[MrAndrew]

As you may know, I am involved in the Pet Supplies retail business with both a physical store and a few websites. I strive to offer my customers, both online and in the actual store, with exceptional products at reasonable prices. The problem arises from the Minimum Advertised Price (MAP Price for short), if you are unfamiliar with this please see: The Ethics of MAP Prices

Below is a posting by my partner on one of the sites I wanted to share with you folks and get your opinion on. Thanks in advance
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We were blessed with a visit from our Natural Balance Pet Food representative today. He even bought our buyers lunch. We figured the visit was for a specific reason and not just to thank us for the tens of thousands of pounds of Natural Balance Pet Food we sell each year.

No, the reason was much more sinister. Did you know that manufactures like Natural Balance Pet Food, with the pressure from major corporate pet food retailer chains can force a smaller company like West Coast Pet Supply to fix their prices at an inflated level! That's right. Natural Balance Pet Food bought us lunch and then told us that our retail prices were to low and that we needed to raise them or Natural Balance Pet Food would not allow us to sell their dog and cat food.

We believe Natural Balance dog and cat food is one of the better quality foods on the market, but we also think that they are not the only quality dog or cat food on the market. What would make them think they could dictate what our store sells Natural Balance Pet Food for? Why do they think that it would be better for you the consumer, in these difficult financial times to pay upwards of 10% more for your food because someone like Pet Food Express complained that we were selling Natural Balance Pet Food for less than Pet Food Express wanted to sell it at.

Why not just let Pet Food Express sell it for whatever they want to sell it for and let West Coast Pet Supply sell it for what we want to sell it at?

There are only a few manufactures that rely on this kind of price fixing practice and Natural Balance Pet Food is one if them. As independent retailers like West Coast Pet Supply and consumers like yourself, we need to stand up to this kind of bullying and say no. We will continue to sell Natural Balance Dog and Cat foods on our site at the price we deem fair until that day the big chains like Pet Food Express and the price fixing manufactures like Natural Balance Pet Foods force us to remove it from our offering. Because we will not allow another company to dictate what we sell our pet food and pet supplies for!

M.A.P. = Minimum Advertised Price. You should start asking about it wherever you spend your hard earned money. If the products you are purchasing have MAP pricing, you are paying too much. More than what the market would normally charge!

Think about this scenario. You are looking at a bag of Taste of the Wild dog food and comparing it to a bag of Natural Balance Duck and Potato. The Taste of the Wild dog food is priced at $32.99 (fairly) and the Natural Balance Duck and Potato is priced at the MAP pricing of $49.99 (unfairly). These foods are comparable in quality. The Natural Balance Duck and Potato should be $39.99 without MAP. That would be more inline with the Taste of the Wild dog food and you could weigh the differences between the Natural Balance and the TOW ingredients and see that they were close, then make a decision. But with MAP pricing in place you don't get a true picture of the Natural Balance Duck and Potato value. That's because now it is overpriced and not priced within it's level of quality. If you were to choose the Natural Balance you would be paying too much!

If this really gets under your skin we suggest you call or write Natural Balance Pet Food and tell them what you think. We did, to a deaf ear! But if enough of their Natural Balance customers tell them they don't want to pay higher prices for such an unreasonable and selfish reason maybe they will change their mind.

Natural Balance Pet Foods
12924 Pierce Street
Pacoima, CA 91331
800-829-4493

The person that came up with this brilliant idea is Frank L. Koch the Executive Vice President of Natural Balance Pet Food. 818-897-2521

Best Wishes,

Glenn Matherly
WestCoastPetSupply.com

[Lara's mom]

That really cheeses me off!!! I'll be writing to them for sure and I'll even tell them that they've lost my business even though I don't buy their products!!!