation of Audi owners at Audiworld are happily spending
money like no tomorrow...and we actually bother to find dealers that
give us decent prices(Clair, Carlsen, etc) or third party suppliers.

On the other hand, we have, continuously, for the last 10 years,
helped Audi sales in the US and probably contributed more than any
other group(including QCUSA, which does nothing to promote the
marque) to Audi's recovery.

We:

-kept buying parts, repairing the cars, keeping them on the road and
visible to the public
-maintained some demand for Audis in the marketplace
-recommended them to friends, family, coworkers, complete strangers
-showed up at various motorsport events supporting Audi

etc.  A dealer friend once said: "You have no idea how close Audi
came to pulling out of the US lock stock+barrel."

I wonder how much -we- did to keep that from happening?

It reminds me of Apple.  Macintosh fans would actually sit in a
CompUSA or Sears store for hours next to a Macintosh, because the
sales people treated them like the plague(thus none were sold) and
Apple needed all the help it could get sales-wise.

Apple showed a lot of gratitude; in fact, you could get paid a small
amount by Apple for doing the above officially; I think they got some
freebies you couldn't get otherwise, too(amazing how easy to please
enthusiasts are.)  Nowadays, full Apple employees are at CompUSA
during certain hours to assist customers.

Brett
--
----
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Ben Franklin
http://www.users.cloud9.net/~brett/
http://www.users.cloud9.net/~brett/bdikeman.asc	(PGP Public Key)