Thiel Customer Service - New ownership is terrible!!! - WHAT HAPPENED TO THIS COMPANY ?

Welcome! aolchris,
Thanks for sharing your story regarding Thiel. Sorry, to read about your situation w/ customer service. Looking over my notes, I have, rgillum@thielaudio.com as an email address. This information along with info from tmsrdg will hopefully place you a few steps closer in resolving the issue.  I will do more researching into Mr. Gillum for furture plans related to his position as well.  Keep me posted as developments unfold for you.

Thiel has a Facebook page. Almost all about the Aurora line. Might be nice to leave some of your comments on their page.

I think companies should charge what they need to for service to turn a profit on it.  I suspect Thiel could charge a lot since they have such devoted owners and there's very little new being sold that would be a legitimate replacement. 

Since Thiel has discontinued all of the traditional Thiel designs and concepts I wonder if they could sell/give away the service part of the business to a former competitor.  There must be a company that could carry on the servicing of older Thiel products that would like to get a foot in the door with Thiel owners.  Say Vandersteen bought it so when the 30 year old Thiel speaker can't be repaired anymore they can offer a replacement that has at least some of the qualities that Thiel owners value. 

The idea that anybody is going to buy a pair of Thiels once a year is silly.  There probably are a few people who will do it for a few years while they're moving up the line but nobody will do it for long. 

How does buying from a discounter deprive a manufacturer of revenue?  Haven't you already been paid at that point?  For almost 100% of people price is a factor.  Once you've been in the hobby for a while you really don't need the dealer as much.  I'm comfortable buying with little or no audition in a store.  I would be willing in some cases to rent a product for a while to see if I want to buy it.  I don't know if anyone has that service.  Some dealers let you try something out for free.  I tend to think the dealer should get something for this as it is a very valuable service.  If I don't buy then the dealer gets nothing.  If I do then maybe take what I paid in rent off of the price.

W/my dealer everything I purchased from him he's allowed me to demo at home w/out charge. Vandersteen 2CE's many years ago, Thiel 2.3's and my current Aerial 5T's. Also all my amps and preamps. A good dealer is excellent to have also he will deal w/the manufacturer personally. My dealer knew everyone at Thiel as he dealt w/them for over 25 years and if their was a problem it would get solved quickly. If the customer service is not good from a certain company he has dropped them from his store.

Discounters deprive manufacturers of revenue by demanding lower prices. That discount comes from somewhere and believe me, it ain't their own pocket!

Also, to clarify, I didn't say the "I" expect someone to buy something annually, I was trying to explain the PE perspective. PE firms care about recurring revenue from existing customers. That's one of the reasons why PE doesn't typically work with audio companies. We know that we typically get one chance to land a customer. If we're really good, maybe they'll come back for more as we build new products. But we're not dumb enough to assume that's the case.

And I dispute your assertion that " For almost 100% of people price is a factor." If you care about innovation and quality then you need to be prepared to pay the price that that costs, else it won't occur. If all you care about is price, then by all means buy cheap stuff or used stuff. But as you do that and put companies out of business, its kind of disingenuous to complain that they either aren't providing service or went out of business leaving you no options!