** ALL DISTRIBUTOR'S SHOULD BE RESPECTING THE 4/20 LAUNCH DATE. IF THEY AREN'T, THEY WILL BE GETTING A NOTICE FROM US **
Always great to wake up on a Sunday morning to see such great videos. It seems that the international customers are very vocal and like I mentioned in a previous post, we're doing the best we can here while obeying the rules laid out.
Previous sales we had were either prior to us having distributors and/or based on glass pieces that we were trying to move. Now that we have wholesalers and distributors, we are all respecting the MSRP and if one has to ask why, just search the whole Arizer debacle and you will understand why this is so important. It has been discussed ad naseum so I won't get into the specifics.
You can buy from us direct (and get a 225 store credit, not 150) or you can buy through an international distributor. One thing that you should all keep in mind is that early adopters have all upgraded to the Cloud+ model. If you want to look at it from an optimistic standpoint, the US customers worked out all the kinks in the Cloud so that the international customers will have a smoother launch. When you factor in that you guys get a 2 year warranty out of the box, and the additional $150 that US early adopters paid to upgrade to the latest model and extend their warranty, the differential isn't that large.
Is it what I promised to several of you over email? No. I have apologized for that several times already and did our best to find workarounds so that we can work within the confines of the agreement between us and our distributors. These key relations will help us expedite our CE certification and maintain a fair marketplace and allow us to better service your market if you need to service your Cloud.
We've gotten so many emails how we are trying to deliberately F our international customers. There could be nothing further from the truth. But when running a young company, you learn new things and new situations come up where you have to make decisions on things that you previously hadn't thought about. MSRP, CE Certification, international warranty process, were all things that were not top of mind when we were planning for the launch. Again, we tried to be as fair as possible while working within the confines of our own agreements but as with many things in life, decisions have to be made that will not please everyone but rest assured, it is the best long term decision even if the short term is a bit painful.
Keep those videos coming and we will see if we can make "Dunk a Munkey" a possibility.