Can't I trust Trane?

[MaintGuru]

I am curious if anyone has had this happen to them in any other areas of the country:

A school district was taking bids for a renovation coming later this year - Trane was listed as the only HVAC manufacturer in the spec book for the 2 chillers. I work for a mechanical contractor and received the pricing for the chillers and got all my ducks in a row for the bid. After the bid I found out my buddy, who works for another contractor (who was also bidding) told me that he not only got a price from Trane for the 2 chillers, but also McQuay and Carrier. He then offered the GC and owner a discounted price if they went with McQuay or Carrier - Come to find out, Trane was almost triple the price of the other 2 vendors. We found out that this is very typical for Trane because their sales people are 100% commission. Their salesmen won't think twice about doubling a price if they can get away with it, they are like car salesmen! Should I not trust Trane anymore? At least in our town, Trane won't be getting many projects anytime soon!!! The word is out! This makes me wonder if they were actually looking out for my best interest on past projects or just trying to make orders!:limb:

[ptb]

Your perspective seems to be that of an installer. AS long as Trane gave the same price to similar installers, Trane was being fair to the installer.
Criteria such as total volume, time to pay, and many others, might be used to determine YOUR discount rate.
Within a manufacturer's product line, the price difference from the least efficient to the most efficient can be HUGE. The increased cost for high efficiency equipment can be recouped in a reasonable time in an apartment building, which runs A/C 24/7, but may never be recouped in a school which doesn't run A/C at all in the hottest months of the year.
Most likely, all major manufacturers offer very high efficiency, very expensive, and very closely priced equipment. That is the big market today.
It is possible that only the two you mentioned offer lower cost, lower efficiency units.
It's likely the lower cost options are lower efficiency. The cheapest overall equipment varies with the application.
If a piece of equipment saves $5 an hour, but costs $50,000 more, would take 25 years to pay back in a school that runs A/C 400 hours a year, but only 2.5 years to pay back in an apartment building that runs 4000 hours a year.
In some instances, the energy hog saves total dollars.

Of course, we all might be crooked.

[ptb]

Of course they were just trying to make orders. You wonder if they were looking out for your interests? HaHaHaHaHa
In the long run, the best way to make lots of repeat orders is to look out for everyone's best interest.

[beenthere]

Anytime a manufacturer is listed as the only approved equipment.
They tend to be a little higher in price.

[timebuilder]

I am curious if anyone has had this happen to them in any other areas of the country:

A school district was taking bids for a renovation coming later this year - Trane was listed as the only HVAC manufacturer in the spec book for the 2 chillers. I work for a mechanical contractor and received the pricing for the chillers and got all my ducks in a row for the bid. After the bid I found out my buddy, who works for another contractor (who was also bidding) told me that he not only got a price from Trane for the 2 chillers, but also McQuay and Carrier. He then offered the GC and owner a discounted price if they went with McQuay or Carrier - Come to find out, Trane was almost triple the price of the other 2 vendors. We found out that this is very typical for Trane because their sales people are 100% commission. Their salesmen won't think twice about doubling a price if they can get away with it, they are like car salesmen! Should I not trust Trane anymore? At least in our town, Trane won't be getting many projects anytime soon!!! The word is out! This makes me wonder if they were actually looking out for my best interest on past projects or just trying to make orders!:limb:

Sound to me as if Trane was not interested in being competitive.

[beenthere]

Sound to me as if Trane was not interested in being competitive.

Trane probably had their own bid in.

[freonguy]

What happens up here is the Trane salesmen go direct and sell direct if they can get away with it.

My legit contractor buddy had some questions about some Trane equipment, the Sales guy showed up, they had coffee, and my buddy let it slip that there was an expansion coming up at a local hospital that presently has 3 air cooled Carrie chillers on the roof.

Next thing you know, the Trane sales guy was in talking to the guy in charge for a direct sale of the equipment, as my buddy was the contractor they have been using for years and due to location / logistics, are limited to using my buddy. This is common practice in British Columbia, and quite frankly, borders on ( insert your thoughts here ).

Just my opinion -

Freonguy

[turbo50mike]

I call it Trane going "Trane Crazy".

No, you can't trust them. When they 'think' they have their foot in the door, prices go UP, UP, UP.

But we like their smaller units (10-50 tons) better than most of the other guys, so we use them quite often.

Your only hope is to treat your salesman right, and with any luck he'll do what he can for you when Trane is specd.

[Murphcoair]

Trane probably had their own bid in.

And if they did not before they quoted you , you can bet they did soon after they quoted you.

[dd98724]

I don't think it's Trane specific. My cousin works in a local sales office that reps cooling towers, drives, fan coils and whole bunch of other stuff. He's not 100% commision but his base salary is a joke. If the equipment he's repping is spec'd into the job his price goes way up. If there is a lot of competition he bids much lower. If water coils freeze and bust he marks it up 200%. If the contractor gives him a lot of business he only marks it up 20%. Free market economy at work.

[flyin90]

Salesmen will always try to make money. If a company is the only approved product, of course the price will be higher. You also do not know the reason why they were the only one approved.

Trane may have spent months working with the engineer and owner to get exactly what they want. If someone goes to carrier and says hey you were not approved but lets try to screw Trane and offer them one at cost to get in the door what does Carrier have to loose. Nothing. They have no time invested and were not approved to begin with. It also may have been an owner that always uses Trane so Carrier and Mcquay may have given a real low price to try to make Trane look bad.

Just saying that don't judge unless you know the whole story.

[beenthere]

You also do not know the reason why they were the only one approved.



Lets kick back and think about this.

[Airmechanical]

Trane probably had their own bid in.

we have a winner!



.

[apycf29]

We found out that Trane Svc was calling on our customers after 1 yr warranty was up. Nice guys, those nice guys have not received a single order from us in 7 years. I like their units but not at the cost of losing customers. They were poaching our customers from start up info. Total BS!

[absoair]

Trane probably had their own bid in.

Thats what I was thinking!

[jayguy]

what you guys are saying may be true in your areas...but it is not like that everywhere.

my biggest question is: if you are doing a good job...how are they getting your customers?

below cost margins to get in the door? (i have seen this before...many companies do this, not just factory offices), "factory authorized" sales claims? (common sales technique), etc.

are these factory owned offices, franchises, both?

[brooklyntech]

Trane cannot put bids out for work unless there is existing equipment on site. In that case that is called a "Turn Key Project". As far as Trane being the only equipment in the specs for job, as previously stated: you dont know what the engineer called for as far as job specs. I'm sure that there is a chiller start up involved? There are many things that other manufacturers do not povide. Is the chiller a delta wye start, solid state or a VFD? Hint, hint- if the job calls for low pressure chiller what are you gonna install a York? maybe a Carrier?

[maxster]

trane sales guys as far back as the late 80s where limited on the amount of salary they can make in a year so i saw forst hand sales guys bidding turn key crap and estimating it high just so they said they did bid on that job to keep the upper people happy.if they do get a job and make some profit as there walking down the hallway in the office everybody is grabbing a percentage of that money before he gets back to his desk...especially the NYC metro group now that it is IR and NJ/LIC as one TRANE office.the big contractors that do self contained always have the radar up after a multi-unit installl say 2000tons of 45 story building for somebody to pull them over and say go with us screw the installer for service....and then the phone call goes into the factory from the contractor and believe me it never repeats itself on that one.............Donnally,Arista,PJ,Fresh meadow,MAJOR JUICE with order up jobs these companies keep their shops running during the lean months like now with service tied mostly in with Local 94 guys in house.....and the big joke with trane is they reallly don't have the techs to give that micro service to individual buildings...3-4 750 ton chillers sure on WM,but 40-50-100 SWUD type units .....no way

[apycf29]

what you guys are saying may be true in your areas...but it is not like that everywhere.

my biggest question is: if you are doing a good job...how are they getting your customers?

below cost margins to get in the door? (i have seen this before...many companies do this, not just factory offices), "factory authorized" sales claims? (common sales technique), etc.

are these factory owned offices, franchises, both?

I am not worried about the quality our work at all. Our customer fell in love with Trane, he has 39 locations and as the RTUs began dying out, we began providing Trane Voyegers. My customer began getting phone calls from Trane, from different sales people pushing service contracts. He let me know and I spoke with Trane, they could care less about me as their customer. Remember, I went to Trane because that's what my customer wanted, this wasn't a public bid! I also spoke with the GM of Tranes after market parts who admitted to me that it's poor business practice that is coming to an end!

By the way, their new thermostat 2 heat 2 cool stat, our customers don't like em at all. Pulled out the ones we installed and put in CTI boards and Honeywell T7350. Much easier for customers to navigate.

[flange]

i guess you guys havent seen these tactics yet....the local choo choo office works very hard to get the eqipment specified, then, they do aprepurchase deal with the end user, and when the job comes out for bid, you get no markup, no warranty, BUT have to receive the equipment, bring otto the jobsite, install it. when i see a choo choo spec, i through the prints in the trash. how about this one....if you have a trane machine, and need parts, they will give you the old "we'll get back to you with a quote deal" and then call the end user. i refuse to give serial number anymore on parts requests. how about "he is not qualified to wrk on TRANE, our guys are factory trained". The local office has not sent a field guy for training in many years to a factory school. they are all just steamfitters like everyone else. how about the old "if you want to sell our equipment, you must buy at least seventy five percent of your equipment each year from us".

[chiller mekanik]

But, it's about like trying to get everyone in the whole country to not buy gas for their automobiles on the same day as to throw the oil companies into a tailspin.

If, & only if EVERY contractor was to stick together the MFRs could be forced to do business with contractors only. The days of them selling to the end user would be over. But, too many people think the MFRs are our friends & are not willing to forgo their incentive plans for a few months or a year at the most to show them who wags who.

Finding alternatives to the big four is not hard. In fact, it is only hard in the large tonnage market but even that is changing so long as the new players stay true to the contractors & not the end users. But think about it, there are multiple brands that can be purchased if EVERY contractor was willing to band together & put the big four on notice, we will not buy anything from you until you change your policy, period.

I know I will be accused of being a conspiracy nut by those who believe the big four are indeed our friends but I'm telling you, we hold the cards. The question is, do we have what it takes to do something about it.

In my little corner of the world I have a very small circle of people I do business with & most of them are from out of town. I refuse to support someone that works to my demise. Every salesman that I've thrown out of my office knows it too. The first thing I ask them is about their policy on selling to end users & it's simple, if they do, I show them the door. Period.

But, I'm just one lunatic. Are there any others????

[fletch]

"he is not qualified to work on TRANE, our guys are factory trained". The local office has not sent a field guy for training in many years to a factory school. they are all just steamfitters like everyone else.

I have worked for a few of the multinationals. The joke is if they are the manufacture they can determine what is "factory trained is." I have never been sent for factory training but the web sites and sale contracts state that I am. At best I might be given the service manual.

Trane, McQuay, Honeywell, JC and Carrier they are all the same. Just check out their service web sites.

The best thing is that we can even blow things up with out voiding the warranty because we are the local reps!!! About them apples!!!

FYI: Never give Trane your serial number...have had their salesman try to follow up in an attempt to take the contracts