Die-Hard Proceed Owners...

The easy part is sending the letter, the tougher part
is to get enough people to commit and send the letters.
I believe that they need to get buried with mail to have
a real effect. So we need to identify our goal, which
I believe should be to have the AVP2 get software updates
when the No40 gets them. I don't think we have any chance
of getting any thing for the PMDT though.

If all agree this is the objective, we now need to rally
the troups. It would be awesome if we could get Levinson
owners to request it too.

So how do we rally the troups?

As I see it, we need to gather the following and go from there.

1- Identify key contacts (and addresses) at Harman International and Harman specialty group. I have started a list here, but need to verify addresses and see if there are others we want to mail.

Wayne Morris
President
Harman Specialty Group,
3 Oak Park Dr.,
Bedford, MA 01730-1441.

Dr. Sidney Harman
Executive Chairman Harman International

Bernard Girod
Vice Chairman and CEO Harman International

Gregory Stapleton
President and COO Harman International

Frank Meredith
Executive VP and CFO Harman International

(Is this the corporate headquarters???)
Harman International Industries, Inc.
250 Crossways Park Drive
Woodbury, NY 11797

Erich Geiger
CTO and Chairman Harman/Becker
??(Becker Division) GmbH
??Postfach 74 22 60
??D-76303 Karlsbad, Germany

2- Put together a collection of press releases, Sales Bulletins and correspondence from Madrigal and Harman with all their promises and assurances which we can reference in our letters. We need to have names, dates and sources so we can sustantiate our claims. Some examples:

http://www.madrigal.com/proceed2002/avp.htm
http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?aamps&1049600224&read&keyw&zzproceed
http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/newsflash/madrigal-mark-levinson-4-2003.html

3- Identify a realistic list of requests (not pie in sky, but obtainable). Possible ideas...

-Provide software updates for the AVP2 for 2 or 3 years.
I doubt they have the resources to develop new hardware
for the AVP2, but they did claim the No.40's software
was easily ported to the AVP2. 2 or 3 years of updates
seems resonable to me.

-Provide an affordable upgrade/trade-in to the next
Media console (the No40 complimenting unit Wayne Morris
alluded to in his "important notice" on their website)
(AVP2 owners). They did tell us we would be able to
upgrade our AVP2s to Levinson's, didn't they?

-Provide an affordable upgrade/trade-in to the upcoming
Levinson DVD player (for PMDT owners). A lot of us have
already invested $6k to $7.5k (PVP option) to help them
debug and learn about DVDs.(they probably should just
trade us even(wishful thinking, probably pie in the sky?)).

-Other ideas here

4- Draft a template letter which we can all use as a starting point in drafting our letters to Harman. This template should include:

-expressing our displeasure about being dropped by them

-any and all horror stories of what we have endured as
loyal customers while they worked on fixing all their
bugs. And should include how much money you have
invested and how much down time you have suffered.

-mention how the resale value of our equipment has plummeted.

-List our requests and reference all the promises,
claims and assurences they have made.

-mention how this will not only make things right with
their Proceed customers, but will be a great PR move
in attracting new customers.

-Other ideas here...

5- Identify and solicit Levinson owners to write letters to Harman supporting us. I don't think they can afford to alienate them too.

6- I wonder what the dealers can do to asist us as well?

Let me know what you think. Once we refine this we can do a new post to get the letters rolling.

Cheers,

Ht4me - These are all good ideas. I'm in the midst of doing a little "key contacts" research. I'll let you know what I find.

Great idea about the gathering of press! Do you have a screen shot or hard copy of http://www.madrigal.com/proceed2002/avp.htm ? This link now just directs you to the Harman home page.

I don't think it would be a bad thing to aim a little high on the requests. Trade-in offers to Levinson gear is a good idea...assuming that Levinson continues to live up to it's name. Have you heard that Class A has hired 2 top Levinson engineers? Thier processor & DVD transport that are coming out are supposed to be hot stuff in a similar-to-Proceed price range. Though I think our investments, as you've said, are worth the effort.

Identifying Levinson/Proceed owners IS key. Where else on the internet do these guys hang out? One of my local dealers has completely washed their hands of anything Harman. They're a VERY customer oriented dealer & they took the lack of info & returning phone calls, when their customers wanted to know, as a sign of doom for Harman. They feel Harman lacks integrity & refuse to work with companies of such. My other dealer patiently hangs in there & has said they are trying to work with Harman on moving forward. Maybe my rep there can be of help.

I think this is a great idea. I communicated with people at Levinson a year ago on these topics and while courteous didn't really get definitive answers. Obviously that is why we are at this point. I am a heavy madrigal owner and woudl hope they are concerned about the marketing impact of dissing this group of loyal customers. I had one of the original pav units and bought the digital upgrade with promises of forever upgradability. Didn't happen but ML did give me a generous trade in when I purchased a Media 40. I also have the AVP2,PMDT, two sets of Revel speakers ect. Frankly if they don't do something for AVP2 owners and particularly suffering PMDT owners I am tempted to dump the lot go in a different direction and let my feelings be heard long and loud on this site as well as with dealers around the country I have dealt with. I picked up my AVP2 after the reorganization based on Harmans assurance that the unit would be supported under the ML line.I agree that at least the software on the avp2 could be supported for a period of time and the cost to the company would be easily overridden by the value of good will created. Any company giving that kind of support and honoring its commitment to customers would reap a large dividend in customer feedback.

The Proceed web site is now gone. The HK web site does not have any information on Proceed or any links. If this is how HK is going to treat and support Proceed owners then we need to make sure that our fellow Audiogoners are aware how they are going to treat them in the future.

Gerry