Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Absolute Sound Review Feb/March Issue

Jburkart,
I would advise you to ask the dealer to give you his complete margin on the upgrade. He clearly misinformed you. Perhaps the wrong upgrade price he gave you when you bought it is not his fault, but it certainly is not yours.
Making profit on new boxes is one thing, but making 35% on a upgrade seems too high to me, and reading your response is scaring you away from the brand. Not a wise dealer in my oppinion.

Also watch out that he does not try to sell you a new front. This is not adding any functionality.
I bought a 2nd hand 800v2, and got the upgrade for much less than 5600 Euro's. So it is possible to get some discount.

I like the DVD-A playback very much. Also the DVD-V playback in 24/96 is great.

Jaco

Perhaps CPRM is for DVD-A recordable. It is in my head for some reason.

An upgrade that costs the price of a 568...

Content Protection for Recordable Media

Jaco,

Thanks for the information about your upgrade cost. Actually, when I complained about this mega price tag, my dealer said he couldn't do much about it, as there wouldn't be much margin for him.
Meridian would claim that they do most of the upgrade work, so therefore they wanted to keep the "money". He was mumbling about something around about 5% for him.

OK, the 800v2 I got from him was his demo piece so he didn't get the full price at that time. But shortly after, I even bought a pair DSP 8000s from him. He himself had picked up those as ex-demo from the German Meridian distributor, which had used them for one or two German show case events. Sure, they were price-reduced for me as well, but he for sure did not pay the full price either.

Now idea, what margins he had made with me at all, but trust me, after this amount of total revenue I generated for him, me too would have expected a little bit more generous upgrade offer.

Perhaps I should contact the German distributor directly. For sure, I'm looking for a new dealer now.

I have some clues on the margin a dealer makes, and i do not believe theyu give it away. They have a shop to run off-course.
I mailed you some more details.

Jaco

dealers have to run their business, which has lots of overhead and all that jazz.

but the markup on Meridian equipment is quite substantial. they've got lots of room to move.

with the right confluence of events you can get 35% off MSRP or more on non-demo, from the factory equipment. but they're not going to just give it to you.

if you've bought an 800 and a pair of 8000s from this guy, he should be willing to deal for you.

some dealers buy direct from Meridian. some buy through distributors. obviously that means differnet discount floors.

my two pennies.

doody.

Yes, the markup on Meridian gear is high at about 40%, at least in the USA. Reason I know:

I contacted a dealer for a quote and to his embarrassment he quoted on his cost prices. Once he realised he had to recind. The difference was about 40%.

Now that sounds a hell of a lot until you start to look at overheads like wages (and that includes time spent on customer service), stock held etc etc. It would soon whittle down to a fraction of that 40%. Frankly, selling Meridian and other high end gear is not an area of retail sales I would choose.

Regardless of this, the price of the 800/861 is steep and something I rarely confess to out of embarrasment. BUT I do like the music it translates from those pits. It has converted me from LPs to CDs and I am no longer a digital luddite. However I find it incredible it has taken 20 years for companies to exploit the potential of the redbook CD standards and it has taken the likes of Meridian to demonstrate, at high cost, how good well engineered CDs can sound.

John

the markups you describe sounds pretty normal for this market.

we sale paradigm, proceed, revel, mirage, denon, and marantz at our store and they all fall in the 40-50 points range.

other products like the new jvc sx1 is 15 points. we cant afford to have a demo on the floor with the points so low.

We are way off topic here, but my remarks were only on the fact that if you buy a 800v2 as demo modell, and the dealer tells you the upgrade will be 1500 or so you should expect some discount on the list price of 5300 as quoted above. In my oppinion it is the dealers problem that he misinformed you, and not yours. In that case he should give away his whole profit and make the customer happy as far as is possible for him.

Jaco

There is no way you will get 35% off Meridian. Dealers could not stay in buisiness.

I always 'expect' min of 10% off new gear with my regular dealer, however, I have achieved upto nearly 60% off ex-dem. I know that's subject to many variables, but, it does verify where the gross margins actually are with some Meridian products.

Rgds

Nick