As promised

[Rusty]

I took a few minutes to try to get thru my Email since my return from Vancouver. As promissed I'm reporting on a response I got from Gemthane Siding. Some of you may recall during my participation in a thread by gfalls [Nuform and siding in Alberta] I sent an Email to Gemthane Siding on The 13th of April. I received the response on the 27th of April. My Email was sent to the Sales Department thru the "Contact Us" Link on Gemthane's site, N Boyle [nboyle@madisonchemical.com] and I received the response from Ross Mitchell, President and General Manager. In his 3 1/2 line response he thanked me for my recent Email and apologized for the delay "Sorry for the delay – a bit of upward delegation to me as CEO." I'm not exactly sure what that means. [?]

Here's what I asked along with a couple of comments I made in my original Email to Gemthane. Do you have a dealer in Edmonton and have you installed any of your product in Alberta? Can you assure us that it will perform? Expansion contraction and hail damage are major considerations and should not be taken lightly. Any pertinent comment would be appreciated.

His response is labelled "for private use only" so I will paraphrase a bit here. He reiterates the company position that climatic conditions have been addressed in the production of the siding and the info is a bit "technical" and hard to address in an Email so I should phone him at my convenience. That's it.

Now I'm pretty sure I don't need the technical stuff at this point but a simple answer to "have you installed any of your product in Alberta?" could be handled with yes or no! To me the first rule of business is to answer a direct question with a direct answer, so I'm not sure at this point if I will contact them or not!

Any thoughts?

[J. Vibert]

In my personal experience, when a company is asked for reassurance that their product will perform in adverse conditions ,and they request a phone call rather than answer the direct question, they are: 1) Trying to avoid providing an answer that can easily be traced back to them for legal reasons. .or. 2) They're going to try and talk you into something else.

Now maybe neither of those are truly the case..., just my experience in similar situations.

[OttawaP]

Geez....when did a one on one conversation start taking a back seat to an email ?? Put it on speaker phone and record the conversation if you are paranoid. I give the guy credit for wanting to make contact and address all your concerns personally.

[Al=name]

"Sorry for the delay – a bit of upward delegation to me as CEO." I'm not exactly sure what that means. [?]


I also am only guessing, but the bit about the "upward delegation " I think means that since he is the CEO it took longer for him to get your information and respond, reason being maybe something you wanted to know about was normally addressed quicker at a lower level.
Hope this is helpful, Al

[Rusty]

Geez....when did a one on one conversation start taking a back seat to an email ?? Put it on speaker phone and record the conversation if you are paranoid. I give the guy credit for wanting to make contact and address all your concerns personally.

Hi OttawaP. I'm just the reporter and I can assure you I'm far from Paranoid. Email vs. Conversation is an interesting question but the paranoia might be from his side if he doesn't want to put anything in writing for the reasons J. Vibert suggests above. Regardless what's to be paranoid about. The questions I asked were pretty simple and certainly straightforward. Do you have a dealer in Edmonton? Have you installed any of your product in Alberta? Can you assure us that it will perform? Now if you consider those tough, what can I say? The answers could have been any combination of Yes and No and definitely aren't meant to bait and/or trap anyone.

I reiterate; "There ain't much to be Paranoid about!" At least that's how I see it.

[Rusty]

"Sorry for the delay – a bit of upward delegation to me as CEO." I'm not exactly sure what that means. [?]


I also am only guessing, but the bit about the "upward delegation " I think means that since he is the CEO it took longer for him to get your information and respond, reason being maybe something you wanted to know about was normally addressed quicker at a lower level.
Hope this is helpful, Al

Hi Al. Hopefully you're getting some spring in that beautifull area you live in.

The puzzling part for me was how he signed the Email. It was Ross Mitchell, President and General Manager, not Ross Mitchell, CEO and certainly not Ross Mitchell, President, General Manager and CEO.

Unless of course he's the only employee. [Just Kidding!]

[Gitter]

I realize I'm late to the party as far as this thread goes, but thought I'd offer my two cents. I had GemThane siding installed on my cottage and boathouse four years ago, and it still looks great. Previously I would paint over my siding every few years to keep it fresh. Ended up with a physical record of my cottage's changing colours in the form of layers of paint! Love the GemThane stuff; haven't touched it since the install, and it shines in the sun like installed yesterday.

Have had a couple hail storms, but nothing larger than raisin-size, so dunno if that measures up to your climate (pretty tame stuff here in Ontario). And re: expansion, well since it's real wood, I assume it's been expanding and contracting as any wood would. Don't see anything visually to suggest otherwise.

As for the email vs. phone thing, one wonders if you actually gave them a call. When you suggest a resistance to putting it in writing, hey, they put it in writing on their website. I'm thinking the guy probably wanted to talk in detail about your technical concerns, because obviously the written info on the website didn't fully answer your questions.

[Kevin H]

He may be like myself.

I reply to clients and potential clients daily with "I type with two fingers, please call me."

I don't type with two fingers, but generally keep it brief, if typing. Get them on the phone, they hear my tone of voice, attitude and I get take care of two weeks of e-mails in less than five minutes on the phone. It's not to avoid a paper trail, it's to save time. Today was 14 hours, no breaks or lunch. Same as usual. Propriorship <sp> has it's pros and cons.