Louis,
All of your points are fair points. No question. (Except for one).
Mike picked up the last few glowing coals from the fire that was almost
extinguished and is trying to re-kindle it, paying cash as he goes, out of
his own pocket.
I retired from the computer industry where I was a marketing VP for many
years.
I can assure you most of what we talked about was futures and vaporware.
If you don't do that, you're toast.
All companies do it.
Half of the products I spoke about never came to fruition.
The other half did.
But I was paid to talk about all of them.
Ten-Tec is currently shipping nothing. Nada; Zip.
If they follow your suggestion to the letter, all a prospective customer
will be greeted with is a blank web page. At that point Ten-Tec would
really be dead.
I now work for Spiderbeam, in fact I run the entire company.
The owner and MD pays me to keep customers away from him.
Sounds terrible but he must do that.
He owns 2 other companies and has manufacturing facilities in other
countries.
He travels all the time, and rarely has time to answer customers...and
certainly not on their timeframe. But he has people in each business that
do that for him.
THIS TOO IS STANDARD PROCEDURE IN BUSINESS.
The boss can't do everything himself so he delegates tasks to reliable and
capable people.
Your expectation level here is totally unrealistic.
It would indeed be nice if Ten-Tec could have a contact telephone, but they
are not ready for that yet.
73 - Rick, DJ0IP
(Nr. Frankfurt, Germany)
-----Original Message-----
From: TenTec [mailto:tentec-bounces@contesting.com] On Behalf Of Louis
Ciotti
Sent: Monday, February 20, 2017 11:11 PM
To: terry foskey; Discussion of Ten-Tec Equipment
Subject: Re: [TenTec] Wrong Product - Eagle
Here is the problem with Tec Tec right now.
Most people go to websites to look for information. I am looking for
information on TenTec, I go to the site. I am met with a home page that
shows photos of 6 possible transceivers, and 2 receivers. Some of the photos
are OK, but they all are grainy, one is down right bad. It looks
amateur-"ish".
OK so lets get past that, let try and buy a radio... ooopps.. it goes to a
under construction page. No mention of the production "pause", future
production plans, nothing... hmmm
OK.... lets get more information... how about the About page... Well at
least this has some information, but it appears dated, and with this recent
news coming via a third party to an e-mail reflector, that the first
production radios will be "eagles" with basically no updates. The site
states differently, it talks about an Omni 7+, then a "Super Eagle" then an
Orion III... Wait... this all is familiar, oh yea that same text was
published 1 year ago, so that is dated, and obviously wrong.
OK lets go further... I have a tentec, and they are repairing radios, lets
get that out for repair... Go to service, click the contact us link...
ooopps now I am at mirror of an old site and have a 404 error...
Grrrr.. maybe there is something in the news section... Nope, just a check
back regularly notice...
OK lets go to the contact page.. Hey some useful links finally... but what
is this?? All over the site there are comments about not contacting
Distronix about anything tentec related, but it looks like if you are a
commercial company or government customer you get to call Distronix.. Well
I guess we know who they care about....
All of this adds up to people thinking TenTec is gone... or at least no
longer viable long term option
My thoughts:
1) if the radio is not in production, DON'T put it on the products page
2) If I can't order a radio, DON'T even have a products page, because lets
face it, if I can't order a radio, you are not producing radios, are you a
radio manufacture?
3) If you do have service available, have the service page actually work,
and oh have a phone number that people can call, even if it just goes to
voice mail, and oh BTW check the voice mail, and respond. If you can't have
someone to answer the phone, again that leaves an unsettled feeling with
people. After all you are trusting people to send in their radio for repair,
it would be nice to talk to someone about it. I am not saying you have to
have a tech man the line, it can just be a person who documents the problem,
and files the RMAs, a pretty low skill position that can't cost that much
money.
4) A lot of the website talks about how much better new management is doing,
seems sort of thing someone would say in house, not to customers. Really we
do not need to hear how much better you are than the last guy, prove it with
actions not words.
5) Post company news via proper channels, not via a e-mail reflector through
another person. Company information should come from the company and nobody
else. TenTec needs a face and a voice for the amateur crowd, and right now
all they have is an "OK" website, and second hand forwarded e-mails..
6) If TenTec is going to make a radio, then fine, figure out the production
time line, price point etc. internally, and then ounce that is locked down
and you have committed to doing it the post it publicly, and promote it, and
oh BTW don't count on a limit run of radios to keep you afloat, that will
never work, it is just kicking the can down the road. The eagle was released
when 2010/2011?? your going to save the company with 7 year old tech?
I give Mike credit for taking on this beast, and I had hoped he would have
been able to turn things around by now, but I am left feeling like he is in
well over his head.
Just my $0.02 take it for what it is...
On Sun, Feb 19, 2017 at 3:58 PM, terry foskey via TenTec
<tentec@contesting.com> wrote:
> You will never sell eagles at the proposed price point. I was not
proposing an OMNI VII only the form factor ie user interface of a box
similar in size or between the Orion and the Omni VII. What i propose uses
the Eagle receiver and perhaps transmit sections but in a different package.
>
>
> From: Ron Notarius W3WN <wn3vaw@verizon.net>
> To: 'terry foskey' <n5tf@yahoo.com>; 'Discussion of Ten-Tec
> Equipment' <tentec@contesting.com>
> Sent: Sunday, February 19, 2017 2:48 PM
> Subject: RE: [TenTec] Wrong Product - Eagle
>
> Terry,
>
> I would respectfully disagree with you in part.
>
> Considering that the Omni VII is the older of the two designs, it
> makes sense to bring back the Eagle first. Less chance of parts
> suddenly becoming unobtanium, one of the hottest receivers on the
> market at the time (remember the upgrade to the Orion/Orion II second
> receiver was the Eagle receiver design, as I recall), and a relatively
compact design.
>
> If were Mike to ask for my input, which he has not, my only quibble
> would be to make the "bare bones" Eagles all with the antenna tuner.
> You can achieve a bit of an economy of scale that way, and it would be
> a good selling point when compared to the imported rigs for less money
that come an AT installed.
>
> Now, with that said...
>
> I would agree that, if I were asked, which I have not, that the first
"new"
> rig would logically be an updated Omni VII. Take the Eagle design,
> bring it up to date with technology from the last few years, possibly
> add either a second receiver or the capability to add one later (a
> simple add-in board, perhaps). Use the larger rig form factor of an
> Omni VII or an Orion for the purpose of ergonomics (I've used a K3,
> and I really dislike the small knobs and the relatively crowded front
> panel... But I don't wan an all menu driven rig, either).
>
> Once that's done, if I were asked, which I have not, I'd then suggest
> updating the Eagle. So the two primary HF rigs would be the 'updated'
> Eagle and the 'updated' Omni VII, whatever names/numbers end up being
> hung on them.
>
> Oh, and I would also (if asked) suggest bringing the Rebel & Patriot
> back sooner than later, and yes, I know that the old CPU is out of
> production and this would require a small redesign. They were selling
> quite well for a while, and it looked as though they were a big hit
> with those interested in Open Source and similar 'mod' projects. Both
> were essentially single board rigs, as I recall, with a simple case.
> Should be easy to put back in production (oh, sure) compared to the other
rigs.
>
> ...and if at all possible, I'd hope Mike can have rigs with him at
> Hamvention (I guess we can't call it Dayton anymore, can we? Xenia
> Hamvention just doesn't have the ring to it though). I think it would
> be a huge postitive PR step to not just SAY that the gear is back in
> production, but to SHOW them, and display them ready for sale NOW. If
> Mike were to ask my opinion, that is, which he has not.
>
> Back to the contest!
>
> 73. ron w3wn
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: TenTec [mailto:tentec-bounces@contesting.com] On Behalf Of terry
> foskey via TenTec
> Sent: Sunday, February 19, 2017 11:58 AM
> To: TenTec@contesting.com
> Cc: terry foskey
> Subject: [TenTec] Wrong Product - Eagle
>
> I personally believe the Eagle is the wrong product to hang a radio
> restart on. Piggy back on the OMNI VII and Orion 2. Take a form
> factor somewhere near the Omni VII box, slap two eagle receivers in
> it, nice pad adapter screen with an output for a larger screen, IF
> Out and you could compete with elecraft and others. The user
> interface alone on the Tentec will run circles around the Elecraft.
> Perhaps Im wrong but I don't believe the Eagle has the demand.
> N5TFTerry
> _______________________________________________
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>
>
> ---
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>
>
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