Thank you - I’ve felt welcome :)
Most of my posts here have been on the Helix Stadium thread purely because I’ve got a deposit down so I should (fingers crossed) get one when they land. The difference it makes being able to post genuine product related questions on a forum and have them answered is huge. That is, questions answered by someone *from the company* and then engaging in discussions around the official response and potentially going off on tangents. I don’t know if the mods here have to get rid of many posts or reign people in but genuinely that thread has lots of relevant information plus some funny stuff and no serious idiot behaviour that I’ve seen. I will take that. I’ve had more questions directly answers by a Line 6 employee here in two months of posting than I’ve ever had in 12 years on the official Kemper forum. Of course, it’s not just the comms sending me to getting a Stadium but being confident that I know what it does from the horse’s mouth is important to me and in stark contrast to what I’ve become used to.
I sell tech products for a living these days, I was originally an engineer and I’ve been involved with aspects of product management / internal product tweaks / customer training / applications support etc. I 100% get that you can’t always tell the customer what they want to know right now and that some customers can be unrealistic in their expectations with this. The majority will accept ‘I’m really sorry, I can’t talk about that right now but you’ll love it’. Ignoring people and going out of your way to appear difficult is not a great idea IMO. Of course, if the mk2 turns out to be world beating in terms of tonal quality there will be lots of happy customers. But the old statement about ‘build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door’ just isn’t true. Sure, some people will find your mousetrap and buy it. Most people will buy the second-best mousetrap from the guy that is shouting ‘come buy my lovely mousetrap’. How you present yourself matters. If it didn’t, there would be no need for websites, marketing or anything else.
I have no doubt that the people working there are lovely folks and I want them to succeed. Competition and choice is good for us all as paying customers as all the products get better……. Kemper being alive and well will keep Line 6 wanting to beat them - it’s how it goes. So the fact that I told Kemper on their own forum a couple of weeks ago that *their own website* still said ‘expected Summer’ for the mk2 profiling despite it no longer being Summer wasn’t a great look. The fact that it’s 10th October and that’s what it still says on the product page for Mk2 is off the charts communication stupidity of the highest order. This is not helping them. You could argue that most people don’t care and you’d probably be right but if this turns just one person off and it’s avoidable? Don’t do it when it’s so easy to fix. That’s what frustrates me - it’s a decent product still for many people - please, for the love of all that is holy, realise that how you present yourself makes a difference to a lot of people and sort out the simple things like updating a website and not being grumpy on your own forum
