Atomic Chicken
Monday 21st August 2006, 03:43
Greetings!
Last year, I made a post in the Zeiss section of this forum. It was entitled "7x32 FL - you heard it here first!", or something along those lines. The basic essence of the post was that I was at a local Zeiss dealer, and he told me that he had seen a pair of Zeiss 7x32 FL prototypes at a show, and that according to his information they would begin selling them to the U.S. market somewhere around March of this year.
The post received a lot of interest, including several private messages from none other than one of this site's main administrators - telling me of a member (who I will not name) who is actually a Zeiss marketing rep who occasionally posts on this forum incognito. The site admin told me that he had been in conversation with the Rep who told him that the whole thing seemed to be a fabrication, and that Zeiss did not (at least to his knowledge) have 7x32 FL's in the works.
I promised the admin that I would get to the bottom of the issue, and obtain as many details from the local Zeiss dealer as possible and get back to him. Meanwhile, the thread continued to grow and much interest (as well as scepticism) was exhibited by forum members.
I had several further conversations with the dealer subsequently. Every time the conversation turned to the 7x32 FL's, he became somewhat evasive - always telling me that he had seen a pair stamped "prototype" at a show, and that Zeiss would make a product announcement at an upcoming IWA military show in Europe. I told him about the Zeiss marketing Rep I had heard from on an optics forum (BirdForum), and he always replied that all the employees of Zeiss were not aware of the new product, and that I should just wait for the announcement. This left me in a bit of a conundrum, not being able to report any further information to the forum or the site admin, I had no recourse but to wait and see if the product was actually announced. I decided that I would give it a 6 month window from the time of the supposed announcement just to make sure there were not engineering issues or marketing issues holding up the release - before deciding one way or the other.
The window has now passed. No Zeiss 7x32 FL's have been announced.
I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what the local Zeiss dealer had to gain by deceiving me on this matter - the only thing I can figure out is that he knows I frequent many birding and hunting forums and post about new optics - perhaps it was a ploy by him to either increase Zeiss sales of 8x32 FL's by generating an artificial demand for a non-existent similar product? Or perhaps it was some kind of distractionary strategy to keep people from buying competitors products due to waiting for the 7x32 FL's? I do not know - and at this point I don't really care, that dealer will never get another penny of my money as long as he is in business, which I hope is not much longer.
In any case, I'm writing the post in order to apologize to the forum for my original post - and for not researching it more thoroughly before getting hope up or communicating the details in general. I'm hoping you all understand, but if some of you have hard feelings toward me, I accept it - and hope that eventually you will understand that I bore no malice or fraudulent intent toward anybody during this unfortunate occurence.
Best wishes always,
Bawko
Edit: I have posted a link to this apology on the thread in question.
Last year, I made a post in the Zeiss section of this forum. It was entitled "7x32 FL - you heard it here first!", or something along those lines. The basic essence of the post was that I was at a local Zeiss dealer, and he told me that he had seen a pair of Zeiss 7x32 FL prototypes at a show, and that according to his information they would begin selling them to the U.S. market somewhere around March of this year.
The post received a lot of interest, including several private messages from none other than one of this site's main administrators - telling me of a member (who I will not name) who is actually a Zeiss marketing rep who occasionally posts on this forum incognito. The site admin told me that he had been in conversation with the Rep who told him that the whole thing seemed to be a fabrication, and that Zeiss did not (at least to his knowledge) have 7x32 FL's in the works.
I promised the admin that I would get to the bottom of the issue, and obtain as many details from the local Zeiss dealer as possible and get back to him. Meanwhile, the thread continued to grow and much interest (as well as scepticism) was exhibited by forum members.
I had several further conversations with the dealer subsequently. Every time the conversation turned to the 7x32 FL's, he became somewhat evasive - always telling me that he had seen a pair stamped "prototype" at a show, and that Zeiss would make a product announcement at an upcoming IWA military show in Europe. I told him about the Zeiss marketing Rep I had heard from on an optics forum (BirdForum), and he always replied that all the employees of Zeiss were not aware of the new product, and that I should just wait for the announcement. This left me in a bit of a conundrum, not being able to report any further information to the forum or the site admin, I had no recourse but to wait and see if the product was actually announced. I decided that I would give it a 6 month window from the time of the supposed announcement just to make sure there were not engineering issues or marketing issues holding up the release - before deciding one way or the other.
The window has now passed. No Zeiss 7x32 FL's have been announced.
I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what the local Zeiss dealer had to gain by deceiving me on this matter - the only thing I can figure out is that he knows I frequent many birding and hunting forums and post about new optics - perhaps it was a ploy by him to either increase Zeiss sales of 8x32 FL's by generating an artificial demand for a non-existent similar product? Or perhaps it was some kind of distractionary strategy to keep people from buying competitors products due to waiting for the 7x32 FL's? I do not know - and at this point I don't really care, that dealer will never get another penny of my money as long as he is in business, which I hope is not much longer.
In any case, I'm writing the post in order to apologize to the forum for my original post - and for not researching it more thoroughly before getting hope up or communicating the details in general. I'm hoping you all understand, but if some of you have hard feelings toward me, I accept it - and hope that eventually you will understand that I bore no malice or fraudulent intent toward anybody during this unfortunate occurence.
Best wishes always,
Bawko
Edit: I have posted a link to this apology on the thread in question.