I hadn’t looked at the Thiel website for some time until tonight. This is indeed an increasingly worrying situation. And yet an entirely predictable one, as a new CEO with no apparent high end audio experience makes her presence felt, with what appears to be an exclusive and unwavering focus on wireless and streaming products. Enough to make us all weep.
The tragedy is that they’ve cornered themselves into a situation where they’re flogging a wafer-thin "me too" bluetooth range, simply because they totally botched the transition from Jim’s stunning designs to those ordinary and yet unbelievably expensive speakers, for what they were, that, as far as I can ascertain, no one had even the slightest interest in. And now, it seems, those are being discontinued, with no sign of an equivalent replacement range.
Of course none of this would matter anywhere near as much if we didn’t all rely on Rob from time to time. As I’ve said earlier in this thread, I’ve repaired one of my 3.5 mid ranges myself and, I have to say, it’s still holding up wonderfully well. I think I may be getting both formally repaired sooner than later, though, given this latest iteration of the company, which seems to be moving even further away from what made Thiel such a special organization.
All that being said, what would happen if Thiel went bust while my mid ranges were with them? Hmmm, not such a no brainer decision to send them away then...
It seems very likely that the rationale behind keeping the Kentucky service department alive was to maintain a dialog with old customers, perhaps in the hope of interesting them in a new range. But that possibility has all but disappeared now hasn’t it!
It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest to take my weekly journey through the latest additions to this thread and read that the service department, and/or Thiel as a whole, is no more.
Of course that may not be the end, even then, as presumably Rob and/or others could set up an independent servicing operation, perhaps buying the old tooling, reference pairs etc. Quite honestly that can’t happen soon enough and we can then all stop obsessing about the current Thiel company woes and poor product decisions and just leave them to commit commercial suicide.
We’ve seen this situation repeat itself too many times in this hobby, right back to the days when other wet behind the ears execs came into the industry in the early 90s with aspirations to sell a surround sound system to one and all. And we know how that ended...
Ultimately, you just have to marvel at the insanity of acquiring a company with the reputation, technical and customer service collateral that Jim and Kathy diligently built up and ending up in short order with a range of products containing zero DNA of what made Thiel so wonderful.
