Hey, I'm not a doctor, wanna' buy some narcotic-analgesic painkillers...?
Sorry, Carl, they are subject to fraud charges (civil and possibly criminal) for playing upon a manufacturer's marketing claims and not living up to those claims. Fine print doesn't count either. And if an illegitimate dealer is offering software, the software is by definition bootleg, so they're as guilty as if they were selling pirated copies of MS Office. And unsupported product intended for non-USA markets, good luck getting the software legitimately. And if you get it illegitimately, Panasonic has grounds to yank your certs. As for soapboxes and sweets, you have to live with yourself. Frankly I'm disappointed. And in the long run you're screwing yourself too (interesting picture that makes!). As for me, on the rare occasions when I've gotten help-calls from customers who got screwed by an illegitimate dealer (e.g. wrong config, no software, bootleg software, etc.), my response is to tell them they have to get their money back from the badguys and press fraud charges if need be, but I will not become a party to an illegitimate dealer's unethical behavior. And very often it turns out that clients who whine about getting screwed, were deliberately out shopping for a bootlegger after having gotten legit proposals from real dealers and thinking they could get something for nothing. So those clients are not as innocent as they may seem, and I'm not going to be an "enabler" of that kind of behavior. I'll take my wins & losses in competition with legitimate dealers, not in competition with (or collusion-after-the-fact with) fraudsters. Fortunately my market niche (high value customizations) knows they need high-skill engineering & technical work, and does not often stoop to buying from fraudsters. The lack of ethics these days is enough to make me puke. Just because Bill Clinton engaged in "horizontal diplomacy" with his staff doesn't make it right, and just because Karl Rove committed treason by outing a deep-cover agent doesn't make that right either. And the same case goes for people who make bootlegs of MS Office (regardless of rationalizations about MS being a monopoly) or the KXTDA firmware (regardless of rationalizations about Panasonic being a huge global company). -George The salient point is that ATHQ is not a "dealer" so they're not subject to a dealer agreement. The TDA's are imported from Canada, thus the TDA-30. There's always going to be someone who will sell something for a small margin or at a loss. And there will always be buyers who will buy something because it's a good deal. Panasonic can't stop that. I could get on my soapbox and state that I won't support an end user who doesn't buy from me, but those surcharges are too sweet to pass up :-) Carl Navarro _________________________________________________________________ KX-T Mailing list --- http://kxthelp.com/ Subscription changes: http://kxthelp.com/mailman/listinfo/kxt
