Posted in About ASG - Policies and Procedures

The following definitions, policies and procedures apply to all Sales Orders and Purchases made from any of our websites:

When you place an order on our website(s) using our shopping cart a Sales Order is created.  A Sales Order means that your order has entered our system and is being processed.  A hold will be applied to your Credit Card used on the Sales Order, but a PURCHASE does not actually take place until the credit card it charged on our end and the Sales Order is finalized on our end.  We do NOT charge your credit card and finalize a Sales Order into a Purchase until we are ready to ship the product (or in the case of custom orders - order the product).

What is a Sales Order?

The sales order, sometimes abbreviated as SO, is an order received by a business (US) from a customer (YOU) through our automated shopping cart system. A sales order may be for products and/or services. Given the wide variety of businesses, this means that the orders can be fulfilled in several ways. Broadly, the fulfillment modes, based on the relationship between the order receipt and production, are as follows:

* Build to Stock - Where products are built and stocked in anticipation of demand. Most products for the consumer would fall into this category
* Build to Order - Where products are built based on orders received. This is most prevalent for custom parts.
* Engineer to Order - Where some amount of product design work is done after receiving the order

A sales order is an internal document of the company, meaning it is generated by the company itself. A sales order should record the customer's originating purchase order which is an external document. Rather than using the customer's purchase order document, an internal sales order form allows the internal audit control of completeness to be monitored as a sequential sales order number can be used by the company for its sales order documents. The customer's PO is the originating document which triggers the creation of the sales order. A sales order, being an internal document, can therefore contain many customer purchase orders under it.

What is a Purchase (SALE)?

The legal definition of a PURCHASE (The term SALE is interchangeable here) according to the Uniform Commercial Code is:

§ 2-106. Definitions: Sale :  Title passes to the buyer (a sale occurs) at the time and place at which the seller completes performance with reference to the physical delivery of the goods (FOB Origin = Our Dock), despite any reservation of a security interest and even though a document of title is to be delivered at a different time or place; and in particular and despite any reservation of a security interest by the bill of lading.

When does an actual PURCHASE (or SALE) take place?

An actual PURCHASE takes place when money changes hands and you take legal possession of the goods or services as defined in the UCC.  In our system, this is when the credit card is charged and the product is shipped from our Dock under the terms FOB Origin fully insured to arrive at your delivery location.

Until the Sales Order is finalized it is merely an intent to purchase and may be subject to being cancelled or modified based upon our fraud abatement and MAP policies in effect.  We will communicate with you to clarify any issues which arise prior to completing your PURCHASE.

Why do we DEFINE this?

By James Childers - CEO ASG Global - We define these procedures in an effort to eliminate attempts at Vertical Price Fixing by Manufacturers - The law in the United States used to be that ANY attempt to fix a price at retail was illegal on its face (Per-Se), meaning that there was absolutely NO defense for a manufacturer telling a retailer that they MUST sell at or above $X price.  A 2007 case (Leegin Creative Leather Products v. PSKS, Inc.) with a razor thin 5-4 decision reversed this 100 year old rule and said that now a "Rule of Reason" must apply and that the Per-Se rule was invalid. With this little kernel of knowledge in their hands, many manufacturers are starting to implement dangerous MAP programs which attempt to FIX a price for their product above the "prevailing market price" and some are even directly targeting Internet Sales of their product (not just advertising) for these policies.  There has never been more truth to the saying by Alexander Pope - "A little knowledge (learning) is a dangerous thing"...

Recently several manufacturers have begun enforcing restrictive and channel specific (some would say even blatantly) discriminatory Minimum Advertising Policies solely upon "Direct to Consumer" Internet Vendors such as ASG Global. One manufacturer has even gone as far as to state that BEFORE a PURCHASE can take place we cannot supply you with YOUR best pricing by automated electronic means (including our online shopping cart) and that we must provide you with that pricing verbally or using some method of "Human Intervention"!?!?.  Their logic for this is clearly non-sequitur.

The problem is easily addressed by the question - When does a PURCHASE take place?  As you can see above - legally a PURCHASE or SALE can ONLY take place when money or other valuable consideration is exchanged for a product or service.  This does not happen in our system until we finalize your Sales Order and charge your credit card.  Thus, appropriately, we will be contacting you during the intervening time (2-24 hours) using a human generated email or voice call to notify you of the low pricing on your Sales Order, thus bypassing this ridiculous attempt at retail price fixing.

So, you, OUR customer cannot actually make a PURCHASE online, you can only make a Sales Order - or an INTENT to purchase. You will receive a Sales Order Confirmation, however, the actual purchase itself takes place AFTER we have contacted you and jumped through their ridiculous hoops.

You will see your low price (which is much lower than their MAP pricing) on your sales order (intent to purchase), and then we will contact you by telephone or email (human intervention) to discuss your order and notify you of the price which is below MAP.  We will THEN finalize your PURCHASE, charge the credit card or PayPal account and transfer rights of ownership to you (Title to goods) thus complying with their ridiculous policies simply designed to prohibit YOU from getting the best possible price on the goods YOU are purchasing.  Recent Supreme Court Rulings have left the question of "Vertical Price Fixing" very much up in the air and some unscrupulous vendors are seeking to limit what price you can PURCHASE an item.

As the CEO of the company, I take full responsibility for complying with their MAP policies and still providing you, our customers with the lowest prices and best service.  With any luck, REASON will prevail and these manufacturers will simply let us go back to doing what we do best - selling their product.