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‘I hate brokers!’
Wow! Pretty strong words…… Unfortunately it’s all too common. There is a disdain for brokers in the repatriation industry and I’m keen to understand why. This animosity persists even though many air ambulance, insurance and assistance companies depend on brokers for support.
Brokers can be viewed like the telemarketers. They always seem to call at the worst time. ‘They can be like parasites’ explained to me by a medical director from an assistance company. ‘They do their best to insert themselves between us and our clients.’
My personal experience: I set up a website called AirAmbulanceBroker.com (AAB). The website was designed to facilitate the buying and selling of air ambulance services via online tools. The business model was designed such that sellers paid a nominal transactional fee for generating quotes. Although the site did not charge commissions on successful bookings I viewed the service as a brokerage function. Hence the addition of ‘broker’ in the website domain name. It took me 3 to 4 times as long to explain to buyers and sellers that it was not a traditional brokerag site, e.g. we did not take commissions on flights. As soon as the word broker was mentioned, their was a tangible tension and all barriers went up. In retrospect it was a terrible experience but fantastic education. Clearly I should have understood my buyers sensitivities before launching a site with that domain name.
Everyone seems to hate the salesmen but forgets their function is essential to every business. People buy from people they trust and like. That will not change.
In my quest to understand the root of this disdain I made a few phone calls to repatriation companies. Speaking within the context of Air Ambulances ‘there is rarely a company that doesn’t use a broker’ says Craig Poliner, President of MedEscort. There are not enough airplanes for one company to consistently meet the demand so they must buy services from another. So ‘everyone is a broker’ in one fashion or another.
After a handful of conversations I think the root of the disdain comes from associations past and present but all related to the following:
Brokers have been known to:
- Book multiple flights with AA operators, not pay the bill, close shop, open a newco under a different name and repeat the process.
- Charge exhorbinant rates to end users when their costs are a fraction of the price.
- Misrepresent themselves as the actual AA operator, i.e. owner and operator of the aircraft.
- Promise their clients a jet but deliver a turbo prop.
- Fill up a route with multiple patients and charge each patient full price rather than apportion it.
I’m sure these are no surprise to people in the business. In fact there are AA operators that have used the same tactics. Brokering is common practice but any association with the word broker is viewed with a negative connotation. Brokers are needed and there are plenty of good ones and bad ones. Unfortunately, it seems like the name ‘broker’ will have to join the ranks of the used car salesman. The stereotypes are alive and well and change is unlikely to come soon.
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