free lunch

[haydxn]

thanks for the official word

[Graeme]

Yes - thanks for the info.

[Germ777]

[
Bottom line: NFRs, please go to your retailer for your copy of T2.

dernil
Mackie Dude

I just asked here and it is hard to support local retailers when they ask 250$ for a program that should cost 150$ by the maker´s standard.
Too bad. The whole band was getting a copy of T2 after I talked them into it. After all this stuff the saw going on here they just went out and bought Steinbug. I hate stein! but have to work with it now
Oh well 6 Tracktion buyers less in the list.

PS. I am still likely going to buy it but will have to wait a bit more than planned for it.

[diverdee]

Seems a bit harsh on registered non U.S. T users.
$244 vs $89.99 for the boxed version (including the $60 U.S. only rebate). That's $160 difference, more than the actual cost of the program itself.
Moral of this story for the non-U.S. owners is to get the download for definate. $20 versus $244 for the bundled plug ins? damn to buy a version of rmiv you can use in any host is around $149?

[headquest]

First off, thanks for the explanation and confirmation dernil

Seems a bit harsh on registered non U.S. T users.
$244 vs $89.99 for the boxed version (including the $60 U.S. only rebate). That's $160 difference, more than the actual cost of the program itself.
Moral of this story for the non-U.S. owners is to get the download for definate. $20 versus $244 for the bundled plug ins? damn to buy a version of rmiv you can use in any host is around $149?

Exactly.

And being a Brit myself, I cant escape from the irony that Jules is a fellow Brit .

Ah well... (he says, shuntling off in the direction of the Linplug website...)

[Graeme]

Now we have the 'official' word, it's becoming increasingly obvious why the potential users (outside the USA) of T2 are not so happy. It's hard to find a better argument in favour of a downloadable version.

Forget all about upgrades from T1, NFR versions, rebates and the like, just consider the following;

I want to buy a copy of T2 (as a new user). The local Mackie agent has never heard of it, but I can go to the UK and get a copy from there. For this, the UK company wants to charge me £130 (=US$244) - which is way over the USA MRSP and we all know that nobody is going to sell at the MSRP in the USA. On top of this, they also want to charge me another £20 (=US$37.50) to put it in the post! I've had bigger packets than this one sent here for a lot less than that.

Personally, I would much rather put the full MSRP asking price (US$200) direct into Mackies pocket than be ripped off in this fashion, but it seems this is not going to be an option.

However, it's plain to see why European customers feel so hard done by. I'm not saying that it's Mackie's fault - they probably do have no real control over what the distributors charge - but they could limit the abuse by providing downloadable versions at a figure which would make the distributors think twice about their policies.

[bastien]

Seems a bit harsh on registered non U.S. T users.
$244 vs $89.99 for the boxed version (including the $60 U.S. only rebate). That's $160 difference, more than the actual cost of the program itself.
Moral of this story for the non-U.S. owners is to get the download for definate. $20 versus $244 for the bundled plug ins? damn to buy a version of rmiv you can use in any host is around $149?

Now, we don't yet know what the rebate is and the MSRP is $199, and factoring in the 17.5% VAT rate, that gives us:
MSRP $199 + 17.5% = $233.83

But yes, it'll have to be a massive rebate to get the price down to US levels...

[whyterabbyt]

I must say I'm surprised that dernil is stating that Mackie have no control over distributor pricing. I would have thought that they at least got to set an MRP or RRP.

Cakewalk got a lot of flack a while back for the $1=£1 thing and as a result they made sure that the final price of S4 in Europe was a lot closer to the exchange rate....

[Germ777]

Seems a bit harsh on registered non U.S. T users.
$244 vs $89.99 for the boxed version (including the $60 U.S. only rebate). That's $160 difference, more than the actual cost of the program itself.
Moral of this story for the non-U.S. owners is to get the download for definate. $20 versus $244 for the bundled plug ins? damn to buy a version of rmiv you can use in any host is around $149?

That is the main reason why I posted the request on behalf of the NFR users outside of the USA.
See. The USA NFR users even get a rebate. The rest of us do not! I was willing to pay for the upgrade key at a reasonable price, even if it did not include the plug ins ( that I can really do without) because If the rumours about no downloadable purchase were true. The rest of the world would get screwed over by Mackie´s distributors. I have been proven right.
Too bad everything I posted here derived into a "Looser NFR freeloaders" bullshit rant and the threads were locked because of a few who just could not see beyond their freaking noses.
In the end the only one loosing is Jules as HIS program is not getting to the hands of users at an affordable/reasonable price.
I am really annoyed now and even though I still want T2 It will take a lot longer to buy it. I must balance out if it is worth some very hard to earn 200+ $

And being a Brit myself, I cant escape from the irony that Jules is a fellow Brit

Aahhhh! the irony of it all!!!!!

Germ

[diverdee]

I must say I'm surprised that dernil is stating that Mackie have no control over distributor pricing. I would have thought that they at least got to set an MRP or RRP.

Cakewalk got a lot of flack a while back for the $1=£1 thing and as a result they made sure that the final price of S4 in Europe was a lot closer to the exchange rate....

good point about the cakewalk thing, sonar U.S. & U.K. pricing is at round about parity now. At least proves it can be done.

[headquest]

I think that the Cakewlak situation it has something to do with the Edirol deal, too . By all acounts the European wing were having some difficulties which they soted out with their US big brothers re. marketing and pricing.

Also Cakewalk as a business has an ongoing strategy to break out of their US-only dominance and increase their marketshare through other territories.

So while it is an interesting example of a company treating their non-US customers much better than Mackie are, I think there are some notable differences between the two.

[Mr. Tingle]

Surely if someone like Turnkey or Digital Village buy in bulk we can see a resonably priced UK (EU) version of T2. This is capitalisum right? If T2 is good there will be a market for it, if so, then vendors will compete on price to sell it. Or am I missing something?

[headquest]

Surely if someone like Turnkey or Digital Village buy in bulk we can see a resonably priced UK (EU) version of T2. This is capitalisum right? If T2 is good there will be a market for it, if so, then vendors will compete on price to sell it. Or am I missing something?

It doesn't work quite like that.

Tracktion has yet to establish itself in the retail market. We don't exactly have "Mackie Superstores" here in the UK . Music shops tend to take on new products if there is an established demand, which they will no doubt initially gauge by customer requests. Only then will T2 be a regular product that people will buy off-the-shelf based on the recommendation of the store owner/employee. And these guys tend to recommend what they themselves use (i.e. Logic, Cubase, etc). ANd because there are incentives for them to personally use the gear they are getting a deal on themselves instore, they are not quick to change. Tracktion has a long way to go to break into the mainstream in terms of RETAIL outlets specifically.

On top of that, many T1 owners like me will now no doubt download the $20 upgrade rather than buy the box, and it seems that a large chunk of the NFR users have been put off T2 altogether because of the pricing. This is bound to put a dent in the initial T2 uptake...

[Graeme]

I must say I'm surprised that dernil is stating that Mackie have no control over distributor pricing. I would have thought that they at least got to set an MRP or RRP.

They can set as many MRP's as they like, but there is no RPM (retail price maintenance) in Europe - it's against the law (intended to stop manufacturing cartels - not really applicable in this particular case, of course) - which means the local agent/distributor can actually set whatever price they want.

I always expect USA sourced things to be more expensive in the UK or Mainland Europe - as someone who imports goods from the USA myself, I am well aware of the additional costs involved - and the reasons for European prices being higher than the supplier country. Even so, with the current exchange rates (where £1 buys you nearly $2 and €1 will get you the best part of $1.30) the markup seems highly disproportionate to me.

I'll wait and see what the price is here first - but I can see that it's unlikely to be any better than the UK one (I might save a bit on postage). If that's the case, then Mackie have lost another potential client. The only pactical thing to do would be to get someone in the USA to buy it for me and send it on.

[Germ777]

I'll wait and see what the price is here first - but I can see that it's unlikely to be any better than the UK one (I might save a bit on postage).

Where are you at? I talked to 2 different distributors (notice I say distributors not retail shops) here in Spain and one of them told me they are not going to sell it because they allready sell Stein on a steady basis and don`t need to risk with an unknown app (that was a slap in the face to say the least) and the other one, the main Mackie dist here, were not sure but most likely around the 200€

If that's the case, then Mackie have lost another potential client. The only pactical thing to do would be to get someone in the USA to buy it for me and send it on.

Buying it from the USA would be almost the equivalent of buying it on-line as no "Mackie distributor" gets his share of the sale. Wouldn`t it? so I see this is going in a very bad direction both to Mackie and Tracktion. I can`t beleive they put so much effort into getting people from the UK and Europe to try the NFR version and then deal with us like that.
I wonder where the original poster of this thread is now? Probably playing with his boxed T2 and laughing at all of us freeloaders
I´m off to un-install Tracktion and look for another audio host.
Germ.