Boss Service Paper Price-Hike

[Joe Kramer]

Hey Friends,

I've always considered it a worthwhile "tuition" fee to buy service papers from Boss for roughly ten bucks.  But I just called today to see about papers for the Boss PN-2, and was told that all service papers are now $35.00--that's almost as much as some brand new Boss pedals!  Forget it!

I won't go into a rant about the evil and greed of corporations because they're too easy a target.  But in this society where people vote with their dollars, I plan on doing all I can to avoid casting my vote/dollar for Boss in the future.  Moments like this make me grateful for the network of friends and knowledge found here on this forum.  DIY is not only fun, it's an alternate route that leads out from under the crushing wheels of corporate juggernauts to freedom.

Regards,
Joe

[theehman]

You can always go here:
(shameless self-promotion follows)
http://www.ronsound.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=11_13&products_id=380

[Joe Kramer]

That's what I'm talking about. 

Hey Boss, you had me and then you lost me.  Now I'm going to give my money to Ron Neely.  You hear that?

Expect an order from me soon Ron. Thanks.

[Processaurus]

Weak.  That's powerful weak.

[theehman]

Weak.  That's powerful weak.

Mind explaining?

[Processaurus]

Boss.  They should be ashamed to gouge people trying to keep their old products (and reputation for reliability) alive.  I was all excited about their customer service because I got my extensive GR-700 service manual for $10 and they sent it quickly.  $35 is a "we don't even want to deal with you" kind of price.  Like a returned check.

Wait, is the $35 for Roland service notes too?

[Joe Kramer]

The guy on the phone said it was an "across the board increase" on service manuals, but I didn't ask him if that meant Roland also.  I wouldn't be surprised, and that would be a shame too, as I've often bought older Roland gear knowing I could get the service papers at a reasonable rate if it needed fixing.  Now I'll think think twice about buying old Roland gear, to say nothing of new stuff.  They've lost my loyalty--what little there was--but unfortunately I doubt it will matter to them at all.

It occurs to me now, maybe they've become aware of the DIY resurgence of recent years and they're afraid of losing money to people who could build from their schematics just as soon buy their pedals.  IMHO, the only way to deal with a fear like that is to embrace it, because once it's here, it's not going to just go away, sort of like digital music downloading.  But raising the price of information sets up an adversarial situation, which inflames people like me, who now look for ways to stick it to them back.  Bummer.

[R.G.]

I like the quote from Napolean Bonaparte - "Never ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetance."

I think you're just seeing another instance of MBA Disease. Some hot shot kid-MBA noticed that paper sales were still happening, and figured out that if they could not eliminate it as a cost, they could at least make money on it. He made the presentation, got his bosses' benevolent smile and a raise, and you get to pay more money.

You're much too small a thing to matter to Boss. They are not afraid of DIYers making pedals.

[Joe Kramer]

I like the quote from Napoleon Bonaparte - "Never ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence."

I like the quote from Napoleon Dynamite - "Just follow your heart. That's what I do."   

I think you're just seeing another instance of MBA Disease. Some hot shot kid-MBA noticed that paper sales were still happening, and figured out that if they could not eliminate it as a cost, they could at least make money on it. He made the presentation, got his bosses' benevolent smile and a raise, and you get to pay more money.

I'd be happy if they shut down the paper sales altogether.  I Paypal'd Ron/EHMan and got a PDF of the schemo I wanted for a reasonable price within an hour.  Seriously, that level of competence shouldn't be a stretch for Boss.
 

You're much too small a thing to matter to Boss.

Sure, and they don't matter to me either.  I can walk away.  But they are still in the tricky position of having to both make money and give people what they want.  They can't do one without the other.  If they don't give me what I want, I take my money somewhere else.  But that's just me, one small person, glad I have choices.       

They are not afraid of DIYers making pedals.

No, not to the point of it being a threat to the foundation of the Boss/Roland Corporation.  But I would hypothesize that they are certainly aware of the much greater competition in the market in recent years, with everything from Behringer to boutiques to DIYers.  And they must also be aware that every schematic they sell eventually will find it's way to the internet.  All that may not add up to anything significant, but isn't that why they call those guys bean-counters?

Instead of an across-the-board tripling of the price of service papers, they should raise the price of all their pedals one dollar.  That would boost the bottom line plenty.

[PerroGrande]

I'm glad someone else is well aware of the modern curse that is "MBA Disease." 

I could write a few examples, but with current magnetic storage technology limiting small-systems hard drives to around a terabyte each, I rather doubt that I would have enough space to do this subject justice.

[Ronsonic]

Worse than the MBAs are the wannabe MBAs.  As a bench tech my life is made miserable by administration people who want to show a profit every time they lift a pen.

Ron

[Paul Marossy]

I think you're just seeing another instance of MBA Disease. Some hot shot kid-MBA noticed that paper sales were still happening, and figured out that if they could not eliminate it as a cost, they could at least make money on it. He made the presentation, got his bosses' benevolent smile and a raise, and you get to pay more money.

You're much too small a thing to matter to Boss. They are not afraid of DIYers making pedals.

Agreed and agreed. 

[theehman]

And it makes my business better.  Thanks to all who have been customers over the years.

[Mark Hammer]

It bears remembering that Boss/Roland generates revenue by selling new product, not by keeping old product alive.  Certainly, reputation amongst consumers is enhanced by greater product longevity, but they address that by working on ways to make the product more reliable for a longer period of time as is, not by providing all manner of after-market service.  If they were GM or Chrysler, they could make money by selling after-market stuff like parts, but only a small segment of what Boss sell falls into the pricepoint range where it would be worth their while to provide that level of after-market service.

Quite simply, whatever documentation they provide is generally intended to avoid after-market service burden, not attract it.  I keep reminding people of this.   You can find Boss and DOD schematics because they aren't interested in servicing the pedals and are willing to provide the amount and type of information to service centres that can help to avoid reaching some critical level of consumer dissatisfaction.  You will NOT find schematics from Moogerfooger, Z-Vex, Klon and other high-reputation builders because they happily accept the burden of after-market service.

I'm with R.G. on this one.  Somebody somewhere made an ill-informed cost-recovery decision.  On the other hand, none of us have any idea what sorts of corporate costs occur by restructuring the organization in a way that is incompatible with providing this sort of after-market service.  Sometimes things get more cumbersome than they need to be because nobody planned for it.  I work in government, and we are constantly taken to task for how intransigent we appear to be in responding to access-to-information requests from the public and from journalists.  In some cases, I suppose there are instances of true reluctance, but in the vast majority of cases, it's mostly because we do not design our organizational practices around being able to respond instantly to any request for information.  I've been involved in fielding some requests, and in those instances we were starting from square one, and completely baffled as to where the info was or how we would extract it, because we hadn't orgainized the info for purposes of providing it to the curious from the get-go.  We weren't stubborn, we were just very UNready.  Easy to imagine that Boss/Roland has set themselves up such that providing the information to interested parties is far more complicated for them, internally, than it really needs to be....so they charge you for it.

[StephenGiles]

2 points - anything Boss stuff DIYable has circuits out there on the net, and $35 is not much. Just don't waste that amount on something else - give up smoking for a day for instance!

[Joe Kramer]

I was never for nor against the MBA hypothesis.  I'm sure it's one of many factors that may explain the price-hike. My hypothesis may also play a small part in the matter.

But my original post was not an appeal for explanation.  Explanations for things are almost always debatable, and the reasons why something happens seldom change the fact that they happen.  Being more practical minded than otherwise, I'm mostly interested in what to do about it.  I could understand bumping a 10-dollar item up to 15 or 20 bucks, but 35 bucks I will not support.