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After experiencing Broadway's performance with QSI (I now have three of them) I will buy QSI almost exclusively now. There are a whole wall full of soundtraxx and digitrax DCC and sound stuff costing similar to MSRP but not too bad because you have to install em yourself. I am not yet ready to cross that bridge. One person spoke about people trying to sell at List on ebay ... I am on eBay several times a day "Hunting" a specific item that is oop and too see long long lists of items that are very close to MSRP and "Buy it now!" tags next to them that are apparently listed by stores. I think some are virtual and some are brock and mortor. This was too much like recent train shows where I have seen 10 year old new products being offered at near retail of today's offerings. I find it amazing that they will demonstrate the product at trains shows and people will want to buy it after hearing it using the "WOW factor" by not making the product availible will lose sales as the customer is forced to hunt for a LHS that has the items and discovering the necessity to match the item to the loco. Some LHS's may install it for you but you are expected to do it yourself. The statement that customers will get list price direct from the factory means that people will go to a dealer that does have the item or perhaps discount it a small percentage to generate sales. Also they like the word "Advertised Price" alot in the declaration... we recognize that MR may carry a price that is advertised by the manufactor, websites may carry the retail price but... many will discount and then advertise a lower price. Or worse some will ask you to contact them for the price during a sale. (What good is a sale if you are not told the price up front??) Additionally they indicate prices given within the confines of trading booths at train shows, Counter tops at LHS's with dealers free to set thier own prices and phone price quotes not being applicable to the new MAP policy.. because those prices are not considered advertised prices.... That is alot of double talk here, most people in the hobby understands what things cost and they have a understanding due to years of experience trying to get items that are Limited Run for two weeks and suddenly OOP for years. I doubt that DCC and Sound products will suffer the same wild limits because Analog (DC) is slowly being shown the door while DCC is being "Cheaply" made to appeal to the folks who might want it for their 30 dollar christmas trainset on a loop. Then they discover that cheap Sound or DCC may not stand up to thier expectation. Recent threads in MR Forums have been showing us the battle between the Cheap DCC versus the Expensive DCC and the reasons advocating both. I better stop here because I am slowly confusing myself with so many points to maintain. So I summerize: 1- DCC and sound are becoming "De Facto Standard" in Model Railroading. The savings in wiring and the enjoyment of Steam chuff or EMD Low Idle cranking is apparent in the community. 2- QSI is already "Built In" to the loco, I dont need to worry about finding the right decoders or speakers and installing them. This simplifies my modeling world quite a bit. Eventually many products will have some form of built in ready to go features and QSI is uniquely positioned to take advantage of it. 3- Anyone who sells a hobby product usually sells at a discount. This practice has apparently started to anger the manufacters and we may be seeing further cracks in the infrastructure as the battle to find the exact item for your model railroad goes to the internet and information seeking for the lowest price. The rest will simply not sell the item for a long time or sell it to a customer unaware of the lower prices out there who may feel "Cheated" 4- Discounts used to be very rare in the LHS. Items that had no value after a year or more and not in demand got discounts so they can be made to go out the door. Much like unwanted pets at the county "Pound" before they are put to sleep. 5- Discounts being applied to almost everything to entice customers to come into the door because they cannot or will not buy at list (Read not enough money in paycheck) eventually breaks the entire system from the factory all the way thru as people seek to enforce or make policy to attempt a tighter fisted control of a problem that started to escalate years ago.
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