An Open Letter from Gale and Team LRU

[Locators R Us]

Dear Customers,

We know that some of you are pissed and not happy with our service lately but let me explain the reason why we have such issues.

First off, let me again tell you that we are located in the Philippines and we are using internet phone to make calls (NOT SKYPE because it will only allow us to make 50 calls per day), we are using VOiP that is charging us per minute of calls to make sure that the lines were ok. With that said, we are paying our VOiP to make calls to US. Since there is no upfront payment, we are allocating our own money to pay for those phone lines while we are working.

As a small locating company, we solely rely on your prompt reports and payments. In spite of this reminder during order acknowledgement and when we are sending you locations, SOME clients failed to do their part. We have some clients who didn’t give us updates after getting half of their required locations. We also found out some clients are delivering machines to the locations that were given to them without telling us. And I know some of you are wondering why did we say that? Well, some of my colleagues are calling back their location and asked if there’s a machine that has been placed and when. Manager says the machine was placed after we called them. We asked if we are the only ones who them, and they said yes. We are not confronting them as we hope that they will be honest and pay us but we are wrong. Some clients are not paying their bills on time. It’s hard but we have to take this since we are the one who offered no upfront in the first place. But we didn’t know that some vendors will take advantage of our trust. We trust you on working with your orders without payment and we know you trust us with your business. But let us do things right. We are a team of 5 when we first started, another 5 people joined our team last February, but some of my colleagues didn’t work again because some client’s didn’t pay their locations.

Now, the next concern is “why you guys are giving locations to other vendors while you are not giving me locations?” As I’ve said in my emails when you asked us about this, it still depends on your area and type of business that you want. If you are picky and your area is hard (few businesses, lots of corporate owned business, few English speaking managers/attendants who answers the phone) and congested with machines, then the 3 locations per week is not attainable. If you are not that picky and your area is not that congested and there’s a lot of business plus you don’t have a lot of do not want then 3 per week is attainable. We work on first come first serve basis. And sometimes, hard areas affects our output because we our time and effort are wasted and at the end of the day we got zero locations. That’s why after trying 2-3 days we ask for new areas and while waiting for new areas we start to work on other orders. There are some vendors who ordered more than 20 locations and gave us a long list of areas but when we sent them locations, some were turned down, we understand that, but we just hope that you update us of the turned downs the soonest possible time so that we can immediately replaced it or if not we won’t be thinking that we just owe you few locations. Again, the number of locations we sent depends on your requested area. It is also sad that most vendors who got a lot of locations (5 or more a week) from us are those vendors who are not paying or reporting promptly. Some vendors, after giving them locations they are not delivering the machines within the week we gave them. They have some errands and when they get back they will just tell us that locations were turned down. We know that some of you are not a full time vendor, but since this is your business you don’t want to give your customer (location) to other business and you need to deliver the machines on time.

I think, I must say that THIS IS NOT JUST OUR FAULT. You, as a vendor have responsibility as well, and that is to deliver your machine, send us report and pay us on time. The last 4 weeks was been hard for us, our domain has issues and our VOiP was disconnected because we do not have enough paypal funds to reload. Our operation was a messed. I’ve been honest in telling some vendors who asked that we have these issues because we haven't received any reports and payments from the vendors we sent locations.

Next issue, you can’t be reached in your phone number and it takes time for you to reply. As of today, our 415-800-4110 number is officially closed. It’s a skype online number and for some reason we are receiving calls asking to cancel their subscription in a certain magazine, I think our number is also used by other company, I don’t know how and why that happens. We can’t also make calls using that number since we wasn’t able to pay the monthly fee. Emails, I do reply to emails, it takes time sometimes since I am also busy calling locations and most of the emails that I don’t reply are asking why we haven’t send locations. You know that if we found locations we sent it right away. Sorry, it’s our mistake, we failed in that area. But rest assured we have different policies and procedures now.

Why you are only telling this to us now? We think hard about this, and we waited for other vendors to pay or update us but we decided that waited enough. I haven’t been in the forum for a while but since ALL of our clients came from this forum, it’s time for us to be heard.

Our new policies and procedures effective today, May 15, 2012.

We will accept not more than 5 orders per vendors and we will be asking 50% upfront before working on your orders. We are doing 5 orders per vendor to maintain quality locations, and for you to deliver the machines first before we do your next order.

Aside of emailing you your order acknowledgement, we will call you and talk to you about your order. If we cannot talk to you we will not start working on your order.

Your guarantees…

If we do not find you locations after 2 weeks, we will refund your money.

Emails will be responded promptly during 10AM-6PM Eastern. Emails came before and after that time will be responded as soon as we read those.

Calls in our NEW contact number 1-954-671-5050 will be answered during 10AM-6PM Eastern. Voicemails came before and after that time will be responded as soon as we heard those.

Also, our new contact number 1-954-671-5050 is a magicjack number, and we are free to make and receive calls for one year so rest assured that everything is fine with our main contact number.

Now, we know we might lost some customers, with our new policy but it’s better to lose them now, than lose them after we wasted time, effort and money finding for their locations and not paying us.

We hope that we can start a new and you can again trust us with your business.

P.S

We are not General Vending or affiliated with them, we are not re-inventing ourselves or whatsoever. We have our own domain name, and own email address that we spend money in creating and we will not just leave it.

Gale and Team LRU

Locators R Us

www.locatorsrus.info or www.locatorsrus.biz

1-954-671-5050

support@locatorsrus.biz

[bbeckl]

bravo for the update , and i would be glad to see you (LRU) get back in the game . for the record , we have got a total of 10 locations from LRU , and been happy with them . some better than others , but as im learning ,they cant all be gold mines .

[GW1115]

good luck, hope it works out well for you

[kandyking]

I, for one, appreciate the honestly in the above statement. Every business hits a bump now and then but you have grown and adapted because of it. Allow me to be the first person to order 5 triples to be placed. I will call momentarily to work out the details.

UPDATE: No sooner did I reply to your message than I got 2 potentially great locations in my inbox! Looks like you guys are back in full force.

[fyver]

LRU, thank you for the update and being honest with the group. Everyone in this business can make a quick buck by taking the shortcuts, but it's building a long-term relationship with clients that will keep you around for years to come. This is a good step.

I'll definitely be considering you in the future if I'm not able to self-locate over the coming weeks.

[onecent@atime]

What about the vendors who have current orders that have not been filled ? Are you going to fulfill your current obligations to your current customers ?

Dear Customers,

We know that some of you are pissed and not happy with our service lately but let me explain the reason why we have such issues.

First off, let me again tell you that we are located in the Philippines and we are using internet phone to make calls (NOT SKYPE because it will only allow us to make 50 calls per day), we are using VOiP that is charging us per minute of calls to make sure that the lines were ok. With that said, we are paying our VOiP to make calls to US. Since there is no upfront payment, we are allocating our own money to pay for those phone lines while we are working.

As a small locating company, we solely rely on your prompt reports and payments. In spite of this reminder during order acknowledgement and when we are sending you locations, SOME clients failed to do their part. We have some clients who didn’t give us updates after getting half of their required locations. We also found out some clients are delivering machines to the locations that were given to them without telling us. And I know some of you are wondering why did we say that? Well, some of my colleagues are calling back their location and asked if there’s a machine that has been placed and when. Manager says the machine was placed after we called them. We asked if we are the only ones who them, and they said yes. We are not confronting them as we hope that they will be honest and pay us but we are wrong. Some clients are not paying their bills on time. It’s hard but we have to take this since we are the one who offered no upfront in the first place. But we didn’t know that some vendors will take advantage of our trust. We trust you on working with your orders without payment and we know you trust us with your business. But let us do things right. We are a team of 5 when we first started, another 5 people joined our team last February, but some of my colleagues didn’t work again because some client’s didn’t pay their locations.

Now, the next concern is “why you guys are giving locations to other vendors while you are not giving me locations?” As I’ve said in my emails when you asked us about this, it still depends on your area and type of business that you want. If you are picky and your area is hard (few businesses, lots of corporate owned business, few English speaking managers/attendants who answers the phone) and congested with machines, then the 3 locations per week is not attainable. If you are not that picky and your area is not that congested and there’s a lot of business plus you don’t have a lot of do not want then 3 per week is attainable. We work on first come first serve basis. And sometimes, hard areas affects our output because we our time and effort are wasted and at the end of the day we got zero locations. That’s why after trying 2-3 days we ask for new areas and while waiting for new areas we start to work on other orders. There are some vendors who ordered more than 20 locations and gave us a long list of areas but when we sent them locations, some were turned down, we understand that, but we just hope that you update us of the turned downs the soonest possible time so that we can immediately replaced it or if not we won’t be thinking that we just owe you few locations. Again, the number of locations we sent depends on your requested area. It is also sad that most vendors who got a lot of locations (5 or more a week) from us are those vendors who are not paying or reporting promptly. Some vendors, after giving them locations they are not delivering the machines within the week we gave them. They have some errands and when they get back they will just tell us that locations were turned down. We know that some of you are not a full time vendor, but since this is your business you don’t want to give your customer (location) to other business and you need to deliver the machines on time.

I think, I must say that THIS IS NOT JUST OUR FAULT. You, as a vendor have responsibility as well, and that is to deliver your machine, send us report and pay us on time. The last 4 weeks was been hard for us, our domain has issues and our VOiP was disconnected because we do not have enough paypal funds to reload. Our operation was a messed. I’ve been honest in telling some vendors who asked that we have these issues because we haven't received any reports and payments from the vendors we sent locations.

Next issue, you can’t be reached in your phone number and it takes time for you to reply. As of today, our 415-800-4110 number is officially closed. It’s a skype online number and for some reason we are receiving calls asking to cancel their subscription in a certain magazine, I think our number is also used by other company, I don’t know how and why that happens. We can’t also make calls using that number since we wasn’t able to pay the monthly fee. Emails, I do reply to emails, it takes time sometimes since I am also busy calling locations and most of the emails that I don’t reply are asking why we haven’t send locations. You know that if we found locations we sent it right away. Sorry, it’s our mistake, we failed in that area. But rest assured we have different policies and procedures now.

Why you are only telling this to us now? We think hard about this, and we waited for other vendors to pay or update us but we decided that waited enough. I haven’t been in the forum for a while but since ALL of our clients came from this forum, it’s time for us to be heard.

Our new policies and procedures effective today, May 15, 2012.

We will accept not more than 5 orders per vendors and we will be asking 50% upfront before working on your orders. We are doing 5 orders per vendor to maintain quality locations, and for you to deliver the machines first before we do your next order.

Aside of emailing you your order acknowledgement, we will call you and talk to you about your order. If we cannot talk to you we will not start working on your order.

Your guarantees…

If we do not find you locations after 2 weeks, we will refund your money.

Emails will be responded promptly during 10AM-6PM Eastern. Emails came before and after that time will be responded as soon as we read those.

Calls in our NEW contact number 1-954-671-5050 will be answered during 10AM-6PM Eastern. Voicemails came before and after that time will be responded as soon as we heard those.

Also, our new contact number 1-954-671-5050 is a magicjack number, and we are free to make and receive calls for one year so rest assured that everything is fine with our main contact number.

Now, we know we might lost some customers, with our new policy but it’s better to lose them now, than lose them after we wasted time, effort and money finding for their locations and not paying us.

We hope that we can start a new and you can again trust us with your business.

P.S

We are not General Vending or affiliated with them, we are not re-inventing ourselves or whatsoever. We have our own domain name, and own email address that we spend money in creating and we will not just leave it.

Gale and Team LRU

Locators R Us

www.locatorsrus.info or www.locatorsrus.biz

1-954-671-5050

support@locatorsrus.biz

What about the vendors who have current orders that have not been filled ? Are you going to fulfill your current obligations to your current customers ?

[Locators R Us]

What about the vendors who have current orders that have not been filled ? Are you going to fulfill your current obligations to your current customers ?What about the vendors who have current orders that have not been filled ? Are you going to fulfill your current obligations to your current customers ?

Of course we will. But with the new policy which is, we will accommodate 5 orders and vendors needs to pay us 50% upfront. I called some vendors who failed to update us earlier, and the numbers they used in the order forms were bogus. The person who answer the phone doesn't even know the vendor. It's really frustrating in our part, but then again, we must move on. That's why we decided to stick with our new policy. And that is to ask for a 50% upfront payment. I hope you understand.

Thanks!

[onecent@atime]

Ok well we placed an order for 6 on Nov 26th 2011 and you still have nit finished yet. So we have to prepay with those time frames as a basis for what kind of progress we can expect?

[Locators R Us]

If this is RJ1494, i believed we sent more than 6 locations and mostly were turned down. 5 were placed and 1 rejected after 5 weeks because of low volume. Sent you payment request for good locations. I informed you that your location is hard and we are having hard time with it. There is a time that 3 of my colleagues are working with your location but they got nothing. You said we can work within 20 mile radius but when we sent you locations which is within the 20 mile radius you refused it. You placed your machine but you were not able to update us on time of your placements. We thought we only owe few locations but we got a lot of turned downs than placed. You emailed us once saying you placed a machine in this japanese restaurant but it might get booted. And you didn't update us what happen with that location. I keep on telling you that your location is hard because most of the restaurants has candy machines already or corporate owned. We are asking you to be flexible with the type of business if possible.

what kind of progress we can expect?

As i said in my letter, we will refund your upfront payment if we didn't find any locations for you.

[onecent@atime]

A order of 6 locations that has not been filled in nearly 6 months and you now want 50% up front and if you dont fill the order you will refund the order. We have paid for the partial order over a month ago, we are a paying customer our contact info is up to date. We have a valid E.I.N, Duns # as well as Sales Tax I.D. with a Current business licence and small business bank account, Phone # and website we have been in business for over 8 Years we are not going anywhere.

As a person with a BA in Entrepreneurial Studies I believe that its fair to send invoices to all customers on the books, if they pay grandfather them in if they dont take them off the books. Start new polices once you've completed there order and renegotiate then. How would you feel if we have a new policy all TVF members gets a 50% discount and only pay after the placement has been in 30 days to insure its not a dud. I'm sure we provide the lions share of LRU's business.

If this is RJ1494, i believed we sent more than 6 locations and mostly were turned down. 5 were placed and 1 rejected after 5 weeks because of low volume. Sent you payment request for good locations. I informed you that your location is hard and we are having hard time with it. There is a time that 3 of my colleagues are working with your location but they got nothing. You said we can work within 20 mile radius but when we sent you locations which is within the 20 mile radius you refused it. You placed your machine but you were not able to update us on time of your placements. We thought we only owe few locations but we got a lot of turned downs than placed. You emailed us once saying you placed a machine in this japanese restaurant but it might get booted. And you didn't update us what happen with that location. I keep on telling you that your location is hard because most of the restaurants has candy machines already or corporate owned. We are asking you to be flexible with the type of business if possible.

As i said in my letter, we will refund your upfront payment if we didn't find any locations for you.

The issue at hand is the policy of LRU is it not ? We are on the open forum to clarify that.

All vendors chime in is the light company flexible, is the gas company flexible is the IRS flexible is the mortgage company flexible is the grocer flexible is the gas station flexible, or do they expect to be paid with money, i.e cc, check , debit cash. We need to make money we contract a service if a vendor asks for hog farms only and you except then get the business what they ask for. Id LRU provided an easy service then any and every tom golpher and harry would be doing it.

[caserri]

How would you feel if we have a new policy all TVF members gets a 50% discount and only pay after the placement has been in 30 days to insure its not a dud. I'm sure we provide the lions share of LRU's business.

Hey, I like that idea!

Sent using Tapatalk 2

[rdendy]

Hey, I like that idea!

Sent using Tapatalk 2

There should be a way for us to leverage some special pricing and deals as group.

[caserri]

There should be a way for us to leverage some special pricing and deals as group.

That idea has been kicked around here for years with both locators and suppliers. Unfortunately, it never gets any traction. We always seem reluctant to work as a group.

Sent using Tapatalk 2

[rdendy]

That idea has been kicked around here for years with both locators and suppliers. Unfortunately, it never gets any traction. We always seem reluctant to work as a group.

Sent using Tapatalk 2

I'll think on it right after I find that raffle ticket code

[dogcow]

a lot of beating up on locators here lately, i dont get it ,seems like people's expectations are very high. they are just guys dialing the phone from thousands of miles awayy why do you expect they would do any better job than you could, if anything i would expect it to

be much worse since they dont know the area. seems like everyone would be better off going with qualified appointment model. that would be a lower cost but only guarantees a qualified appointment with the decision maker. i mean lets face it most people if they cant close an account in person are sunk anyway. in this manner expectations are managed,but theres no conerns over 'warantees' or kick out policy,dud locations etc... and the vendor pays a lower fee in exchange for a riskier offer. the facts is i bet vendors would get better results because its much easier to get an APPOINTMENT than an agreement to place a machien over the phone. once you show up in person with it you will probably get a placement anyway so more appointments would result in placements than currently happening. hope this makes sense.

[Locators R Us]

The issue at hand is the policy of LRU is it not ? We are on the open forum to clarify that.

The reason why we have new policy is because 7 out of 10 vendors are not doing their part. They do not report and pay us on time. Some send reports after a 3 - 4 weeks of placement telling us they want to pull out the machine because of low volume and they didn't even informed us that it was placed in the first placed! If we asked for report no one will reply, if we ask if we can send invoice no one will reply.

As I said in my first post, ALL of our customers came from this forum (we haven't posted to any jobsites, craigslist, or any other forum yet, we don't want to take a lot of orders that we can't work), thus, being a TVF member is not an excuse to spare you from the new policy. We have a lot of non paying vendors telling us they were from TVF. We trusted them and worked with their locations because we never thought they will do such things to us, since we also have vendors doing their part from this forum. We found more than 60 locations from vendors telling us they were from here and they haven't report their placement yet. Tried calling them in their listed number in the order form but no one answer and if there's someone who answers, told us they didn't know such person.

There are only three reasons why we haven’t finish or close previous orders, 1st reason is the area is hard and we are really having hard time, 2nd the vendor is not giving us reports or pay us and 3rd both 1st and 2nd reason, their area is hard and they haven’t reported their placements yet from the locations we gave them. And you want us to finish first previous order before we implement the new policy? You are asking us to swim in the same dirty pool again.

I hope as a businessman yourselves, you understand why we have to make those new policy.

And it is my appeal, to those vendors who are not doing their part of reporting and paying us on time to please stop from bashing us here in the forum. You already got what you want, you got your location for free, and some got the privilege of earning first from the machines that were placed 3-4 weeks prior to reporting to us that it is placed.

If you don't want the new policy then its ok with us, we choose to work on few vendors willing to take the risk and build long lasting locator-vendor relationship with us.

Thank you.

Gale

[dperry]

Considering how hard it is to locate in some areas, it sounds like it might be a good idea to update your pricing policy. You should create a price and timeframe schedule based on zipcode.

[Locators R Us]

Considering how hard it is to locate in some areas, it sounds like it might be a good idea to update your pricing policy. You should create a price and timeframe schedule based on zipcode.

We simply cannot do that since we do not know if the area is hard or not unless we started working on it. It's not fair to just say to vendors that, "hey your area is hard and we need to increase the price for you". What we can do is to ask for additional area and ask vendor to be flexible in the kind of business.

-gale

[wallstreeterww]

That sounds more than fair to me

[Rick]

Just read this and...wow, it seems like LRU has come a long way since May 14th (based on KandyKing's epic thread re: the locator contest). Good for you LRU! Sounds like you trimmed the fat on a few crummy vendors who were giving you the runaround and things are more stable now.

I'll hopefully be placing an order very soon.

[wallstreeterww]

Yea Rick, I plan to use them also once we make our move to Vegas.

[JuJuVending]

Last week, I contacted Gale (LRU) about locating a machine for me. We had a great, detailed talk and Gale seemed to understand exactly what I wanted to achieve as far as locating, e.g. what types of businesses would be appropriate locations for different types of machines, etc.

It's been 1 week and I have not yet heard back from Gale. I plan to call her tomorrow.

Does anyone have any idea as to what might be going on with LRU..? To me, Gale seems very above-aboard, much like Sonya from First Choice -- and the polar opposite of my first experience with KickStart.

Does anyone here have any reason to believe I should feel nervous?

[JuJuVending]

Last week, I contacted Gale (LRU) about locating a machine for me. We had a great, detailed talk and Gale seemed to understand exactly what I wanted to achieve as far as locating, e.g. what types of businesses would be appropriate locations for different types of machines, etc.

It's been 1 week and I have not yet heard back from Gale. I plan to call her tomorrow.

Does anyone have any idea as to what might be going on with LRU..? To me, Gale seems very above-aboard, much like Sonya from First Choice -- and the polar opposite of my first experience with KickStart.

Does anyone here have any reason to believe I should feel nervous?

(As I wrote in another thread this morning!)

I open my email first this morning, and lo and behold: it's a GREAT location from Gale at LRU!!! It's a large auto (break, oil, and repair) shop!!! I couldn't be happier with this placement!!

Absolutely, I understand family emergencies -- and I'm just very happy she's back!!

Thank you, Gale, LRU, KandyKing -- this is great!!!

[JuJuVending]

I posted this in another thread, but it's applicable here, IMO.

Locators R' Us -- 0/1 machines placed in 11 days

I hired LRU to place one machine on June 24, 2012. It is not July 5, 2012 -- and although I received a location on the third, it was rejected by the Muffler & Brake shop's district manager.

Gayle sent me an email stating that LRU wouldn't be working on July 4th because it's a US holiday -- in my area, most stores are open on July 4th -- regardless, Gayle wrote that she would find me a replacement on the 5th. I did not receive any word from LRU today.

I'll let you all know how this works out!! I still have my fingers crossed for LRU!

[dougdad65]

LRU 1 for 1. Nice little hair salon. Went real smooth!