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

There are two major points.

Firstly, I think old Thiel speakers keep to be
one of the best ones, in absolute terms. For instance, for my taste, Wilson Audio speakers, which cost is uncomparable to those of Thiel are no better - with apparently more defined mid and high ranges, they, for my taste, sound more sharp and bright. And lower frequencies of CS 6 and CS 7.2 and just incomparable with even largest Wilson speakers. 

So keep your CS 7.2 and keep trying to fix the tweeters. I have completed a similar task for my CS 6 about one year ago. Although it took almost one year, the coaxes were rebuilt successfully at Thiel. At that time, the telephone number did work and also e-mail communication was especially useful. Try to contact Rob  Gillum  at  rgillum@thielaudio.com. Although quite busy, he is a nice guy and I think will be able to repar your tweeter successfully, as he did with my two coaxes. Good luck!   

If discounters won't pay what the manufacturer needs to get for a product then don't sell to them for a discounted price.  Of course there will always be people resellers negotiating for a lower price, bulk discount, whatever. 

Price is almost always a factor.  How many of us can afford to go buy the very best of everything without regard to price?  You can drop hundreds of thousands of dollars on a stereo. Pretty much everybody is looking for the best value for what they have to spend.  This will never change.  I'm sure manufacturers look to buy parts as cheaply as possible as well.  Nobody intentionally overpays

I've bought both new and used and the idea that there's something wrong with used is absurd.  If a person upgrades a few times of course they're going to have extra stuff that someone else might as well enjoy.  A lot of people trade in or sell their used stuff to help afford the new stuff.  It's a fundamental part of the hobby.

Ah! See you used the word "value" and that's what we try to strike a balance for: Performance at a price point. We spent a lot of money researching the audio market and engineering hardware, firmware and mechanicals that let's us achieve performance that's consistently rated 4X-10X above it's price point in reviews. We worked really hard to deliver that performance at a price that is reasonable in the context of the industry. That may not mean that it's affordable for everybody but it's reasonable in the market. (And we recently quit selling to discounters all around the world. Discounters are killing the industry. If there are no dealers, then new customers don't have anyone to guide them through the process of entering into the hobby!) You'll have to trust me when I say I understand that the realities of life make it hard to afford the hobby! I get it, I really do. )

I'm really not looking to start an argument or perpetuate one. If someone starts out with a Dragonfly and eventually moves up-market, I think that's great. At least they're not listening to MP3s any more.

But buying decisions need to be based on Price V Performance. If it's just about Price, go buy a Beats Pill and be done with it! Amiright?

I thought that value being what the price conscious person is looking for was obvious enough to not need to be explicitly stated.  There are a few people who have so much money that they can just buy what they think is best regardless of price and then the 99.x% that factor in price when buying. 

I definitely agree that getting into the hobby has become extremely difficult.  The lack of brick and mortar dealers is a problem for a lot of things these days.  I hope some other model emerges that allows people to learn and get into the hobby but that doesn't also include dealers having to scrape by at best and get abused by bunghole consumers.