I Feel Like I Got Screwed. What Say You?

[TampaBayBrad]

Man!.......All this negative talk about Minelab starts because they ran a sale on Manticore. I'm sure there are a lot of folks that appreciate the sale and bought one.

[Lodge Scent]

XP did the same some years back. I had just purchased the Deus 1 and literally 2 days later they dropped the price by something like $240 bucks if I recall. I emailed the dealer to find out what the heck just happened and after some hemming and hawing, they gave me a store credit for the difference. 

[palzynski]

On 4/26/2024 at 4:20 PM, Skull diver said:

...but I mind that in Europe it seems we'll not benefit of this price discount.

..

I confirm the Manti is still at around 2000E .

It looks like we are rich over here  🙂 ..

 

[Luis]

2 hours ago, palzynski said:

I confirm the Manti is still at around 2000E .

It looks like we are rich over here  🙂 ..

 

In Spain and I think I have also seen it in Holland, they are giving away the 15 coil for the manticore and also for the box 900. I would have liked them to have made a discount

[EL NINO77]

On 4/25/2024 at 11:24 PM, Steve Herschbach said:

Nobody is blaming them for an anniversary since nobody including Minelab cares. It’s just a marketing tool and not why they are blowing the Manticore out the door at deep discount. I’ve been too deeply involved in how the corporate world works to be anything but cynical about stuff like this. They are not anyone’s friend and not doing anyone any favors. It’s all pure cold hard business calculations at work.

Steve, I agree with you... 👍 ...but it's good that Minelab knows how to use... even this opportunity... after all, the people who buy Manticore at this better price will benefit the most from it...

but I also hold the opinion that Minelab has a sufficient number of people on the board of directors who, first of all, have a "calculator in their head" /as we Europeans say/..and the company's profit comes first..

[longbow62]

I guess I don't understand how the manufacturing, shipping and the storage process works. Take the CTX for instance. Surely they don't sell a lot of them these days. So the one someone does buy might have been made several years ago? I surely didn't think Minelab had CTX lines continually churning them out. The same could be said of any of the detectors they manufacture. They make a run of a model then switch to another model in some type of rotation. It seems like Minelab would not lower the price because they were overstocked. At least not this early in the Manticore's existence. I don't think it was a poor sales or overstock issue.

On another note why Minelab thought it was a good idea to make the 900 is beyond me. They could have done the whole fixing issues thing and not changed much and still called it an 800. I would have understood it more if they dropped the 800, but they still manufacture it. A lot of people had they not had the option to buy a 900 would have instead probably have bought the Manticore. Maybe I don't understand marketing and maybe Minelab would hook them into buying a 900 and then reel them in to purchase a Manticore later.

[UKD2User]

11 minutes ago, longbow62 said:

I guess I don't understand how the manufacturing, shipping and the storage process works. Take the CTX for instance. Surely they don't sell a lot of them these days. So the one someone does buy might have been made several years ago? I surely didn't think Minelab had CTX lines continually churning them out. The same could be said of any of the detectors they manufacture. They make a run of a model then switch to another model in some type of rotation. It seems like Minelab would not lower the price because they were overstocked. At least not this early in the Manticore's existence. I don't think it was a poor sales or overstock issue.

On another note why Minelab thought it was a good idea to make the 900 is beyond me. They could have done the whole fixing issues thing and not changed much and still called it an 800. I would have understood it more if they dropped the 800, but they still manufacture it. A lot of people had they not had the option to buy a 900 would have instead probably have bought the Manticore. Maybe I don't understand marketing and maybe Minelab would hook them into buying a 900 and then reel them in to purchase a Manticore later.

I think part of what we're seeing is simply competition in action. What's interesting is that Nokta has just announced some sales promotion activity. Minelab's pricing power is being eroded.

[phrunt]

I'm guessing the 600 and 800 are still around because of the Legend and because being such a popular model there would be thousands of them in stock around the world.   Discontinue them and the value of the existing stock falls.

Once this stock runs low, will they keep making them or will they suddenly be discontinued? I think they'll phase them out over the next year or two but they may just keep them going because of the Legend.  It's easy to keep the model alive on their website while most dealers won't stock it as it's not selling, a bit like the CTX, probalby not a well-stocked item but dealers can bring it in if needed from the local distribution point.

If we think they care about replacing the odd pod that gets flooded we don't understand how little these pods would cost them, $40 maybe, and they're moving to inhouse servicing in places like the US which keeps their warranty service costs low not paying 3rd parties.  They make so much profit on each detector they could replace the entire unit many times under warranty and still retain a profit on the sale.

The 900 not just being a replacement for the 800 and an instant discontinue of the 800 is a marketing move I think, new models sell, if they just put the 800 into the 900's body to fix the known faults with the 800's design people wouldn't be in a rush to buy it until their existing 800 died.  By adding some minor new features like a larger ID range which is just a firmware modification and a little bit of a sensitivity boost even if it can often be used which is just another firmware change and would be very easy for them to do, they probably could have just given the 800 a free software update like Nokta do to make our 800's into a 900 software wise.

They could easily make the 900 appear like a new model with minimal effort.  And most of the 900's improvements with hardware are borrowed from the development of the Manticore, so it was a minimal expense for development of a new detector, and with new models selling far better than existing ones it made a lot of sense to me.

[okara gold]

I don't feel like I got screwed. In fact... I was elated to finally get my hands on one when it became available. I'm sure thousands of others would say the same thing!

Would I prefer paying $500 less now? Of course I would, but a years' worth of water has gone over that dam since my purchase, and I have no regrets.

[Dug D]

I'm not happy with the price reduction at all, but I think anyone that bought a 900 would also not be happy. 

I have had thoughts of selling mine, but they just cut the value. I won't ever order a detector again until its in common usage, the BT change during the waiting time, new detectors being released, no accessory coils for a whole year and a huge price cut add up to waiting a year for sure.