Taking a tough decision against Samsung distributors, Chandigarh channel
partners have decided to block their payments if they don't get their backend
claims cleared soon. Partners took the decision after a meeting with the Samsung
team and their respective distributors in Chandigarh.
The meeting was attended by a three-member team led by Sanjay Yadav, Head
(National Sales)-IT Business, Samsung India; Deepak Zutshi, Branch Head, Ingram Micro;
Inderjeet, Branch Head, Redington and Chandigarh channel partners.
Giving details about the issue Rajesh Kakkar, representative of the IT Forum
Chandigarh, which was constituted about one and a half years back, said that the
backend claims of about Rs 5 lakh have been pending from Samsung's side for
over two years now. “These are basically incentives promised by the company on
the sale of their products through its local representatives, which were never
made. So after making repeated requests to distis and the company and waiting
for two long years, we have now decided to initiate action,” he added.
According to industry sources, local representatives of the company made
these promises and most of them were verbal. However channel partners claim that
they have all the proofs with them in the form of e-mails sent by
representatives. Others sources informed that this confusion occurred during the
major shuffling that happened in Samsung's top layer about a year back.
The recent meeting was organized to sort out this long pending matter. IT
Forum Chandigarh informed that Samsung has admitted that at least half of the
claims made by partners would be cleared in a period of one month. But partners
are not satisfied with this, as they want all the pending claims to be cleared
by the company as soon as possible. Finally, the forum has decided that if the
company does not clear all the claims, they would block the payments of distis
as it is their duty to get all the issues settled.
However, when contacted, the branch heads of Ingram and Redington in
Chandigarh refused to comment. When Yadav of Samsung was contacted, he sent the
message that the company was keenly looking into the matter and they would sort
out the issue within one or two months. He also added that the meeting with
Chandigarh channel partners ended on a positive note.
Seema Kakkar New Delhi, May 5