Alles Normales

My most current endevour was a quest to dig out information on certain kind of rollers used in tracked vehicles.

This is pretty much person-to-person business - my client is a private person who has access to wast supply of slightly rusted, outdated yet 100% re-usable rollers stored in some Russian warehouse, and he apparently knows the real price of these rollers and hopes to sell these for pretty good profit to somebody who happen to need these exactly outdated types of rollers for his equally outdated yet 100% workable tracked vehicles.

The little problem my customer came upon is that those rollers are not clearly labelled with what kind of tracked vehicle they’re suitable for. He’d been desperately trying to find this information for last 12 months - he doesnt speak/read English (or any other foreign language - he’s typical Russian living outside of megapolices like Moscow/St.Petersburg).

That’s when I stepped into the game. This client of mine happened to read my short ad posted to a local board:

–
1. Will hunt down for you any kind of information on Internet, in any language.
2. Will provide brief translation of what the found text contains, free of charge.
Upon request will provide complete translation, at extra cost.

Internet experience: 13+ years (”plugged-in” since 1993)
Languages: English (fluent), some other languages (can handle reading, am able to provide translation with assistance of fellow foreign freelancers whom I worked with on a number of successful projects)
–

On August 14th I received following email from him:
–
I can provide dimensions and photographs of unknown rollers for tracked vehicle.
The task: to determine what model of tracked vehicle these rollers are suitable for.
Remuneration: $100 for complete information.
My cell phone: X-XXX-XXX-XXXX

In the future I might use your service to locate a buyer for these rollers.

–

Upon receiving this email, I called him and fished out few more details (aka “keywords”), like:

komatsu D35
caterpillar
real large tracked vehicles
most likely, it’s either for Korean or Japanese vehicles

As you can see, Pic 2 contains an index of sorts: BERCO A0 2345.

It doesnt take a rocket scientist to feed it to Google. So I did. The very first result line was reading:

Berco SpA
www.berco.com/
berco undercarriage parts for heavy equipment machinery, track chains, track shoes, rollers, sprockets, idlers, pin and
bushing groups, seal groups.

I went to visit the site, spotted a most suitable department within the company (it turned out to be a large one), and found right person to contact:

Product Support
Carlo Bellini
Dir. Tel.+39 0532 864 488
Fax: +39 0532 864 347
e-mail: productsupport@berco.com

It took me another couple of minutes to come up with an email to Carlo, like this:

–
Question regarding Berco roller with ID BERCO A0 2345

Dear Carlo Bellini,

I’ve got a question regarding Berco Rollers.

Our company needs to identify several rollers items we’ve got in our warehouse.

I managed to find an identification code on one of these - it reads

ITM 331-10B-01
BERCO A0 2345

I’m also including two pictures, these are of defferent items - both pictures contain all possible dimensions we could think of. Is it possible to identify the rollers based on this data?

In particular, we need to know EXACTLY what kind of tracked vehicle these rollers were made for? I’d much appreciate a detailed list, like:

roller1.jpg - was made for Komatsu D35, Caterpillar ##, ###, etc.

Would you be so kind to help me out in this regard?

Your help will be much appreciated.

Kind regards,
XXXXX XXXXXX
Russia
email: XXXXXX@XXX.ru
tel. +7-XXX-XXX-XXX
mob. +7-XXX-XXX-XXXX
—-

I havent recieved a response, so next day (August 15th) I sent it again. I waited one more day - to no avail. So I went to the Berco site again, and looked up another contact, more general - info@berco.com - and on August 17th emailed them once again. Same result - or rather lack of result.

I decided then to give them a call - after a series of long rings somebody picked up a phone on their end and in Italian (!) started to tell me something. I repeatedly and very slowly asked: “Do you speak English ?”, and that person managed to tell me “Factory closed, twenty one.” I figured out that the company is closed until August 21st ( I was calling on Aug 18th) and English speaking staff is on vacation, so I decided to put my quest on hold for a little while.

On August 21st sharp, I received necessary information from Berco.

To summarize:
It took me no more than merely 1 hour of my time (in total) to locate information my customer had been desperately seeking for for 12 months. Why such a striking difference?

To my mind, the reasons are:
My customer: a) does not know English (or any other foreign language) b) belongs to OFFLINE world and lacks any Internet skills (and possibly any computer skills as well)
Myself: a) except my mother tongue, Russian, which I use to communicate with my customer, I speak English and feel myself comfortable in non-Russian Internet environment
b) I’m an Internet geek - I use Internet services as easily and mindlessly as my dear non-Internet-initiated customer uses knife and fork to help himself at his eggs & bacon.

Guess I’ll be helping my customer to sell those rollers via Internet - I’ll be sure to report how does it go.

Filed under: Success stories - Offline meets Online