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Ted Randall ordered to leave the Kenwood Radio booth in Dayton |
| Posted by Administrator (admin) on May 18 2013 |
Many of you have been listening to Ted Randall on QSO for over 7 years now on a number of shortwave outlets as well as on various streams. As you all know Ted is very conservative on the QSO shows and seldom controversial. All of that took a turn yesterday at the Dayton Hamvention 2013 when he went to the Kenwood booth to inquire about getting an older Kenwood TS 930 fixed and restored. Due to the age of the radio Ted felt the best folks to ask would be Kenwood the manufacturer. Ted says he was treated with extreme rudenes and arrogance upon the part of the Kenwood reps for asking routine questions. When he pointed out that he felt he was treated arrogantly he was promptly was ordered out of the Kenwood booth. The radio in question was a radio given to Ted and his family by WB4KCG Ronnie Milsap. Ted and his entire family works full time in Nashville as radio engineers are wanting to restore the radio along with a number of other pieces to go into a public location where hams can come to Nashville, view and operate some of country music entertainer Ronnie Milsap's vintage ham radio gear. At one point the Kenwood rep snapped at Ted saying "he did not care who the radio belonged to". One of the first things one of the lead Kenwood reps did was make degrading remarks about ICOM. Ted said he never ever expected to get that kind of reception from a radio manufacturer. He told the Kenwood reps it was no incentive to purchase Kenwood gear of any kind ever in the future. Ted said he was told "the TS 930 was riddled with problems, you are wasting your time". Ted said there are many TS 930 oweners still out there that love the TS 930 so this must be depressing for them to hear. To contrast Ted visited the ICOM booth to ask the same question about several IC 751's that are part of this group of radios to be placed in public historical access. The ICOM 751 is an older model made by ICOM about the same vintage as the Kenwood TS-930. The Icom 751's are part of the Ronnie Milsap collection he and his family want to get restored back into pristine shape. The radios look pristine and sparkle just like new but suffer from some aging electronics. Ted said in great contrast, the folks at the ICOM booth gave Ted a warm reception and told him ICOM indeed still services their older radios like the 751. Ted said the folks from ICOM more than made up for the arrogant manner that he was treated earlier by the folks at the Kenwood radio booth. Ted said Kenwood radios have been an excellent product over the years citing the infamous TS 520 that has stood the test of time. Ted said he feels Kenwood needs to put their sales folks and technical reps who interface the public through some intensive training in the area of "people skills". Ted said Kenwoods management is in dire need of taking a excellent course like "The Dave Ramsey Entre Leadership Course" and should read Dave's book "Entre Leadership". Ted said great customer service skills are aquired through traning and are easily overlooked today and that is why so many companies fail. Even old line companies come appart at the seams when customer service and customer focus falls by the wayside! Ted said bare minimum Kenwood should take lessons from ICOM's customer service group! Ted said I have dealt with the reps from almost all of the major radio manufacturers and have never encountered this level of total lack of concern for a customer and aggressive treatment "being ordered to leave their booth for questioning their bad behavior" this is a good example of customer service and customer focus falling completely off the radar and the rep group becoming self focused.
Listen for more details on this story on The QSO Radio shows.
Last changed: May 20 2013 at 8:19 PM
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