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At 1:17 PM -0800 1/3/99, Howard Harawitz wrote: >I was not trying to add to some kind of conspiracy against >Gibson/Oberheim. >My intent was to offer constructive criticism via this list, believing >that >the folks from Gibson who monitor it would carry the word upstairs. In other words, instead of simply calling them with a helpful suggestion, you choose to make a public spectacle, cause largely undeserved fear and doubt among other potential customers, and force them to devote a lot of people and effort to repairing the resulting PR damage when they could have been fixing the small problem you had and getting on with their job of producing music gear? I'm not trying to flame you in particular, Howard, because I've seen many other people go way more over the top than you have, but I just don't see the logic in this approach. It seems more designed to harm than help, and I'm getting a bit tired of seeing people wasting a lot of time and effort on all sides to deal with this sort of thing. In my experience, this is about the least effective way to deal with a problem. >>But we're not hearing reports of that, we're hearing rumors of that. When >>pressed, we discover that the rumored info is based on shaky inferences, >>unsubstantiated info from some other unverified source, or based on >>something that happened two years ago rather than any current situation. > >I am definitely not "screaming unfounded rumors" based on two year old >information. you might not have, but others definitely were. >Only a couple of months ago, I, myself, had problems finding a >shop in the US or Canada that would sell me an Oberheim Echoplex. I >reported that experience to this list. At the time, that seemed >appropriate. In fact, it was only after several of those kinds of reports >appeared, and via the list's "Group Buy", that I (along with several dozen >other list members) was actually able to acquire an Echoplex. The people who organized that group buy didn't have trouble finding a dealer, right? In fact, there were a variety of dealers competing for that, as I recall. Other people have located dealers without much difficulty, right? If you call up Gibson and ask for a dealer, they are happy to suggest a few. Probably they can even tell you which ones have stock in echoplexes or whatever you're looking for, or when another shipment is expected. You can even get dealer information off their website. When people ask for a recommendation for echoplex dealers on this list, they promptly get a variety of replies, often including replies from Gibson folks. In other words, was this really Gibson's fault? As far as I can tell, Gibson is more than happy to help you buy their products, and generally friendly and efficient about it. The same can be said for just about any other company, I would guess. So before you go citing this as evidence of horrible calamities for the echoplex, could you at least ask yourself whether you were making a sensible effort to find a dealer in the first place? For example, did you try the obvious approach of calling Gibson and asking for a dealer near you? >If there are misconceptions and rumors about Gibson's ability to deliver >Oberheim products, they are being spread by some reasonably reputable >music >dealers. Those are the people that you and Gibson need to reassure -- not >the folks like me that are trying to buy Oberheim products from those >dealers. Sorry, I haven't seen any of these rumors about Gibson being spread by "reputable dealers". More like irresponsible net users. If a Gibson dealer were doing that, I imagine they would cease to be a dealer pretty quickly. I have seen a few cases where uninformed dealers were telling potential customers things about Oberheim that were wrong, and as soon as Gibson knew about it I think they tried to correct the problem (or other dealers happily jumped in to take the business). For the most part, the damaging rumors I've seen were coming from uninformed people throwing fits on the net. The sad thing is this stuff persists regardless of what a company has done. There's always somebody popping up to scream about something online without making any effort at all to to see if what they are saying reflects any real situation. It really sucks for the people on the other side of it, who are working hard to do things right and still get stuck wasting their time on pointless PR firedrills. It's not just Gibson, either, this sort of thing happens a lot. But in the past few months there have been all sorts of crazy things said about Gibson, very little of which had any reality associated with it. I think it's an issue of responsibility for the community you are in. For one, if there are hardly any companies interested in producing looping gear, how are you helping that situation by using public forums to attack those that do and scaring away their potential customers? Would you rather there were no companies producing these instruments? If you want a better situation, how about making a positive contribution rather than a negative one? The second responsibility issue is libel. The result of people making unfounded accusations online is more and more companies are filing libel suits to recover damages to their reputations or their business. I imagine the outcome of this trend will be a chill on people's willingness to express themselves in any circumstance, which sucks. I think if we, as a community, don't want that sort of thing happening, we all need to take some responsibility for the accuracy and effect of our words. >My perception is that of a prospective customer, and I was reporting this >because, from that point of view, Gibson has a bit of fence mending to do. What more do you expect them to do? They've posted here regularly, they've repeatedly provided all of the information that you failed to find in this very forum, they've been very helpful to folks on the phone, they've done backflips to help people out who reported a problem to them, they've worked very hard to get production up to meet demand and improve their products, they've done everything they could to improve relations with dealers. Does none of that count? Should they also be employing a bank of people to post careful replies every time some tortured ego with an email account decides to trash them anyway? Personally, I would much rather see them (and other companies, like mine) doing their job of producing musical instruments than wasting time endlessly combatting the latest items in the rumor mill. >IMO, that means taking care of small things like an Email address that >fails. Because if they don't, folks like me will be led to believe that >the >recent changes, rather than solving old problems, may have created some >new >ones that will continue to get in the way of satisfactory service. But you didn't even give them a chance to take care of this problem! Rather than contacting them to let them know of the error, you jumped right onto the net to make an issue of it. How fair was that? >From my perspective, no matter what they do there will be some people who manage to find some problem, no matter how trivial, that proves the end is nigh. Personally, I find that irresponsible and frustrating, especially when you don't even give them a chance to deal with the situation. As far as I can tell, the Oberheim/Electar/Gibson guys (and any company really) have been happy to get feedback from people and fix any problems they could. Give them a chance at least! kim ______________________________________________________________________ Kim Flint | Looper's Delight kflint@annihilist.com | http://www.annihilist.com/loop/loop.html http://www.annihilist.com/ | Loopers-Delight-request@annihilist.com