@DaveTubaKing said:
A little perspective is needed. You say 90% of their customers had very strong feelings. How many customers do you think they have. A few hundred? a few thousand? tens of thousands? I suspect nearer the latter. I haven't counted but I suspect the number of people (not posts) on this forum who have had very strong feelings is no more than 150. I think we're a little closer to 1% expressing very strong feelings.
I said 90% of customers HAD, not expressed, strong feelings. Do you know how predictive demographic polls work for elections? You take a look at the sample you generate and create a percentage for all the rest of the population you don't get opinions from. There are a lot of customers who do not write on this forum; I have been one since 2005 or 6 and I wrote my first post when this fiasco occurred. And what do you think? That the thousands that did not write said "Ah great! I am so relieved now that I will have to pay €9000 for the Cube as opposed to €5000"?... I admit that quite a few (like Jay Chattaway) don't care about such financial discrepancies one way or the other and they don't count as they wouldn't mind if Apples and PCs started costing €18000 (fully specd) again, but to actually contemplate that more than a small minority would accept what happened as a bonding... Again, it was not my intention to re-open this discussion - unless new ground could be covered, we said what was to be said - merely that at least it is my wish that this particular thread will continue to carry a foul odor from what transpired.
So what is your point in posting? By your own admission, you have no interest in contributing to this Community. Is it that you just like to complain and try to spoil it for others? There is no foul odour. Like it or not, it has all been explained. Move on.
DG
That is how you read my not having posted here earlier having been a customer for so long. There are many reasons why this could be the case, only one of them being what you say "you have no interest in contributing to this Community. Is it that you just like to complain and try to spoil it for others"... I'll just say that I would write only when I felt I could contribute or help someone out. This just has not been the case, since although I have owned the products for a while, I am not an expert such as yourself and others here (perhaps you can read into this that I am mentally retarded). I have great respect for people such as yourself who give out so much to users-in-need, I wish I knew half as much about the technology as you do, and would very much enjoy an opportunity to hear your VSL audio results.
Through the years (for quick breaks off work) I have a few times followed threads where regulars here have cockfought each other to relax my mind and for great laughs!! This Roman arena of course still goes on and provides the same kind of hilarity as it always has mainly for the following reasons: a) people can get so angry at each other here (for no reason really) and it's funnier than the token forum situation since it involves orchestral composers, (not even in academia have I encountered such hostility so regularly), b) they have no skills on how to build a cogent argument (through dialectics, induction, etc.), or even be able to read properly into other people's arguments(!), or they fail to realize that what they argue about can sometimes naturally accommodate strictly subjective approaches. And sometimes they fail to see the point, as is the case here...
1) I was not the one that initiated this thread,
2) This case was about me losing a lot of money through the questionable actions of a company to which I had contributed in its infancy and quite heavily; not about whether Stravinsky was better than Mozart, or the music to Psycho was better than that of Jaws, what have you... I suppose we all felt that through a collective complain (something we could not really know was done if we all wrote privately) maybe Herb would reinstate the VIP plan, plus to their credit they allowed it to be viewed - dirty laundry - by anyone on the web, including rival companies, and perhaps a branch of the European Commission. This was why I entered a public dialogue in the first and only place. We did manage to secure a "later" deadline for the upgrade through this - did not make me happy personally, but I felt it was worth a try when someone was dipping into my pocket as opposed to just making a silly musical comment... VSL's explanations did not really address the point and were questionable at best, but they made a business decision. Business decisions are about money, not samples, universal brotherhood, etc. And so it should be and so it was. Thus, perpetual privileges were stripped, not because of spite, but money! We all addressed the propriety and ethics of what happened hoping to reverse the action because right was with us, but we left logistics out since we are not privy to such information (nor should we be), and because if and when it all comes down to money in business, everything else goes out the window (as it did)...
3) I am still a customer, I have since made another purchase, since every one of us weighs the pros and cons in any situation and evaluates every business relationship. This action has been painfully noted but so has everything else positive that VSL has done. In short I have moved on...
I write in my post that "we said what was to be said" - did you miss that perhaps ("Like it or not, it has all been explained"). It is just that after all the bitterness and the efforts in this thread, I don't think R.M.'s epitaph so long after the ashes have settled was reflective of the thread's spirit, or this particular experience with the company. After all, the odour is in the nose of the besniffer, and this is my own.
P.S.: Dave, I explained my rationale, you did not say that I thought 90% of the customers had expressed themselves, but that is the point you made. It is a fact that you cannot know how every customer feels, but you can make an educated guess from a demographic sample (there are people that, like me, had never written before and did for the first time in that thread, are they all whingers like DG suggested?). Of course I also said that in this case you did not need a demographic sample; who in their right mind would prefer to pay full money for a product when he can pay half?
Best wishes to all,
Errikos.