Re: [slim] Local Best Buy giving Sony, not Squeezebox the love
Oh, The Sony products sound FABULOUS. I heard them a couple of weeks in a row. I was born in 1955 and they sound EXACTLY like the TRANSISTOR radios my parent's friends used to hold outside the windows while we were going down the road when I was too young to remember the year. P Hifi is a stupid mistake. -- pski real stereo (can almost weld) pski's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=15574 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=69297 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Local Best Buy giving Sony, not Squeezebox the love
Goodsounds;469661 Wrote: Most companies have pretty strict policies against employee conduct of this sort, and they monitor compliance. On both the buying and selling sides, especially with these both being publicly owned companies. I can't imagine payments to a customer's employee being approved at a company like Sony. What are you basing your comment on? OK, this is BS. I am basing this on making the systems that keep track of the sales subject to spiffs and how the salespeople are paid. I have been doing this for a decade.5 Spiff systems are dependent on their retailer. They can involve packages like camera bodies and lenses or simple SKU's like (and mostly involving extended warranties.) An SKU is a line item on your sales slip. It stands for Stock keeping unit and it could be anything from what you bought to the warranty on it or whether the salesperson thought you would respond to a later mail to pay for an extended warranty. Who are you and what's your basis? Or, you can think about cables. Are some better? -- pski real stereo (can almost weld) pski's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=15574 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=69297 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Local Best Buy giving Sony, not Squeezebox the love
On 10/9/2009 10:42 AM, Goodsounds wrote: toby10;468493 Wrote: Yes, I'm not talking about paying for product placement. I'm talking about precisely what I said, bribe. :) It happens at the store level, regional level, corporate level. Most companies have pretty strict policies against employee conduct of this sort, and they monitor compliance. On both the buying and selling sides, especially with these both being publicly owned companies. I can't imagine payments to a customer's employee being approved at a company like Sony. What are you basing your comment on? It's an ages-old practice in the audio industry - take a look at Spiff on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiff -- Bill Burns Long Island NY USA http://ftldesign.com ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Local Best Buy giving Sony, not Squeezebox the love
ftlight;470331 Wrote: On 10/9/2009 10:42 AM, Goodsounds wrote: toby10;468493 Wrote: Yes, I'm not talking about paying for product placement. I'm talking about precisely what I said, bribe. :) It happens at the store level, regional level, corporate level. Most companies have pretty strict policies against employee conduct of this sort, and they monitor compliance. On both the buying and selling sides, especially with these both being publicly owned companies. I can't imagine payments to a customer's employee being approved at a company like Sony. What are you basing your comment on? It's an ages-old practice in the audio industry - take a look at Spiff on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiff I'm quite familiar with spiffs. The ones I've seen differ greatly from bribes in that they happen in the sunshine, not under the table, with full knowledge of all parties concerned (supplier, employer, store, etc). To me, the term bribe implies a clandestine, unauthorized payment for someone to do something they might not do otherwise, or that they are perhaps not authorized to do, or to do something differently from what they were instructed to do. And usually implies an illegality. Spiffs that happen in the sunshine are legal. It's a supplemental sales commission to someone who is paid to sell things. I'll let the matter drop. I see a lot of instances in these forums and elsewhere (even in real face to face life!) when people who only half understand something assume they know much more than they actually do. Especially in these forums, such mangled positions are often accompanied by either a wikipedia link or language lifted from wikipedia. That's fine, but someone who has no knowledge or understanding of a topic is not going to magically become knowledgeable by reading a paragraph or two in wikipedia. I'll assume you guys know what you're talking about, I'll just add I rarely see illegal payments and it's discouraging to me if you have. -- Goodsounds Goodsounds's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=14201 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=69297 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Local Best Buy giving Sony, not Squeezebox the love
toby10;468493 Wrote: Yes, I'm not talking about paying for product placement. I'm talking about precisely what I said, bribe. :) It happens at the store level, regional level, corporate level. Most companies have pretty strict policies against employee conduct of this sort, and they monitor compliance. On both the buying and selling sides, especially with these both being publicly owned companies. I can't imagine payments to a customer's employee being approved at a company like Sony. What are you basing your comment on? -- Goodsounds Goodsounds's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=14201 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=69297 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Local Best Buy giving Sony, not Squeezebox the love
Goodsounds;469661 Wrote: Most companies have pretty strict policies against employee conduct of this sort, and they monitor compliance. On both the buying and selling sides, especially with these both being publicly owned companies. I can't imagine payments to a customer's employee being approved at a company like Sony. What are you basing your comment on? - Several friends family working for large retailers in middle to upper management. - My next door neighbor was a regional supervisor for CC for three years and has been the same for BB for over four years now (recruited HEAVILY by BB). - Me being personal friends with the regional reps for Yamaha and Furman. They all have stories to tell, believe me! :) Then my own personal experience as well, going back to my prior two employers from 1984 through 1996, and now being self employed since 1996. But none of these personal experiences, past and present, have anything to do with consumer electronics nor retail. But policies were/are in place and I assure it is quite common in most business'. Policies are great but are often circumvented or policy violations are not enforced. -- toby10 toby10's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=12553 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=69297 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Local Best Buy giving Sony, not Squeezebox the love
toby10;469681 Wrote: - Several friends family working for large retailers in middle to upper management. - My next door neighbor was a regional supervisor for CC for three years and has been the same for BB for over four years now (recruited HEAVILY by BB). - Me being personal friends with the regional reps for Yamaha and Furman. They all have stories to tell, believe me! :) Then my own personal experience as well, going back to my prior two employers from 1984 through 1996, and now being self employed since 1996. But none of these personal experiences, past and present, have anything to do with consumer electronics nor retail. But policies were/are in place and I assure it is quite common in most business'. Policies are great but are often circumvented or policy violations are not enforced. Interesting. I'd guess these are personal payments rather than company payments, but maybe I'm wrong about that? Such conduct is often illegal. It's too bad to learn how prevalent it seems to be among the people you know. In my experience, it's quite rare in Silicon Valley, but I'm talking about tech companies and products rather than retail ones. It's not that all companies are saintly in everything they do, but the vast majority do try hard to stay within legal boundaries. Most companies I know try to be vigilant about shenanigans among field sales staff and things do pop up from time to time. Especially abroad. -- Goodsounds Goodsounds's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=14201 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=69297 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Local Best Buy giving Sony, not Squeezebox the love
iPhone;468127 Wrote: I do really feel for you guys, but there are these things called the Internet and phones. I mean if one is already out or at the BB for something else that is one thing, but to go without checking when its easy to go online or call to check stock. It was one of those got to have it now times and after checking online first BB did have the best price. The boom is my 8th SB player and only the second one brought at a brick and mortar store. -- lesliew QNAP TS-639, 4.5TB running squeezecenter 7.3.3-27044, pyTivo serving 2*Tivo S3's QGet all 24x7, Silver Transporter, 1 * SB Classic, 2 * SB Receiver, 2 * SB Controllers, 1 * SB Boom, iPhone 3GS + iPeng. lesliew's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=30045 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=69297 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Local Best Buy giving Sony, not Squeezebox the love
coma;468029 Wrote: Not impressed. When you look at what the Radio and upcoming Touch offer it kind of made me feel bad for the developers at Sony. Plenty of resources no doubt but seriously lacking and rather expensive too. Sony has been playing catch-up with portable media players (mp3 players) for years. I used them for a while because they were the only ones that could play gapless, though with ATRAC :-(. Remember minidisc? That was a great success ;-). Once Apple supported gapless playback, I dropped Sony like a hot potato! I'm not surprised to see that they are doing the same with media streaming in the home now. It's sad to see - they invented the Walkman and helped develop the CD for crying out loud! What happened to them!?!?! Even when BB had the SB products on the shelves, you could never find them. They had them by the computer speakers. Huh? Same thing with CC (RIP). And the sales people couldn't tell you anything about them. When the Boom was released, it was impressive in that they had a table set up with a Duet and a Boom. But again, the sales people had no clue what the products were about. Online shopping is your friend these days. -- maggior Rich - Setup: 2 SB3s, 3 Booms, 1 duet, 1 receiver. SuSE 11.0 Server running SqueezeCenter 7.3.3, MusicIP, and SqueezeSlave. Current library stats: 27,698 songs, 2,304 albums, 439 artists. http://www.last.fm/user/maggior Looking forward to new Porcupine Tree, Megadeth, Alice in Chains, and The Beatles Box set. September will be an expensive month :-) maggior's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9080 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=69297 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Local Best Buy giving Sony, not Squeezebox the love
maggior;468405 Wrote: . Even when BB had the SB products on the shelves, you could never find them. They had them by the computer speakers. Huh? Same thing with CC (RIP). And the sales people couldn't tell you anything about them. When the Boom was released, it was impressive in that they had a table set up with a Duet and a Boom. But again, the sales people had no clue what the products were about. Online shopping is your friend these days. Yup, very true, and quite a shame really. Heck, I've seen SB players at BB in numerous different locations in the store, some stores had NONE! I travel a lot for biz and often have a great deal of time between appointments so I go window shopping. I actually bought a car on a biz trip once! The dangers of too much idle time. :) Keep in mind Sony has deep pockets to *nudge* (read: bribe) retailers to promote the Sony brand and/or particular products. But I'd also guess part of the blame for poor product placement at retail locations falls on Logitech itself. Not enough field reps? Do they have field reps? Assuming they do have (sufficient) field reps, I'd bet most know next to nothing about the SB devices, therefore they don't really understand how to market them, place them, train store employees for them. :( Just a guess, but keyboard mouse reps may well be overlooking the SB players. -- toby10 toby10's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=12553 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=69297 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Local Best Buy giving Sony, not Squeezebox the love
toby10 wrote: Keep in mind Sony has deep pockets to *nudge* (read: bribe) retailers to promote the Sony brand and/or particular products. Er, in all food stores and most mass market retail stores, the profit margins are in selling the prime shelf space, not in the markup of the goods. End of aisle displays, prime shelf space at arm level, are worth money and retailers live on it. They have lots of terms that don't rhyme with bribe, but paying for placement is normal practice. -- Pat Farrell http://www.pfarrell.com/ ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Local Best Buy giving Sony, not Squeezebox the love
Speaking to the post about Sony playing catch-up it boggles the mind that they've been in this rut for years and still come up so short. I mean their new product is ages behind the first offerings from Logitech and Sonos. At least it plays nice with the iPod/iPhone which is a baby step from them and their death grip on developing and only supporting their proprietary formats. (MagicGate memory stick anyone?) The only reason I waited so long on the sidelines myself before not selecting Sonos and finally going the Squeezebox route is because I figured that Apple with their iTunes and then iPhone would come out with some new hardware to turn their AirTunes into a real contender. 3 years later and they have the AppleTV product but that's not close to what a you can do with 2 Squeezebox products. I'd be surprised if they don't eventually enter the fray but at this stage I doubt they could make any major improvements to what the two established and affordable brands are doing. The one thing they would have for them however is mega marketing muscle, and a great network of Apple Stores where people would see the product, worship it and purchase en masse. Would I purchase such a product? Not at this point, because I've already built a nice expandable networks of devices that serve my needs very well and it would be redundant. If it streamed 1080p HD video, had 5.1 surround and a few HDMI outputs then I'd buy a few. But only if their product came out before the Squeezebox version. -- coma Mac Mini MacBookPro running SBS 7.4, 4 * SB Receivers, 1 * SB Controller, 1 * SB Boom, 1 * SB Radio on order and 1 * SB Touch on pre-order. coma's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=19516 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=69297 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Local Best Buy giving Sony, not Squeezebox the love
pfarrell;468432 Wrote: toby10 wrote: Keep in mind Sony has deep pockets to *nudge* (read: bribe) retailers to promote the Sony brand and/or particular products. Er, in all food stores and most mass market retail stores, the profit margins are in selling the prime shelf space, not in the markup of the goods. End of aisle displays, prime shelf space at arm level, are worth money and retailers live on it. They have lots of terms that don't rhyme with bribe, but paying for placement is normal practice. -- Pat Farrell http://www.pfarrell.com/ Yes, I'm not talking about paying for product placement. I'm talking about precisely what I said, bribe. :) It happens at the store level, regional level, corporate level. -- toby10 toby10's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=12553 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=69297 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Local Best Buy giving Sony, not Squeezebox the love
Similar thing happened to me also. I went to my local Best Buy to pickup a boom about 2 weeks ago. I had to repeat myself 3 times when I asked for it, the salesperson still didn't know what I was talking about I had to take him to the product on display. After checking the stock level he tells me that they don't have it in stock then proceeded to tell me that the sony multiroom system was The way to go. I was really abrupt with him following that I told him that it was obvious he didn't know what he talking about if he was telling me that I then took a 78 mile round trip to the other BB which did have one. -- lesliew QNAP TS-639, 4.5TB running squeezecenter 7.3.3-27044, pyTivo serving 2*Tivo S3's QGet all 24x7, Silver Transporter, 1 * SB Classic, 2 * SB Receiver, 2 * SB Controllers, 1 * SB Boom, iPhone 3GS + iPeng. lesliew's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=30045 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=69297 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Local Best Buy giving Sony, not Squeezebox the love
lesliew;468066 Wrote: Similar thing happened to me also. I went to my local Best Buy to pickup a boom about 2 weeks ago. I had to repeat myself 3 times when I asked for it, the salesperson still didn't know what I was talking about I had to take him to the product on display. After checking the stock level he tells me that they don't have it in stock then proceeded to tell me that the sony multiroom system was The way to go. I was really abrupt with him following that I told him that it was obvious he didn't know what he talking about if he was telling me that I then took a 78 mile round trip to the other BB which did have one. I do really feel for you guys, but there are these things called the Internet and phones. I mean if one is already out or at the BB for something else that is one thing, but to go without checking when its easy to go online or call to check stock. And if one is already at the Best Buy, have THEM tell you where the nearest one in stock is. And another heads up, they ARE in stock on the Logitech Squeezebox website. -- iPhone *iPhone* Media Room: Transporter, VTL TL-6.5 Signature Pre-Amp, Ayre MX-R Mono's, VeraStarr 6.4SE 6-channel Amp, Vandersteen Speakers: Quatro Mains, VCC-5 Reference Center, four VSM-1 Signatures, Video: Runco RS 900 CineWide AutoScope 2.35:1 Living Room: Duet, ADCOM GTP-870HD, Cinepro 3K6SE III Gold, Vandersteen Model 3A Signature, Two 2Wq subs, VCC-2, Two VSM-1 Kitchen: Squeezebox BOOM Bedroom: Second Boom Bathroom: Squeezebox Radio Ford Thunderbird: Duet, Mac Mini Ford Expedition: SB Touch, USB drive iPhone's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=13622 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=69297 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
