Letter writing campaign (?)

[chibishin]

I have been poking around on the forums for a while, but haven't gotten around to posting anything yet since most of what I would say has already been said. At any rate, I'm posting this to find out if there is any interest in a letter writing campaign to try and get something done about the crappy iHP firmware? I have been sitting on contact information for about a month now and have been deciding whether or not I should try to execute this task. What I am looking for is to write up a letter stating our demands as consumers and express our dissatisfaction with the customer support we are receiving. Once we have finalized everything everyone could snail mail the letter to their office. The letters would be entirely identical with everyone signing their name at the bottom and having their return address on the envelope of course. I figured I would see if there was any interest in this since iRiver has basically taken a big dump on all of us. I understand if people don't want to do this since it will actually cost money (0.37USD for a stamp I believe and then envelope), but companies usually don't respond to e-mail and things like that because it is informal and is still not taken all that seriously as far as a professional form of contact. It has been my experience that if you take the time to send a letter, you usually will get some kind of a response. Anyhow, just gauging interest at this point.

edit: argh, someone move this topic. I didn't even notice I was in News/Rumors when I started writing hehe.

[ManchesterUnited4Life]

Yes, I would certainly be interested. As long as you send me the document via e-mail so that I can print it, sign it and send it from here (UK)

[jeff]

Hi Guys... you are certainly welcome to give it another shot although we tried this a couple of months ago with zero results. Here's the original forum thread.

[seadzz]

I agree with jeff that you can give it a try but also think you are beating a dead horse.

Here are a few posts from the iRiverzoo that pretty much sums up iRiver's position (not official but I think it is close).

"I wonder, however, what how their sales figures compare in Asia versus North America? I've noticed a similar phenomena in the Sharp Zaurus PDA whereby the vastly larger number sold in Japan effectively relegated the North American users into a niche that was barely listened to. In that case it was not surprising since Sharp actually owns the Japanese PDA market (you see their stuff everywhere especially in Tokyo's famous Akihabara district).

In short, the number of North American users may be a tiny fraction of their users (perhaps Asia is the main market for them) and therefore they devote the majority of their resources to satisfying them.

I do think, however, many of you do protest too much. Overall the iHP-120 is good enough for everything I use. Sure there are a few things I'd like to see added (I've posted a few requests) -_ but I see little reason to become hysterical over it."

"I do not profess to know much about the Korean market, society or psychology but I am somewhat familiar with the Japanese having visited there many times, married to a Japanese woman and considering moving from my native US to Japan permanently. I've noticed more than once that they do indeed see things very differently and they may not really care too much about on-the-fly playlist. You may find this strange and unbelievable but ponder, for example, on the fascination the Japanese have for robotic pets -- many, many people in Japan pay > $2000 for a robotic dog when they can get a real one that does many more things for a fraction of that price. There would be absolutely no market in the US for such a thing but it is huge in Japan. In short, for all we know they may indeed clamor much more for improvement in the handling of lyrics and not as much for the requests you see here (and with respect for the Japanese love of karaoke I would not be surprised if this were true -- they may want to see the lyrics to learn them and sing along).

IRiver may indeed have little interest in the US market or not as much as you wish it did. This isn't strange. Consider that Apple and the IPod is the established dominant player and it would be very hard to dislodge them. The reverse may be true in Asia... perhaps IRiver may be the dominant player or aspiring to be. This isn't strange because, like in my previous comment, Sharp didn't try very hard with their Zaurus PDA in N America but it sells like pancakes in Japan (Neither Palm nor Microsoft are dominant players in the Japanese PDA market -- Sharp is). You do realize that ~300M Americans and ~300M Europeans aren't much compared to ~1B Chinese, ~50M S Koreans and ~130M Japanese? The Western market is slowly losing its spot as the #1 market in the world and will likely be replaced by Asia in a few decades."

Bottom line iRiver is an Asian company bound and determined to do business their way. They care about protecting the Korean and Japanese market and the high margins they get there. They look at N. America and Europe is 3 or 4th place markets and really do not care much one way or another about improving the product features. OR they just don't know how to fix the issues and are too proud to enlist outside engineering help (this may be closer to the truth).

sdz

[chibishin]

ARGH, I spent 20 minutes writing my post and I hit that damn post reply button at the bottom and it removed everything I had written! *sigh* Here goes again...

I have seen the other letter that was submitted, however I believe that letter to be more geared towards asking for their participation on these forums rather than addressing specific concerns with their product and customer service. What I am suggesting is a letter indicating the non-asian market's concerns and a request for action. From what I can discern, the letter that was initially submitted was one letter with a list of names on it; in order to be taken seriously we must address these letters personally, so that we show iRiver that we, individually and as a community, are concerned about the issues laid forth and are seeking a resolution to such. With all due respect the original letter (as it was written in the initial post) came off as very weak, wishy-washy, and was vague in what issues we wanted addressed; it also never seemed to focus on a particular problem, just that we wanted more involvement from them in the community.
What I am proposing is a letter that is more professionally written, more precise about the problems with their product, addresses our concerns about their lack of customer service, and requests a time frame to either be responded to or have our problems resolved. I realize that a form of this has been attempted, and I understand if everyone does not feel like participating, but in order for anything to happen we must attempt this in the best possible manner. I do not believe that we have done that, and in order to do so I will need the support and input of as many users on this forum, and other forums, as possible. I will only draft up a formal complaint letter if I see a significant amount of support, otherwise it certainly is not worth my time as I have other responsibilities as far as my college studies.
I also see this as an opportunity to put my business writing skills to good use for both something I, and others, are upset about. I see all this anger and frustration on the boards with iRiver's product, and no reasonable action being taken. As I said in the beginning though, this is just to gauge interest in this type of a venture. That is all. Also, I hope that no offense is taken with this post, as I do not mean any hurtful or spiteful sentiments with these comments. I merely wish to point out, in my opinion, the flaws of the original letter and what we can do to better our situation.

edit: I am going to bed as of right now (1AM EST) as I have Japanese class first thing tomorrow. I will be happy to post any further replies tomorrow evening after I finish studying for my Astronomy exam for Tuesday.

[sweetspot]

Hey Chibishim, glad to see someone with "the drive" again. And no, no offense was taken by your remarks about the original letter. To be honest with you, I sincerely doubt that your "professional letter" will fare any better than the original. Unless you're planning on writing it in Chinese, your words no matter how professional sounding they are, will be falling on deaf ears.

You say we didn't address anything specific, when in fact we did. Our intentions were made perfectly clear in the first few sentences. Professionally written or not, the message was loud and clear IMO. I honestly doubt that using SAT words will do anything but confuse them actually. Also, it's VERY well known that they do not even participate on their own official forums. At the very least, one would think that they'd be safe and comfortable approaching their customers on their own turf ?!

And the nail that sealed the coffin, was that for some reason, we got very poor feedback from the members here, regarding this issue. And I'm sure that it wasn't due to the format or content of the Letter. I think people are either just too lazy, or just don't give a damn and are happy with what they currently have, which is an arguably reasonable assessment considering :

There are thousands of IHP owners, yet even on the official forums, there are only a limited amount of people who take the issues which exist seriously judging by how often their feelings are expressed by a written post. Also, look at how many members we have here. I'd say that a good percentage of them are IHP owners, yet we got what...40 some odd names for the list ? We originally intended on sending out individual letters, (all copy pasted from the original) but it seemed that no one was really gung ho about it. So as time went on, I personally started feeling a bit jaded and let down, as I'm assuming that those who were with me on this did as well, and it just disappeared into the horizon.

You are certainly welcomed and encouraged to fight the good fight though...You'll have my support and most likely the regulars as well. What I suggest first though, is to make a poll. (just to cover your bases) The poll should ask how many IHP owners Vs. Non IHP users are here, and out of those on both sides, who is concerned about the communication problems which exist between Consumer and Company. The actual poll questions should contain those things so as not to burden people with having to write it out. This way if we see that there are a lot of people, there's really no excuse for them not to partake in your project.

S.

[ceebmoj]

Hi I will send a copy and support this maybe nothing will happen but if you don’t keep trying you will never know.

Blake

ps sory about the speling and gramer

[rd]

I think trying to get communication from IRiver is not the way to go. You might as well tie a string between two cans and hang one out your window.

If you're going to send a letter you should just get to the point and ask for the firmware changes. Start a thread and nail down ten items that people on the forum really want fixed. If they actually bother to read it at least they will know what we want.

Hah! I just tried to register at the IRiver Korea forum. No dice. It asked me to input something with a dash and I panicked. Abort! Abort!
On my super-stealth recon mission I did notice that IRiver Korea **disneyland** seems to be a little different than the international forum **tumbleweed town**.

BTW, regarding the response you got to the first letter - Is the Iriver forum the Ipod Lounge-like forum that the IRiver guy was talking about? Did the forum change after his letter or not?

rd

[chibishin]

Well, as far as where I'm sending my letter I have a contact at iRiver of America and that's where I intend to send the complaints. I figure the best way to go about it would be to go through the proper channels. If it is as you say, then naturally the Chinese aren't going to give a crap about the American market since they have their own market to be concerned about. I didn't realize that you sent the letter to iRiver of China or whatever, so then sending it to iRiver of America hasn't been attempted before to my knowledge. In that case it is in our best interest to address the issues to iRiver of America in hopes that they would have more pull than us. Naturally, no company wants to lose money or potential customers, so if iRiver of America sees there is a problem, they would be the ones to address it to the software engineers since they are the division that handles distribution here. That's my opinion at least.

My main focus isn't opening a line of communication as far as having regular posters from the company on this board, or any board. My main focus is to seek resolution for these software gripes that everyone seems to have, however this may have to come at a later time. I have to focus a bit more on my Japanese studies and also keep working on my research paper. In addition to this, I've been having some transmission problems and I think I need to replace my throwout bearing, but we'll see what happens. At any rate, I won't be jumping into anything as of yet.

Lastly, I don't appreciate your (Sweet Spot) comment about "SAT words" and the assumption that I didn't pay attention to what the original letter said. This is how I speak; I'm sorry if you're insulted by my intelligence, but you will just have to get over that. I'm not trying to assert that I am smarter than anyone here, this is simply how I speak. If you can't handle my being intelligent, then that really isn't my problem. As for your remark about your point being clear, let's take a look at the original letter shall we?

Dear Iriver Crew,

We, the members of the mIsticRiver community, respectfully invite a representative from iRiver to come and participate on our forum. We are a rapidly growing group of iRiver enthusiasts, primarily using iHP 100/ 120's, who gather at this forum to discuss various issues/ topics related to these multi-codec HDD players.

We would consider it of great benefit to us, and we hope to iRiver also, if someone representing the company could come here and actively participate. We think that this type of two-way communication between iRiver and it's iHP customers would be a great asset for all concerned.

What we are hoping for is someone who could, where possible, not only provide some answers to our more technical queries but also address any problems or concerns we may have in regards to these excellent players. The fact that there is a forum dedicated to the iHP's speaks volumes and we thank Jeff, the forum administrator, for all his hard work in initiating it.

We realize that you are a busy company and that 24 hour participation by yourselves is not going to happen, but if you could at least monitor the forum and give us some kind of iRiver participation then we think it could only be to the gain of all concerned.

We are all aware of the official iRiver forums, but the existance of this dedicated iHP forum means we can concentrate more fully on these specific players. All we are requesting is occasional participation and feedback from an iRiver representative. Whether the person(s) is from Iriver America or otherwise, does not matter. What matters is that we establish a common ground on which we can communicate.

Many thanks and best regards,

The MisticRiver community

My original point was that nowhere in that letter did you state what specific problems we're having with the iHP players, you simply wanted a company representative on the forums to discuss problems with the players. That is precisely what I stated in my original post about the letter, yet you rail me and say that your intentions were clear. If we're on the same page, I thought our intentions were to get the problems fixed, not have someone here on the board to post about the players? The bottom line is people want to have the firmware fixed, and the features we want implemented. I honestly don't think anyone but the regulars care if there were a company rep on the forums, or not, they just want the software problems taken care of. I think it would be cool, but that is obviously not going to happen in this lifetime. Anyhow, I'm done for now. I have no animosity towards you, or anyone for that matter, I just found those comments to be ridiculous.

[ComradePotato]

Maybe we need a more direct approach. Anyone in favour of forming a militia group? I'm sure if we got enough of us we could get discounted plane tickets to Korea. I bagsy a window seat!

Compo

[sweetspot]

`I'm glad you took the time to dismantle my reply to you in order for it to suit your needs and justify your arrogant attitude. But let's start from the top shall we ?

I have a contact at iRiver of America and that's where I intend to send the complaints.

Might have been nice to know that you have contacts there. I'm curious to know how high up in the ranks this person is, and what makes you think that lodging complaints with them, would be any better than asking them to participate with Iriver forum members (here or otherwise) so as to give them some clue about the working minds over there. This would be much more beneficial than to have thousands of people wondering if the 100th+1 complaint was ever going to be heard.

I didn't realize that you sent the letter to iRiver of China or whatever, so then sending it to iRiver of America hasn't been attempted before to my knowledge.

The letter was sent to each Iriver division, not only China.

My main focus isn't opening a line of communication as far as having regular posters from the company on this board, or any board. My main focus is to seek resolution for these software gripes that everyone seems to have

That's all well and good, and judging by this new fact you've presented to us (the alleged contact) it may actually gain some sort of foothold on the situation, but you'll have to realize that since the very beginning of the existence of the Iriver forums, people have been at a loss when trying to get any resolve out of the Iriver team period. It's not like massive amounts of Emails, and regular letters have not been sent to try and accomplish what you're proposing.

Lastly, I don't appreciate your (Sweet Spot) comment about "SAT words" and the assumption that I didn't pay attention to what the original letter said. This is how I speak; I'm sorry if you're insulted by my intelligence, but you will just have to get over that. I'm not trying to assert that I am smarter than anyone here, this is simply how I speak. If you can't handle my being intelligent, then that really isn't my problem.

Wow. Now that's certainly a mouthful of arrogance. I personally wasn't judging the level of your intelligence based on the amount or selected words you chose to use. My comment had nothing to do with one word of your post except for the assumption that the original letter wasn't professional enough in order to be taken seriously. Here's you:

"What I am proposing is a letter that is more professionally written, more precise about the problems with their product, addresses our concerns about their lack of customer service, and requests a time frame to either be responded to or have our problems resolved"

You also said that the letter was wishy washy and not to the point...However what you don't seem to want to comprehend, is that it WAS to the point. Just not YOUR point. Two completely opposite agendas FYI. So your argument is quite out of place and out of line. Pretty much moot actually. The point of the original letter was to try and establish contact with them, and hope that they'd be receptive enough to take ANY kind of action. Which they did not.

And to be quite honest with you, I'm not impressed with your intelligence speech. You obviously did NOT pay attention to my first post or the correlation (or lack thereof) between the intent of the original letter and your idea. Your intelligence has not a thing to do with how you speak, or your mastery of the English (or any other) language. Please don't put words in my mouth. I never asserted that you claimed to be smarter than everyone here. You're simply getting way ahead of yourself. So to slightly re-word one of your statements, "get over yourself".

My original point was that nowhere in that letter did you state what specific problems we're having with the iHP players, you simply wanted a company representative on the forums to discuss problems with the players.

Well I'm glad we got that straightened out. That's the point !

That is precisely what I stated in my original post about the letter, yet you rail me and say that your intentions were clear

Please tell me that you actually see the connection here ! ? And please sir, I did not 'rail' you. Believe me, that was no railing. But YES ! The intentions WERE clear, if you actually pay attention to what the intentions were ! Hell..you even STATE what the letters intentions are in the quote above the last quote ! "you simply wanted.." Again, just because you feel differently about what should be stated in the letter, does not mean it was without point or purpose. And I'd beg anyone here (without bias) to tell me if I'm wrong. I'll say it one last time so that it's clear for everyone. The intention was to try and lure at least one of the Iriver people to a forum. Point blank, the end.

, I thought our intentions were to get the problems fixed, not have someone here on the board to post about the players?

I don't know why you would assume to think that a representative would only sit around and chat it up all day answering questions that we ourselves can answer. It's called getting a foot in the door, which would be a hell of a lot more than anyone has gotten at ANY TIME ! Be a bit more open minded.

I honestly don't think anyone but the regulars care if there were a company rep on the forums, or not, they just want the software problems taken care of.

With those words alone, you're showing just how very little you know about the history of Iriver users and what they would think of this. The Iriver community has been practically begging for such a thing to happen. They WANT open communication. To further prove this, you can look over at the Riovolution forums and get a sense of how much loyalty and love the people have for a company who encourages their employees to communicate with the consumers.

And yes, this has made a lot of Iriver users very jealous. I'm not saying that this sort of thing happens every day, but the point is that (and I think I can speak for most Iriver users) WE want this kind of community.

That's it for now I suppose. As I said before, your letter will be supported. And No matter what I've said, as you have, there's no animosity from my end either. But if you're going to attack me because you misunderstood something I said, don't expect me to be docile. I am glad that you didn't hold back though...honesty is always appreciated, even if it is misdirected. (IMO).

S.

[rd]

Hi Chibishin.

Now that I've read your post again I see that we agree that the letter should identify specific firmware problems. I also believe that writing IRiver America could be a good idea. Maybe your contact can do something. However, if we bother to write the letter we might as well mail it to Korea too.

The most important point that the letter must convey is that *lots* of users are concerned about the firmware. If it seems like a letter from 10 disgruntled tech geeks it's going to get ignored. The fact that it's from the entire Mistic River community will help but we need to reference other official reviews and user communities. It must convince them that these small firmware issues are costing them a disproportionate amount of money. Why not just fix them?

A strategy that I attempted on the suggestion forum was to quote the CNET review that IRiver mentions on its website. The review specifically says that the lack of on-the-fly playlists is a weakness. I also quoted about thirty CNET user reviews who said that they wanted on-the-fly playlists. Maybe that's a strategy that could be used in the letter.

If we are going to support a letter I think the Mistic River community should come to a consensus about the issues that need to be fixed. These should be detailed and reasonable requests.

I know people are sick of trying. I'm getting there myself and its only been a month since I got my IHP. But this is Mistic "River" and right now it's tied to the IRiver products. If the IRiver products fail to improve it's not good for this forum. The other option is to change the theme of the forum to included all DAP because there are plenty of people looking towards the second generation Karma. But right now I think that I would rather see the IRiver cash in on its potential. It's so close to being perfect.


So I'll start it off. Remember, It's not bitching if we're being proactive.


1) ability to create and edit an m3u on the IHP. I think this is a very reasonable request and could easily be implemented.

2) removing the file graphic on the left side. it has no purpose and it wastes 25% of the screen. easily done.

3) some indication that effort is being made to improve the database. it was weak enough that in the first two months someone felt the need to write IHP-Tool. that's kind of embarrassing.

4) support for gapless playback. I think this could be difficult for them but it would be nice to know that they are working on it. could be a great selling point.

5) record level meters for the taping community. i don't think they owe the users this feature but it would be such a smart move. its the trickle down effect. make the geeks happy and they'll convince everyone else the IHP is the best player money can buy. so what if most people will never use it?

6) The ability to delete files. it just makes sense.

I think that's a good start.

rd

[rd]

Well...just read Sweet Spot's post.
This letter thing could be dead in the water.

I'm going back to distracting myself with headphone shopping and planning my CMOY summer project.

How's the amp FAQ coming, Sweet Spot? I'm looking forward to reading it.

[sweetspot]

rd, my intentions are not to thwart plans for any further letter campaigns started by anyone. I said that I'd support the next one, and I stand by that. However, I feel that part of the reason that the initial try failed is because forum members here and at IF didn't get involved. They were encouraged to copy the letters and send them individually, with any revisions they saw fit.

If however, people are more enticed at this point, that's great and all efforts should be carried out. But I still think it's a great idea to have a poll thread asking users here whether or not they care enough. After all, without them....this is all for naught.

As far as the amp FAQ goes, I'm still gathering data. It's frustrating because new information keeps popping up. I'd rather not just say things without the proof to back them up.

[rd]

S.S. - I completely understood your posts and I realize that you would support a letter. You even said it a couple times on this thread. You should defend yourself. I just made my last post because I felt like this little rally had dispersed.

For the record:
Chibshin - Sigh...I was trying not to bring it up but now I might as well. You just can't go around saying crap like this.

Originally Posted by chibishin

If you can't handle my being intelligent, then that really isn't my problem.

I think your contact could be valuable but I don't know why you won't say anything about this person. Why haven't you talked to your contact already? I don't really understand what's going on here.
If you want to write a letter go ahead. Post it here and try to drum up some support.

rd

[Poltergeist]

chibishin... I very much doubt that Sweet Spot, or indeed anyone else, was insulted by your intelligence... I imagine that many of us found it fascinating to read about... I know I did!


Notice to employers:
Recruit a student NOW... while they know *everything*!!

[chibishin]

lol...Okay. Well I'm sorry, I saw it more as a sarcastic kind of personal attack than anything else. I mean usually when someone goes around saying things in quotes like "professionally written" and "SAT words", that can be construed as an insult, and that's how I took it. Sorry if that wasn't the case. At no point did I say you were judging my intelligence, so I don't know where that much is coming from. I'm just saying, I felt it to be a shot at me and I responded. *shrug* I don't expect you to be docile or anything like that, so I'm not surprised about any of this hehe.

As far as our points being different, yes, that was my point to begin with. I understand now that we have two completely different agendas. When I started this all out, my initial intention was just to try and get these software problems addressed, that was it. When others started posting and saying that this has been attempted, I looked at the letter as an attempt to get the software problems fixed in addition to having a company rep on the boards, not simply to open the lines of communication. That's why I stated that it wasn't to the point as far as addressing the software issues. As for the "professionally written" thing, I viewed the letter as being kind of informal and so what I meant was more along the lines of this letter having a more professional tone but that wasn't conveyed very well and I'm sorry about that. I'm not trying to deconstruct your letter and make it seem futile or anything like that, and I'm certainly not trying to lower other user's opinion on your letter, those were just the problems from my POV from the information that I was given.

As far as other letters and forms of communication being attempted, I feel it's a given that people have tried that before. I assumed that much, and I'd be ignorant to think that individuals haven't tried contacting iRiver before; I was just hoping that if we could organize something maybe we'd be heard.

It's hard to convey emotion or anything of the sort through message boards like this, but I honestly don't think I'm coming off as being arrogant, nor is that what I'm trying to do. If that's your perception of me, so be it. I accept that. I honestly don't think low of you, or anyone around here, unless there are some trolls lurking or something so that would be another story heh.

At any rate, with all the negative feedback I'm starting to think it's really not going to happen. Maybe people really don't care enough about the problems to do anything. I guess it's just frustrating being part of the very vocal minority. As far as my contact, it honestly wasn't anyone of great importance or anyone in an executive position or anything like that. I don't know who you originally sent your letter to, but chances are they were probably higher up than who I'd have everyone send the letter to.

Anyhow, as RD stated this is pretty much dead in the water. It's obvious the people who want to do something about this are in the minority so it's just not worth attempting anymore. I appreciate everyone's feedback, I feel I was mistaken for wanting to attempt this.

[Poppy]

I would support a letter writing campaign, but not if it focused on adding new features (on-the-fly playlist, gapless, etc.). iRiver needs to concentrate on fixing existing problems (DB) and quirks (display track# instead of song ID when song is playing, starting file navigation at root level instead of buried in a folder).

I think this letter issue should be brought to attention in the news or in the iHP forum since it's more visited. We have to get more people's opinions on this before we decide not to go ahead.