I was not going to get involved in this before reading mvaleras original note since I doubt Ill buy a duet anytime soon. But I am a very loyal customer, read the forums, own multiple machines and have some emotional committment to what happens to the company.
The reason I have an emotional committment to one company and not another is complex but not necessarily because I am some kind of deluded European socalist. I believe the Squeezebox to embody some values. Obvious ones like quality and excellence but less obvious ones like the committment and effort of the slim devices workforce (as embodied by Sean) Its not that I delude myself they are anything other than a commercial company, rather that i take them to be a certain kind of commercial company i.e. one that takes a longish term view of customer relationships in the belief that it will do better in the long run. Thats some explanation of the thriving community the squeezebox has here and similar products (which have probably had more marketing money behind them) do not. In turn the thriving community leads to the rich variety of additional squeezebox features that are derived from the community itself and in trn enahnce the community. I AM NOT a deluded fool for taking slimdevices to have some values beyond "what can we get away with", Historically it certainly had values beyond that and indeed semmed positivley to believe that its relationship with its customers was part of what was going to make its prodycts special.. I FEEL that for reasons expressed above by Oktup the policy of PREVENTING us from buying direct at whatever regional price (plus tax plus shipping) seemed best value to us was one big symbol of the slimdevices I imagined I knew. OF COURSE they had local distributors who might be setting local rates but we could always buy direct. No longer. Now the pathetic thing to say is say "I'll never buy another Slim product again" a) it may not be true b) they might not care even a little bit but commercial success and failure is often about the marginal differences - the slight emotional engagement we have with one company and not another - Slimdevices loses that at its peril. And finally Mvalera - really - you come over as the worst kind of one dimensional capitalism-is-faultless-so-shutup-socialist-whiners apologist. That can't be good for business. Graham -- gandt ------------------------------------------------------------------------ gandt's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=586 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=43128 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
