Says who?

[Link: cgi.ebay.com]

[Link: avalive.com]

[Link: firefold.com]

Some play the "call for pricing game" and others have a buy it now button.

If you can't afford it you don't get it...period.....not I have financial troubles BUT I can still spend over $15000 on a system and everyone please, please help me.....

Can everyone tell I just heard this sob story from a customer on how I should be obligated to discount him because he can't afford it anymore, has to put food on the table and feels he still NEEDS his system

Thats the issue right there. 20% below will then be %30 then 40% then finally no one will be selling the product and hardware quality will begin to suffer and you will have a rack full of products that you cant get serviced. Obviously you dont care right now but you might some day. Go to CEPro and search for Pronto. They were the first to relax internet sales and they are now out of business.

Having said that.. all of us shop online. I bought a $90 pair of headphones for $45 with next day shipping. Whos fault is that? Not mine. I am not Sony or Amazon and if those fools want to shoot themselves in the foot let them. BestBuy will die soon and then our choices will be amazon or walmart. Either way.. the manufacturers are driving their products into the ground and you buying Crestron online or me buying sony headphones online isn't going to make 1 bit of difference when millions of others are doing the same thing.

If the dealer is not authorized I will not buy from them again.
I called and talked to them in person and they told me that they were an authorized dealer. They would not even disclose the prices on their website.
I have another local dealer who has offerred to provide some discount on MSRP.
I still want to learn more about the system before I receive proposals from multiple local vendors. Sometimes hearing from other experienced installer does help.
Like I said earlier my local integrators have had no problem in installing the system even if I did not buy the hardware from them.
I work in software industry and freely share my time in user forums answering quetions. No one is forcing me to do that. I get help in various forums and I give back when I can. If someone can use my answers to design their own system more power to them. However in my industry there is no requirement to couple the sale of hardware with the custom software.

I did make mistakes when I bought my system. I purchased useless Crestron MLX-2. An experienced integrator would have told me to stay away. Putting together my initial system did require time reading manuals, posting questions in forums.

I am sorry I upset you.

A couple of weeks ago i thought i could answer the way Greg C did but now i know that internet sales of Crestron is allowed and those dealers are authorized. You can even get it at ebay.


There is your problem. You work in an industry that has their act together. Ours is still crawling out of the primordial slime. We are going thru an identity crisis trying to move to a labor based business model while still clinging to our old school 2 channel box moving nature.


Sort of. Buying the MLX-2 from the guy who installed it would have had the same result. What would have been different is who would have paid to fix the mistake.

Crestron said the MLX-2 was good so your crestron online sales agent said it was good and then they told you it was good (in that order).

But then your integrator and then you and then the online crestron dealer and finally crestron (in that order) found out that the MLX-2 wasn't good.

See the issue here? Seems like the first person saying it was good (crestron) should have also been the ones to first discover that it wasn't good.

That example right there sums up the entire home automation industry. The installers are the beta testers.

So in a normal situation if you call an integrator out and he suggests a product and you buy it but it doesn't work (like the MLX-2) you don't pay him until he resolves the issue or swaps the hardware with something that works. But when you DIY and circumvent the rules you gamble with getting burned. This is the case with changing your own brakes or oil on your car to painting your house. You end up in a situation where everyone and no one is responsible. The company that sold it? They blame the company that installed it. The company that installed it? They blame the product and the company that sold it. The consumer pays the price.

So in the case of a TV or the headphones i bought @ amazon.. big deal right? We buy a new one when it fails. But what about your MLX-2? How do you get the online sales guy to take it back and refund your money? Did you save enough on it to cover buying it again? With my headphones i can buy another pair for $45 and i fall right in @ MSRP.

WTF? news to me

Me to. But since those sites are still up IMO online sales of Crestron are authorized.

Yes I tried to do a DIY and circumvented the rules. I bought 2 terrible remotes and a gateway. The remotes were so bad that It was hard for me to believe that Crestron released that product. I reached out to Crestron Rep in Chicago.
He told me that Crestron will release software update that will fix the problem.
I don't know if they ever released the software fix for it. I posted messages in forums including here and enough installers had bad experience with MLX-2 so I knew that it was time to ditch it.

I am grateful for the wealth of knowledge that is available in these forums. Even if I hire a System Integrator to provide all the equipment and installation I will keep on browsing these forums to stay educated.

I am espcially grateful to "39 Cent Stamp" and others who answers so many questions in these forums. Your 17-18 years of CI experience is very much visible in your posts. If I ever do a sizeable Crestron install again I will try to convince you to do my design/build as I am not too far from you.

Noo, not Stamp! He will have a bunch of his "Wiremunky" (tm) staff eating you out of house and bananas!

The problem lies in customer expectations and explanation.

We don't explain that we absorb costs into the product profit so the customer expects that buying goods somewhere else is the same thing and we were charging too much for that box to begin with.

We need to stop hiding/combining ourselves into the products. We need to explain that when buying a system from us we included x,y & z. When you buy the box somewhere else you still need to pay us for x,y & z.

Perhaps we need more line items for our labor services and stop bulking them together. We've learned to separate design, now we need to separate the rest; receiving, loading, unboxing, disposal, recycling, testing, education, support, warranty, remote programming, dog training, child minding, taking off shoes, not scuffing your walls and floors, question answering, while you're here, driving, not smelling, not 'destroying' your personal bathroom, and on and on.

We need a line item that says: "ABC Stereos Services $xxx."

Better yet we need ABC Stereos Platinum, Gold or Silver level services. (Platinum I answer the cell phone on Christmas, Gold goes to voice mail, Silver call the store) Not everyone needs or is willing to pay for Platinum so why do we price everyone in that class?

Then the products can be priced competitively and if the customer decides to buy the box elsewhere (which likely won't be worth the difference) we are still paid for our time and services.

After all, we're in the business of selling ourselves, not the box.

Gets pretty crazy around lunchtime

Between Robs "not 'destroying' your personal bathroom" comment and Stamps photo above, I literally LOL'd

I agree with everything Rob said. I will finish this thread with my experience with the guy who did the landscaping. I asked him to do everything including lighting. For lights he provided estimate for installation and gave good/better/best landscape lighting options. I went to my friends home and loved his landscape lights. He told me that they were Kichler lights and he introduced me to his neighbor who sold it to him. I purchased the lights on my own.

When I told my landscaper that I will provide the lights. He told me that I took away his profit from selling the lights so he will charge more for install. I was surprised to hear that but I agreed to pay him more. There were no hard feelings.

What CI industry is doing is not too different than what is done in other industries. As long as it is spelled out most customers will understand the options and make an informed decision.

hehateme
So why didn't you pay "your" original integrator?

I did pay the original integrator in the following ways:

1. Prewire the entire house for crestron.
2. Paid for speakers for distributed audio.
3. Paid for speaker install
4. Paid for 2 seperate home theater installs
5. Paid for Crestron install

Did not buy the equipment from him or used his programmer.

I am not sure how you got the impression that I did not pay him.