Direct sales of equipment from out of the country

[Jim <alarminex@xxxxxxx>]

I don't know if it's been mentioned here before or not ( even by me ?)
but I've noticed in the past few years at the various shows that there
is more and more  (especially) CCTV equipment that is being
distributed, more or less direct, from other parts of the world.
Obviously, much of the equipment that we obtain is mfg'd in other
countries but backed by US companies and US distributors. Some of this
CCTV equipment "looks" to be of good quality with equal and sometimes
better features than US supplied equipment .... at lower prices.
Certainly, a major concern about buying this equipment "direct" or
from small local sales rep offices for these foriegn mfgs, is the lack
of technical help, limited parts supply, possible long lead times
obtaining out of stock parts and the language barrier or lack of
technical knowledge of the reps when you have a technical problem.
But, again, the price of the equipment is VERY good and the capability
of the equipment (if you do your homework) is as good or better than
than available through our regular distributors.

What brought this to mind was the spam post about buying China mfg
security equipment and a situation that I ran into a few months ago.
When doing a service call for one of my long time commercial customers
I noticed that he'd had a CCTV system put in his industrial building.
Four camers around the perimiter, a monitor, DVR and internet remote
viewing. All for about $2000.00. I would have probably charged about
$4K. The cameras weren't set up all that good as far as what they were
seeing and the picture quality was just so - so. But even so, for $2K
it was well worth it. Anyway, the customer said that he hadn't had
need to call the guy back since it was installed but wanted to know if
I could change some of the perameters on the DVR. Long story short,
there wasn't a single part number, serial number, bar code, brand
name ...... nothing..... on the DVR to identify it. I wouldn't be
surprised if the cameras were the same. I couldn't quite get at the
power supplies for the cameras without being to obvious to my
customer, but there's a possibility that the power sources are not the
standard 12 or 24 volts either.

So .... my conclusion is .... this guy is probably buying equipment
direct from some foriegn supplier and has all his customers locked in
with no possiblility of anyone else being about to service or supply
parts for "his" jobs. As long as he can keep a decent supply of parts
on hand so as to have replacements and\or no delivery problems, he's
in good shape.

I don't know whether to congratulate or condem him.