Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems CES 2010 speculation thread

Most curious! Perhaps that partially explains the price discrepency between the UK and US. Very little margin in the UK price for dealers as they will be able to flip the v4; more margin in the upgrade for US dealers as they will not be able to flip the v4. Seems unecessarily complicated and something doesn't make sense.

That would not make sense at all. In that case, Meridian would only want to have the units shipped to them with the highest shipping costs. Secondly, the non-UK buyer would indirectly pay for the non-resale/disposal of his old unit, while UK-buyers would not...

A look ahead.

What are the dealers or Meridian directly saying about the capacity for future upgrades for the 806 v6 and 808.3?

Agreed, but it could be even worse than that. I do not plan to shell out $16K for the upgrade, and will stick with v4 for the time being. But if Meridian do in fact allow dealers to flip traded-in units to the uded market then the resale value of my v4, should I decide to sell it will be in the crapper.

Regarding to an M dealer source,the price for trade-up from is for the chassis,
not for specific cards.
A logical thing(this is my interpretation) should be the "standard" configuration,
but who knows that in reality?

Have to say this pricing really surprises me to.

And given this is a case of ship old one back (or agree a deal and sell privately) and a brand new box gets shipped out. Its really not that difficult.

The more I think about it, the more I think how ill conceived this trade-in program is - perhaps somebody dreamed it up over their lunch hour? Asking somebody, for example, who may have bought an 861 less than a year ago to have to basically rebuy it, that takes some gall.

Frank asked what would people suggest to make this deal a bit more sensible. Others have suggested making the US price a bit more in line with the UK price, and that would help. But how about doing the 'trade-in' off a purchase receipt and then allowing us to recoup some of the loss with a private sale of the older unit.

Do you just think the old ones will be put in the trash??

Meridian will have worked something out with the dealers, basically allowing the dealers to get close to their full margin buy selling the older 861's. They are not going to do you a V6 with $9000 off and let you keep the V4 as well, the dealer will hope to get some of that $9000 back through selling your old V4.




If the upgrade was just a few cards, say the speakerlink card for $4-5000, and a new firmware (which the V4 will probably get anyway) so no 'big' improvement in sound no one would feel peeved.
The fact it is a whole new chassis and M are prepared to give current owners 35% off is pretty good.

I do think this should have been the 961 and that the 861 should have had a speakerlink card added and new firmware only. It would have pissed a lot less people off.

Simon,

I am amazed how consistently negative your posts are. This is THE first time M have done any form of trade-in on this scale. You and several others have gone from simply moaning about the upgrades to moaning that the trade-in just isn't good enough for you. You obviously missed the intro of the G series just weeks/days after many of us rushed into limited runs of 5xx upgrades.

This time we have at least some offering and yet it's just not good enough.

Honestly what do you really expect here ?

As for the UK/US difference.....The currency swings we have seen in the last 2-3 years have been enough to make or lose loads for any company.
The prices have never equated and for years the US prices looked great vs UK. Win some;lose some....it happens.

Ill conceived and dreamed up over lunch ? That's cute.

Something here is ill conceived and I don't think it's the trade-in deal.

Maybe if one isn't Sooloos upstream or DSPs downstream, Meridian don't think they will sell you much more anyhow, which is probably right. The new 861v6 will make it cheaper for those who use other Meridian components and therefore is a very logical step. If you aren't in that category - and I'm not - it is still impossible to beat the 861v4. Having tried other AV preamps - sound aside - they are dogs to configure as they don't have the PC based software, so you can never get a proper overview of how you are configured. Besides from not doing 7.1 discrete from the HD621, the v4 does it all!

So I will hang on to my v4 for another 5 or so years or maybe even more and then if I buy the v6, or whatever it then is, I will have got good use out my v4 and be happy to pay full price (less a sensible discount of course). So I'm v4 and happy.

Rob

I understand the currency issues, but something is not quite right here. Upgrades are not going to be sitting on dealer shelves at the mercy of large swings if the dealer doesn't have to pay until it sells. Yet the UK->USA exchange rate they are using for a full price v6 is 2.55:1 (new G68's are almost an identical rate) yet is 2.9:1 for the upgrade. This represents an added margin of $1900 on the upgrade, and so maybe you can use this to talk your dealer down if they are the ones making this and not Meridian.

Let's bring on the full release, so we can at least hear it!

Well on the positive side -- yes, there is one -- I would rather i) Meridian be excellent at digital audio and lousy at customer communciations than ii) Meridian be lousy at digiatl audio and great at customer communications...of course, being great at both would be fantastic...