[cstreit]

The more time I spend in this business, the more I am disgusted at the greed I see in the motorsports market. Today I hit the last straw and have to vent:

SO I have a long time customer that owns a custom car that uses a Toyota Supra flywheel. He wanted to upgrade to a Tilton style. Turns out that some time in the last 12 months Tilton granted exclusive sales of this product to a company called Titan Motorsports.

So we call them and ask for a quote. It is normal in the industry to extend a courtesy business-to-business price to other business to allow both parties to make a little money on a part. IN 2011 we sold this flywheel from Tilton for around $600. Titan quoted us over $1000 for the part. Needless to say the customer balked at the price.

Well so we completed the rest of his order and later on got a note from him that said Titan sold it to him for $695. So they boosted the price to a dealer by 50% and then sold it direct to our customer for less?! Are you kidding me? This is nothing but greed. They denied the business to us so they could make another $50?

I ran into a similar situation with Racepak. When they first released their IQ3 logger dash they had trouble keeping it in stock and kept telling me they couldn't fulfill our requests for stock orders. I'd be waiting on stock for months and find out that my customers were able to buy it directly from them. They were holding back stock to steal business from their own dealers! Happened 3-4 separate times before I flat out refused to do any business with them any more.