I will comment on one part of your last post, although again I have
nothing personally to do with our alarm business these days: the
overwhelming majority of dealers and customers in the US does not agree
with your assessment. The survey results that track opinions of our
security products and their value vs. other brands like Audiovox
emphatically show that people do recognize the difference and are
willing to pay for it. We've earned that position through years of
consistent quality, and a lot of hard work in engineering, product and
customer support areas. If you don't agree, that's your prerogative -
but you're in the minority.

I totally believe that to be true. As a matter of fact both of the dealers
that I have talked with (the same ones from my previous posts) said nothing
but positive things regarding DEI and Clifford alarms. One of them went as far
as saying that, I quote" We do not reinstall used alarms with the exception of
Viper alarms, due to their low failure rate".

From my own experience, I have had no problems over the past 5 years with my
Viper 300+, the only thing that I don't like about this model is the built in
shock sensor, which is turned off anyways, since I find them to be a pain in
the butt with any alarm built in or not. Both the Viper and Audiovox we own
have a proximity sensor in place of the shock sensor. This far I have
installed 6 or 7 audiovox alarms (never any all-in-ones) for friends and
family over the past 15 years and never had any negative results or need for
warranty repairs, unlike a crimestopper alarm I used to own. We also have a
pair of Valet car starters that work great, both of them are in their second
car also and are used all year around, since both cars have AC.



On the ebay subject, a casual looksuggests that pricing is not driven by
"old is better" but by simple supply and demand. Old products are
scarcer, and no longer available in quantity at wholesale prices by
dealers - or from manufacturers that dump goods that way sometimes. That
means the products being sold are mostly by end users, that paid more
for them than a dealer would have. I would expect them to sell for more
than current product which by comparison is relatively available and in
the hands of dealers that paid less for them in the first place. Throw
in the predisposition of a certain class of consumers to buy into the
"older is better" mythology (not that it isn't true some times, but
never as often as the auction market would have you believe), and the
model is complete.

JD

Let me ask you this, Why are older products in demand at all? There is no
shortage of new products to place a high or higher demand on old products.
Unlike cars, car amplifiers have no classic or vintage value only a higher
chance of failure due to age. If you could buy a brand new amplifier of equal
or better quality for less money or just a little more money with a warranty,
why buy a used one?