I'm glad that there's a thread on this. Thanks to Paul for his information.
Squeezebox is certainly available online in plenty of online places in the UK, including Dabs, Amazon, Ripcaster etc. However I'm sorry to report that a year on from this discussion the high street situation is no better - if anything it's got worse. Indulge me a short moment while I tell you my story. I checked my employer's rewards/incentive scheme yesterday and found to my pleasant surprise that I had about £500 of redeemable awards on my balance. My mind went straight to squeezebox! However the awards are redeemable against high-street stores only, such as Currys.Digital, Argos, John Lewis, Debenhams etc. They come in the post as pieces of paper that I have to present at a counter in an actual shop. Clearly this was no good for Amazon, Ebuyer etc - and that aspect is clearly not SlimDevices's fault, it's my employer's fault for having such a backward-minded awards system. No mention of squeezeboxes on the websites of Currys, Argos, Debenhams, Richer Sounds. However there was still hope - I could get vouchers for John Lewis and PC World. So I headed for Oxford Street. The nice man at John Lewis remembered what a squeezebox was, but said he hadn't seen one since about last Christmas, and that there was no indication of any pending re-orders in the system. The most helpful thing he could find to say was 'never say never'. The rather less nice man in PC world had not heard of a Squeezebox, seemed unwilling to assist me in sourcing one, and suggested I try the web-site where presumably I wouldn't be taking up his valuable time. Squeezebox classic does appear on pcworld.co.uk (not that I could have bought it from there anyway), but is out of stock across the whole country, with no indication of re-stocking on the site. I did see Squeezebox products on the shelves in Anvika on Tottenham Court Road and finally met a squeezebox classic in person. (It's a bit bigger than I imagined it.) However I can't get vouchers for Anvika since they're such a small, niche retailer. I went home with empty shopping bags, having absolutely scoured England's premier high-street retailing centre. I have been looking out for one of these products for about a year now. I've still never clapped eyes on a Transporter, or a Duet not sealed in its box. Clearly I had a rather specific set of purchasing circumstances, but I can't understand the virtual invisibility of these products in the shops where people in the UK buy these sorts of products. I can't believe it wasn't even in PC-World near Warren Street tube, which is a huge store. Not one major national retailer carries a single one of these products on its shelves in the UK. These are all retailers which stock many Logitech Mice, Keyboards, Speakers, Pure-Fi's, Web-cams, iPod docks and so on. During my afternoon I saw a number of Sonos systems set up ready for demonstrations - including one in PC-World. What gives here? Why is Squeezebox so utterly hidden from UK buyers? Please excuse my rant, it may sound negative, but I'm trying to give realistic feedback on the frustration of trying to purchase one of these devices. regards, SC -- SomeChap ------------------------------------------------------------------------ SomeChap's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=15878 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=38296
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