Reply for Phil

Bear with me. Google can't retrieve your OP for some reason.

"-L." wrote in message
. com...

They don't BUY it, it is sent from Hill's corporate office,
commensurate to the amount of product that is sold by the institution,
in this case, a hospital.

I can see you're not a business person...

I can see you like to make assumptions and jump to conclusions.

I have paper, ink, and equipment reps offering me tons (lirerally)
of gratis
products several times a month. In fact my film and plate supplier
*gave*
me 4 film processors and 6 plate processors (all worth over $20K)
for buying
my materials from them. Sounds good? Another supplier's offer was
more
than double in value, and others' were even higher, but I chose the
first
supplier, even though the cost of materials is higher, because the
products
and support are superior. I get similar offers from other reps in
my other
businesses.

I'm not going to risk my business and millions of dollars of future
revenue
for a few thousand dollars worth of free equipment for using shoddy
or less
than optimum materials. Do you actually believe a vet would risk
his
practice, reputation and years (and $) of education for a few
hundred or
even a few thousand dollars worth of "bennies", that he more than
likely
doesn't need or wouldn't buy anyway, on products that made his
clients' pets
sick?

I didn't say the food made the cats sick. What I said is that the
cats wouldn't eat it, it gave them stinky ****, and/or it got returned
for a number of reasons. He (the practice owner) fed it at the
hospital because it was cheap and he received freebies from Hills.


He'd be outta business in less than a year!

To be honest with you, I don't know where you get your information

You know exactly where I get my information. I have posted to the ngs
for years, worked for a feline specialty vet and have a lot of
experience with a number of cat issues. My experience was apparently
good enough in the past when it supported your other topics of
discussion.

and
figures from

AFAIK, I didn't post any "figures".

or what your agenda is, and frankly, I really don't care. If
you say from "personal experience", I can say with certainty, your
stories
are not remotely close to any arrangements that any of the vets I
work with
or have worked with over the years (and that's a lot of vets) had
with
Hill's.

Well, you aren't in the same market where we were, either. The
freebies the vet received weren't exactly common knowlege. In fact, I
worked there about 6 months before I was made privy to the actual
amount of stuff this guy received from them. If the patients knew the
freebies this guy got, they'd probably be horrified. I know I was.


As far as profits from the products go, most vets that I know and
work(ed)
with only sell prescription diets.

The vets I know who sell Hills also sell their maintenence diets.

And again, I can say with reasonable
certainty (one of my tenants is a vet), that the profit on these
products
barely, if even, offsets the cost of the space to store the products
--
canned products have a slighly higher profit : cost of space ratio
than dry
foods -- unless the vet own a big building.

Which the vet in question did. We had a store room for food.


There are other posts about Hills giving away free or low cost cat
food to vet students, as well as other freebies,

And that's a "bad" thing?

It reeks of inpropriety.

in the Google
archives. It's not exactly a secret.

You shouldn't believe everything you read in newsgroups...

Didn't say I did. But when enough independent sources say the same
thing, you can pretty much conclude there is a trend...

As I'm sure
you've noticed, many people have agendas...

The posts in question are not posted in circumstances where an agenda
is apparent. One that I can recall is from a vet who posts under her
own name and made FWIW comments in a non-cat newsgroup.

The only other freebies we ever received were from Bayer - Advantage
for free. IMO, that was dishonest as well.

What about companies that give their employees free cars and homes
or
apartments and other perks - such as medical benefits (which ain't
cheap!!)
to get people to work for them? I have a lawyer relative who
received a
condo in midtown Manhattan and a car - he can practically live on
his
expense account without hardly touching his salary! Are they all
"dishonest" too?

We are not talking about employees. We are talking about marketing
techniques.
Yes, I received offers for a lot of bennies from sales reps to use
their products when I did work in industry. Personally, I think it is
a marjorly slimy way to do business. The companies with the superior
products don't NEED to do so. Their products sell themselves.


I think you have a lot to learn about doing business in a highly
completive
world. Freebies, bennies and perks are a normal, if not essential,
part of
doing business...

And it creats situations of inpropriety. The Enrons of the world were
not created overnight. In fact, the major corporation I worked for
for 8 years had a specific policy that forbid employees from accepting
such perks because it was deemed unethical.

Because they suck. They get bashed because their products are crap,

If that were remotely true, Hill's products would be returned by
customers
by the truck loads to pet stores (Hill's offers a 100% money back
guarantee
like most other pet food manufactures).

My comment was in regard to the bashing of Hills in the newsgroups.
People complain about things that cause them grief.

Furthermore, at the vet where I worked, food was returned routinely.
Especially the more unpalatable Rx diets like W/D and I/D. C/D-S got
returned a lot because it was the Rx diet we sold the most.

And this I can with *absolute*
certainty, finding returned Hill's products, in any of the three
large pet
store where we have adoption centers, is an uncommon event - and I
look very
carefully because we feed Hill's in our shelter.

Really? You *really* pay that much attention to how much food a pet
store gets retuned? Whatever. If that's one of your major concerns,
your shelter must be empty.

Although we can get lower quality food donated free from other
manufacturers, I choose to *pay* for Hill's products because of the
excellent results I've had in thousands of animals.

Good for you. It works for you. It didn't work for me. And it
apparently didn't work for most everybody else I know who has fed it,
and everybody who reported similar problems on Usenet.

The only discount I get
on the food is from the stores - which is the same % discount that I
get on
any other store items... except the sodas in the refrigerated
cases...

and they push their products through vets by offering such benefits.

This also makes very little if any sense. Most vets, other than
vets in
isolated and remote areas, only sell prescription diets.
Prescription diets
do not generate sufficient revenue to justify or offset the cost of
such
expensive freebies.

They have to sell Rx diets. They also carry the regular manintenence
diets. At the feline hospital rule of thumb was push Hills and then
if applicable, push Walthams. That's all he carried. They have to
carry something, and when the incentive is great to push one over the
other, he pushed the one with the biggest incentive. In fact, we got
nothing from Walthams, and it was used only as a back-up when cats
refused the Hill's.

I know pet (and human) food manufacturers compete for prime product
locations in stores (like prime office space)... Now *that* kind
of volume
certainly justifies expensive perks... But a few cents on a
relatively small
number of cans or a few dollars on a small number of bags.... I
don't think
so... It would take years to just break even!

The vet has to sell something, so he sold the product which gave him
the most perks. This was a large practice - we saw 80-90 cats/day
sometimes.


Many people in this newsgroup came to the same, negative conclusion
after trying their foods.

Your "many" has very little meaning since this newsgroup represents
a very,
very tiny fraction of the world's cat owners. So your "many" is
actually
minuscule in comparison to the tens, if not hundreds of thousands or
probably millions of satisfied Hill's customers worldwide.

This is the exact argument pro-declawers say about the anti-declaw
anectdotal "complications" posts to this newsgroup. You can't have it
both ways, Phil.

The fact is, some people hate Hills. Some people have had negative
experiences with their foods. I do and I have, as have a number of
others in the original thread. Take it FWIW. I don't care. Feed
your cats Hills. I don't care. Just don't go traipsing around the
newsgroup dogging everybody who posts their negative experiences with
the product, like Gaubster does. In fact, I don't really even care
about that. Just don't make up bull**** claims like "Nutro negatively
alters cats' urine pH" with out substantiative data, like Gaubster
does. THAT'S what ****es me off.

As I said, the sales-to-return ratio of Hill's products in the three
national pet stores in which our adoption centers are located does
not
remotely support your "observations".

Fine. Whatever, I don't care. All I know is that the people I know
who feed it think it's ****. YMMV, AAID.

I think most people are wary of constant horror stories that
certainly
appear to be an agenda

Oh, yes, Phil. Anyone who you don't agree with has an "agenda".
Whatever. Eventhough you have agreed with me on nearly every other
subject to date...Sheesh.

and are also wary of stories that reality simply
doesn't support. All a reasonably intelligent pet owner has to do
is ask
the manager of the pet store where they buy their pet's food what
the
returns-to-sales ratio is for Hill's products.

All a resonably intelligent person has to do is feed the food to their
cat and see how it does. That's the definitive test, and the only
relevant one.

-L.