RJM62
Touchdown! Greaser!
- Joined
- Jun 15, 2007
- Messages
- 13,157
- Location
- Upstate New York
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Geek on the Hill
I have several private (non-agency) advertisers from China who are part of a growing movement in that nation to change the country's reputation as purveyors of poorly-made, cheap ****. They're easy to deal with and they pay their bills on time, which is more than I can say for most of my domestic private advertisers. The only way to get many of my domestic private advertisers to pay their bills is to pull down their ads.
Not so with the Chinese. When I first started dealing with them, I actually had to hack my billing software. I suppose because of calendar differences, the Chinese advertisers sometimes made their payments directly via PayPal a day or two before the recurring invoices were generated. Because they paid directly rather than going through the payment gateway, the money would be in my account, but my self-hosted invoicing system would be unaware that the payments had been made.
The absolute last thing I wanted to do was interrupt the payment practices of advertisers who paid early, so I had to cobble together an IPN listener and a script to either credit and update the client's balance when advertisers made direct PayPal payments against invoices that hadn't yet been generated, or send me an email if the software couldn't figure out which client's account should be credited. That happens sometimes when the invoicing software doesn't recognize the payer's email address.
It wasn't a big deal and I really should have done it years before. It just wasn't a "problem" that had ever come up before. Usually my problem was getting advertisers to pay for past-due invoices, not making sure that payments made outside the gateway against future invoices were properly credited. It was a good "problem" to have.
Over the years, I've become friendly enough with the rep for one of the Chinese companies that she occasionally does me a favor by finding out which Chinese manufacturer actually makes specific items sold under (nominally) U.S. companies' labels so I can inquire about purchasing the products directly from the Chinese manufacturers. The prices are typically as little as 15 to 25 percent of what those identical products would cost under the American labels (plus shipping, which is surprisingly inexpensive and rarely takes more than a week to ten days).
My thinking is that if the nominally U.S. companies are going to offshore their engineering and manufacturing jobs to China, then they're really no longer U.S. companies, and I therefore owe them zero loyalty. Other than the CEO and his or her secretary (about whom I couldn't give a ****) and the shareholders (about whom I care even less), they're no longer creating any jobs in the U.S. They're just selling re-badged Chinese stuff at obscene markups.
In other words, if my buying choices for certain products are going to be limited to stuff designed and made in China, then I may as well buy those products from the Chinese. Why reward nominally U.S. companies for sending jobs overseas? I'd rather just cut them out of the loop altogether -- and save some money in the process.
I only do this when no U.S.-made (or at least North American-made) alternative exists for the product I need. I seek out domestic alternatives first. If they don't exist, and my only choices are Chinese-engineered and -manufactured products, then I make every attempt to buy those products directly from the Chinese.
I'm also starting to do the same for stuff made in other countries (especially Mexico). If I can find out who actually manufactured the thing, I look into purchasing it from the manufacturer or a seller in that country, under that company's domestic label, if one exists. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't.
I'm getting the impression that stuff that's engineered in the U.S. is only available under the U.S. labels, but stuff that's engineered overseas and simply re-badged for the U.S. market is usually available under labels domestic to those (and other) countries, usually at much lower prices. The label stuck on the thing may be in another language, but I really don't care about that. I'm not paying for the label.
I've had some of my friends and family tell me I'm being unpatriotic. I disagree because I don't believe I owe any loyalty to U.S. companies once they ship their engineering and manufacturing overseas. I'm interested in the opinions of people on POA.
Rich
Not so with the Chinese. When I first started dealing with them, I actually had to hack my billing software. I suppose because of calendar differences, the Chinese advertisers sometimes made their payments directly via PayPal a day or two before the recurring invoices were generated. Because they paid directly rather than going through the payment gateway, the money would be in my account, but my self-hosted invoicing system would be unaware that the payments had been made.
The absolute last thing I wanted to do was interrupt the payment practices of advertisers who paid early, so I had to cobble together an IPN listener and a script to either credit and update the client's balance when advertisers made direct PayPal payments against invoices that hadn't yet been generated, or send me an email if the software couldn't figure out which client's account should be credited. That happens sometimes when the invoicing software doesn't recognize the payer's email address.
It wasn't a big deal and I really should have done it years before. It just wasn't a "problem" that had ever come up before. Usually my problem was getting advertisers to pay for past-due invoices, not making sure that payments made outside the gateway against future invoices were properly credited. It was a good "problem" to have.
Over the years, I've become friendly enough with the rep for one of the Chinese companies that she occasionally does me a favor by finding out which Chinese manufacturer actually makes specific items sold under (nominally) U.S. companies' labels so I can inquire about purchasing the products directly from the Chinese manufacturers. The prices are typically as little as 15 to 25 percent of what those identical products would cost under the American labels (plus shipping, which is surprisingly inexpensive and rarely takes more than a week to ten days).
My thinking is that if the nominally U.S. companies are going to offshore their engineering and manufacturing jobs to China, then they're really no longer U.S. companies, and I therefore owe them zero loyalty. Other than the CEO and his or her secretary (about whom I couldn't give a ****) and the shareholders (about whom I care even less), they're no longer creating any jobs in the U.S. They're just selling re-badged Chinese stuff at obscene markups.
In other words, if my buying choices for certain products are going to be limited to stuff designed and made in China, then I may as well buy those products from the Chinese. Why reward nominally U.S. companies for sending jobs overseas? I'd rather just cut them out of the loop altogether -- and save some money in the process.
I only do this when no U.S.-made (or at least North American-made) alternative exists for the product I need. I seek out domestic alternatives first. If they don't exist, and my only choices are Chinese-engineered and -manufactured products, then I make every attempt to buy those products directly from the Chinese.
I'm also starting to do the same for stuff made in other countries (especially Mexico). If I can find out who actually manufactured the thing, I look into purchasing it from the manufacturer or a seller in that country, under that company's domestic label, if one exists. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't.
I'm getting the impression that stuff that's engineered in the U.S. is only available under the U.S. labels, but stuff that's engineered overseas and simply re-badged for the U.S. market is usually available under labels domestic to those (and other) countries, usually at much lower prices. The label stuck on the thing may be in another language, but I really don't care about that. I'm not paying for the label.
I've had some of my friends and family tell me I'm being unpatriotic. I disagree because I don't believe I owe any loyalty to U.S. companies once they ship their engineering and manufacturing overseas. I'm interested in the opinions of people on POA.
Rich
