Hey! I've gotta tell you this story !

The Operations Veep from a major Customer telephoned me last week - he had been through all the channels, and wanted to speak to the Pres. "The buck stops here!" I exclaimed, "How can I help you ?"

He told me his Company had been buying ACTION PAK for 12 years and he had appreciated our consistent good Quality and 3-year warranty - but that things had gone to hell-in-a-handbasket recently. Just that week, they had received a shipment of 9 units, of which 4 were dead-on-arrival, and then another 3 failed within the first 2 days. How could he trust ACTION anymore ??

I told him I appreciated his talking with me directly and that if he could return all the units, I would ship immediate replacements via Federal Express Red-Label at my expense (even before we received the faulty units). We agreed, and did just that. I telephoned the following day, to confirm that the units were received and were working properly. Imagine my surprise when, within a few days, we received the faulty units - not ACTION PAKs, but copy-cat-clones! My telephone call-back I'll leave to your imagination. Needless to say, he ended up quite happy with the genuine product.

Our Customer thought he was buying ACTION PAK. He was not. So much of this is hapenning these days, in all parts of life. Everyone is running too fast and falling victim to the quick-buck artist, with a fancy story and an "unbelievably low price" ! Few are taking the time to "look under the hood, and check the engine".

Copy-cat ACTION PAK clones cannot survive much beyond the garage-shop stage and will inevitably fizzle against new ACTION ASIC-based modules that provide many-times more value and functionality. Take the typical cheep-cheap copy of the AP4380 isolator. The same garage-shop will find that cloning a dual-isolator AP4390 is impossibile, actually reducing the price is suicidal and putting the combination on a network to be remotely programmable is simply not in the same universe....To this list, add the AP6380, 4381, 1280/1290, with a Lifetime Warranty! That's the kind of revolution it takes to be a winner in the new business environment. You've got less, you die!

Make no mistake about this - ACTION INSTRUMENTS is the price/performance leader in the market for signal-conditioning, process transmitters and control modules. This is our core competence and we will defend our leadership position tooth and nail! Our EXPECT-TO-WIN program reflects the reality that we can manufacture any ACTION PAK module at something less-than-50% of what is costs any competitor - and that includes the Japanese, Taiwanese and garage-shop clones.

Hey, keep thinking about ways to start your own revolution, to ensure your own survival in these turbulent times. The future doesn't start today - it's already been here for a while....