NGD: Strandberg CL7

[Cloudy]

from a business aspect, fees suck, but thats why you raise prices, to cover increase in overhead, but to raise prices and still ask for buyers to cover fees? from a customer aspect thats insulting to say the least. it sucks that people are having QC issues but im glad to see all this damn hype subside and bring real criticism to standberg product. he/his products are not the golden shrine

This ^

I admit I follow hype, Im an ex-strandberg owner (washburn) and they're not the holy grail of guitars, they're definitely nice but nothing that deserves to get away with some of the stuff they're pulling.

 

[Randy]

IMO, custom shop or not, not a lot of operations are setup to make dozens/hundreds of guitars at this price-point and still maintain the type of QC that's expected at that price.

With the number of features and types of features present on this guitar, you really need to have people who have their eyes on the guitar from start to finish, and aren't just passing things along like an assembly line. You can argue the issue is the QC (a la, a specific department checking guitars before they go out the door) but at this rate, they'd have to toss practically every guitar that comes their way because the TYPES of issues that are coming up involve practically every department.

EDIT: Also, with regard to the Paypal fees thing, Paypal is like any other credit card processor... there are fees involved with any type of credit card transaction. It's silly to explicitly ask for Paypal fees, like you're expecting people to be paying $3500 in cash.

 

[ihunda]

The big difference with fees, is that as a consumer, the paypal fees are taking out of my after tax income, whatever's left but as a business it's removed from the benifits so it's pre tax money, much cheaper.

 

[thesnowdog]

It makes perfect sense. They raised the prices because of increased production costs. They still charge a paypal fee separately. You and others don't want to pay for the fee. Is that it or were there other things you don't feel like you should pay for on the guitar? The finish perhaps? Knobs? Strings?

You're ignoring basic 'human nature'. There's lots of things customers don't want to be _explicitly_ charged for and these sorts of transaction fees is one of them.

If you must, you can usually get away with offering a cash discount though many of your customers will likely find that crass too.

 

[Tom Drinkwater]

The big difference with fees, is that as a consumer, the paypal fees are taking out of my after tax income, whatever's left but as a business it's removed from the benifits so it's pre tax money, much cheaper.

Can you restate that somehow? I'd like to understand your angle on this but you've lost me.


IMO, custom shop or not, not a lot of operations are setup to make dozens/hundreds of guitars at this price-point and still maintain the type of QC that's expected at that price.

With the number of features and types of features present on this guitar, you really need to have people who have their eyes on the guitar from start to finish, and aren't just passing things along like an assembly line. You can argue the issue is the QC (a la, a specific department checking guitars before they go out the door) but at this rate, they'd have to toss practically every guitar that comes their way because the TYPES of issues that are coming up involve practically every department.

To be honest I'm surprised Washburn is building these. They aren't exactly North Americas "go to" OEM. For that matter why are these being built in North America?

 

[Blackheim]

A 20% increase in less than a year to justify "the real manufacture process" is a bit steep. The promised product has been delivered less than 50% of the time (based on NGDs) and they just decided to bump the price, and ya know, fees are not included.
That's of course profitable for them, but unfair to the customer and PayPal ToS clearly says: "IT'S ALWAYS FREE FOR YOUR BUYERS There are no fees for paying via PayPal. View Personal Account Fees"

Source for you folks:
https://www.paypal.com/ch/webapps/mpp/ua/feespolicy-full?locale.x=en_CH

The sad thing is that I was SUPER pumped when I ordered mine back on September (yep, is not here yet) because Mr Letchford stated: What you see, you shall receive. Then they added SS steels frets and everyone was super hyped. Now, after seen all Astral NGDs I'm just concerned. As far as I know and for personal experience, the Astral key contacts are a charm to work with and they've been accountable for their wrongs. But after all, we all expect excellence and even though they're great people, the bad will overweight the good.

 

[narad]

^^ If they're not offering any other payment method then it's not in violation of PayPal's ToS - it's the functionally equivalent to raising the price 4% and including it. It's only relative to other payment methods that the stipulation begins to mean something.

 

[Blackheim]

^^ If they're not offering any other payment method then it's not in violation of PayPal's ToS - it's the functionally equivalent to raising the price 4% and including it. It's only relative to other payment methods that the stipulation begins to mean something.

Didn't know that. Thanks for the clarification

 

[simonXsludge]

The sad thing is that I was SUPER pumped when I ordered mine back on September (yep, is not here yet) because Mr Letchford stated: What you see, you shall receive.

Well, that's just him selling his product. I wonder if he'd get all defensive about the criticism on those Washburn models, just like he did when people started questioning the S7 run quality.

 

[Axayacatl]

Have to agree with Jonathan on this one, Paypal fees are a cost of doing business. If Strandberg are not getting the profit margins they want then they should raise improve the quality of their product, increase the price, or lower their costs of doing business.

Arguments about the fees reflecting being transparent a cost of doing business and arguments about how the fees makes things fairer because they are based on your own purchase don't really hold water.

Please correct me if my reasoning is wrong.

H - happiness from owning a Strandberg, measured in dollars
S - guitar sale price, measured in dollars
C - cost of doing business (materials, labor, etc) but not PayPal fee, measured in dollars
p - PayPal fee
f - Strandberg fee

First, the customer is worse off, no matter what

no Strandberg fee, the customer gets H - S (assume H-S>0)

with Strandberg fee, the customer gets H - S(1 + f) < H - S .

conclusion: customer is worse off ( I"m not even taking into account logistical hassles caused by the PayPal fee as a few posters above have described).

Second, Strandberg is better off for any fee amount f >0.

Profit w/o Strandberg fee = S - C - Sp = S(1-p) - C

Profit with w/ Strandberg fee = S(1+f) - C - S(1+f)p = S(1+f)(1-p) - C.

Which quantity is larger? Notice that we are comparing

S(1+f)(1-p) - C vs S(1-p) - C

which is just

S(1+f)(1-p) vs S(1-p)


which is just

1 + f vs 1

which is

f vs 0

and we know that f> 0 is true from the start.

So clearly

Strandberg profits w/ fee > Strandberg profits w/o fee.

Lesson 1, if the PayPal fee is a cost of doing business, include it in C.

Lesson 2, and if you are worried about your profit margins, increase S or decrease C, but don't invent some fee f > 0 to charge your customers!. If you are worried about profit then watch some S7 youtube videos and stop rolling out boutique guitars with questionable QC.

One of the main reason why charging the customer a fee is against PayPal's ToS is because it disuades people from using Paypal to pay for things in the first place, which of course Paypal doesn't want. But in this case it also protects the seller because, funnily enough, they only accept payment via PayPal in the first place.

To say they are 'scamming' people would be a bit harsh and unfounded, but there is certainly a lot to question of their business model vis-a-vis PayPal fees.

 

[Svava]

HNGD dude

I'll probably die of rage if mine arrives with a finish like that though

So glad to hear it sounds great tho!

 

[BetterOffShred]

Hey so I'm not trying to thread Hijack here, but I just wanted to know, whats the average price in USD that Strandberg is getting on these 7 strings like this? They look pretty rip and if/when I get my druthers I'd like to own one.. Yeah everything in the world costs more than it used to, and everything goes up. Gasoline was 98 cents a gallon when I was a senior in HS, now I'm paying 4.19 a gallon for Diesel.. blows..

-Brett

 

[Jlang]

^ I think they run around 3500 usd new.

 

[blckrnblckt]

If it were me, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a perfect or flawed guitar.