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People talk about testers being afraid they might piss off a manufacturer because they won’t get another “free” detector. Interestingly enough, I appear to be valuable because I speak my mind. The trick is to not be rude or stupid, and I see neither in what I posted. Just good solid advice should someone choose to pay attention to it. If that was enough to get me “canned” then I would not care.

As far as I know nothing has changed since Minelab’s last statement regarding detectors shipping. One thing to keep in mind when reading Minelab notices. It appears to me that “shipping to customers” is the same to them as “shipping to dealers”. The key thing is units are on the move on the way to end user hands. I am “pretty darn sure” it really is a shipping and logistics thing, but if you want to then ignore that and go with whatever rumors you like best.

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When my dealer said he didn't expect more than a few detectors and not for several more weeks, I became so frustrated I emailed Minelab in a very civil way asking for REAL information. Last night (4 days later) they did respond, but only to reiterate the same vague storyline- the initial units have been shipped to distributors and the dealers will be advised of how many and when, and due to the extremely high demand they are behind schedule but committed to covering the preorders as soon as possible. 

Im glad they cleared that up?

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Hopefully Steve is right, that this is just a logistics issue.

think about that for a minute.  Manufacturer builds device In Malaysia- it may or may not then go to OZ.  In any event, it comes to ML in the mid-west someplace.  Then it goes to distributors, then to dealers, then to me.

my iPhone X came direct from the factory in China to me - zip.

The whole manufacturer - distributor - dealer - customer model is doomed - IMHO. It will change.

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Poor Rick Kempf,  .   He lives in the desert where its hot, and has no access to a few cold ones.  How can we get him to relax?

Could someone give him a new teknetics pinpointer to play with meanwhile?   I heard he likes First Texas toys.

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1 hour ago, Rick Kempf said:

Hopefully Steve is right, that this is just a logistics issue.

think about that for a minute.  Manufacturer builds device In Malaysia- it may or may not then go to OZ.  In any event, it comes to ML in the mid-west someplace.  Then it goes to distributors, then to dealers, then to me.

my iPhone X came direct from the factory in China to me - zip.

The whole manufacturer - distributor - dealer - customer model is doomed - IMHO. It will change.

Metal detectors are too small a volume of sales to support dedicated logistics and shipping infrastructure akin to a company like Apple.  Apple has sold 77 million iphones in the first quarter of FY2018 alone (Oct - Dec 2017) and has a total revenue in the quarter of $88B.  Compare that to the parent company of Minelab which in all of 2015 generated $21.5M in revenue (1/16000 of Apple) and only half of that was related to metal detector sales.   You can literally do the math and see what you envision is not happening anytime soon in metal detecting land, unfortunately.  Apple = SpaceX, Minelab = slow boat from Malaysia.  

Minelab transparency would be great, but it isn't going to make the detectors get here any sooner, unfortunately.

Not sure most of the targets are going anywhere either, so sit back, relax, detect with what  you have if you can or help us point out things in the manual we don't understand or complain about something really important like:  what's up with no Equinox accessory pricing or availability information.  :laugh:

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Transparency would go a long way toward tamping down the furor and frustration that Minelab has created.  I can see no credible reason why Minelab is not keeping the public around the world informed and showing their company in a better light than it is cast in now.  They may have some geniuses in their engineering department, but it ends there.

Ditto the comment above on accessories.

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6 minutes ago, TedinVT said:

Transparency would go a long way toward tamping down the furor and frustration that Minelab has created.  I can see no credible reason why Minelab is not keeping the public around the world informed and showing their company in a better light than it is cast in now.  They may have some geniuses in their engineering department, but it ends there.

Ditto the comment above on accessories.

I feel your pain, believe me.  But all detector companies are the same when it comes to this aspect of the biz.  Garrett the marketing genius had a little trouble keeping the barbarians at bay (and I don't mean the Hoover Boys) during the AT Max slow rollout, ditto the Nokta Impact earlier in the year (that cured me of pre-paid pre-orders, never again!), before that it was the nightmare 2-year (from announcement to fruition) release cycle for the Deus HF coils and version 4.0 software, which was hilariously botched on release day when they uploaded the wrong version of the software to the server.  To work around the "slow release" issue in 2017, First Texas took the innovative step of repackaging a number of their previous detectors and creating a "new" Patriot series.  The year before it was firmware gate and faceplate gate for the Whites MX Sport.  It is indeed frustrating but nothing different than what all the other major detector manufacturers go through.  I honestly would be more upset with Minelab if I were not so heavily sedated.

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