Massage Chair Industry Update – July 14, 2015 (Video)

July 15, 2015
 By Allison Bricker
July 15, 2015
 By Allison Bricker

Massage Chair Industry Update – July 14, 2015 (Video)

Transcript of Video Titled “Massage Chair Industry Update – July 14, 2015”

microphoneAlan: Hi, I’m Dr. Alan Weidner from ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com’ and today is our biweekly massage chair industry update for, today is Tuesday, July 14th, 2015.

[SCREEN TEXT: Stock Status]

Alan: Not much to cover today, stock status is pretty good. The ‘Bronze’ Ogawa Refresh is back-ordered, and I did not have an ETA of when they’d be back, back in stock. We also see that, or have been told that the Inada DreamWaves – and we were warned about this a month or two ago, that their stock will be really low on the DreamWaves – but it would be about a week or two for them to come in stock, if something was out of stock – and I believe right now, the ‘Brown’ and the ‘Red’ are back-ordered, but the ‘Brown’ will ship this week, and the ‘Red’ will ship next week. So, even though you’re back-ordered on those, you’ll get them in stock pretty quick. As far as I am aware, everything else is pretty much in stock. The Panasonic MA73, of course, you never quite know until we place the order, and then they’ll kind of update us as to what the stock is on that, but I would suspect that they are probably back-ordered a week or two.

[SCREEN TEXT: New Osaki Chair Made in Japan!]

Alan: The Osaki – Osaki has come out with a new, a chair, they’re calling it the J – I think it’s the JP series. It’s a Japanese-made chair, it’s made by Fujiiryoki, which is the oldest massage chair company in Japan. They have – Fujiiryoki sells chairs here in the US, but the distributor sells, of the Fujiiryoki chairs, sells other chairs too, that’re, that sometimes get – people get confused, what’s Japanese, and what’s not Japanese. But Osaki is now importing a chair from Japan, and like I say, it’s made by the same company that makes the Fujiiryoki chairs, so it’s a very good quality chair, Japanese-made, I believe the list price on it is $9999. I don’t have it on my website yet, I’m waiting for the information on it, so that we can get it on the website, and give you the pricing. I believe there’ll be an instant savings on it, but the advertised price is $9999. That’s quite high, but I do believe that with the discount, it’ll bring it down significantly, but anything that’s Japanese made is great, we all know that, the Japanese quality is fantastic. So far, the only Japanese chairs that we have are the Inada chairs. The Panasonic chairs are Japanese engineered and designed, but they’re now being manufactured in Panasonic-owned factories in China, but the quality control is the same, and the three-year warranty is still in place, and it’s fantastic chairs.

[SCREEN TEXT: Japanese vs. Taiwanese vs. Chinese]

Alan: The Taiwanese-made chairs are known to be almost as good as the Japanese chairs, and better than the mainland Chinese chairs, and the Tai – and we’ve talked about this before on this biweekly update – but the Taiwanese chairs would include the Infinity IT-9800, the Johnson chairs, which now, which would also include the Apex Regent, and also the new Luraco iRobotics 7, which is half US, half Taiwanese-made. So, they import the Taiwanese parts, assemble the chair with the American-made components, which are primarily electronic components, and they assemble it, and quality control test it here in the US. But those are the chairs that have the Taiwanese components, and those are very, very good chairs as well, and then you have, of course, the broad base of Chinese chairs, which make up the vast majority of chairs being sold in the US market. Anyway, so that’s the new chair that’s coming out from Osaki, so we will be adding that to the website as soon as we get the information from them. Also, the Apex Lotus is a new model from the Osaki family. As you know, as you may or may not know, Osaki, Titan, and Apex are all from the same – they’re all imported by the same company, Osaki/Titan, and the Apex – right now, we have the Regal, the Regent, and the Ultra, which is a very popular chair, a well-priced L-track chair.

[SCREEN TEXT: Apex Lotus Coming!]

Alan: But the Lotus is another – I believe that’s also an L-track chair, I cannot recall – but it’s a zero-gravity chair, that chair we should also be having on our website, within a reasonable amount of time. And believe it or not, that is pretty much it for news, as far as massage chairs go. This is the slow time of the year for massage chairs, and we’ll be coming in to the – at the end of the third quarter, beginning of the fourth quarter is when you’ll see a lot of new – well, we’ve seen new models coming out already, but you’ll see more stuff happening, that the massage chair companies want to have out before the Christmas rush. But right now, things are kind of quiet, kind of slow, stock, as you can tell, is pretty good, except for the ones that I told you about. But anyway, if you have any questions, or you want to know anything else, or you’ve heard of anything that I haven’t covered in these updates, feel free to contact me, and I’d be happy to chitchat with you about it.

[SCREEN TEXT: Insurance and Massage Chairs]

Alan: You know, one question I get asked an awful lot about, and I’ve addressed this in years gone by, in articles, and I don’t know if I’ve ever actually addressed it a biweekly update, but I get called all the time from people that want to know if insurance will pay for their massage chair. And we have kind of this, loop of crazy, between the doctors, and the insurance company, and the vendors of the massage chairs, and here’s the deal – and by the way, I will preface this by saying that I have never seen a – you know, general insurance company pay for a massage chair. That’s not to say they haven’t, but I’ve never seen it in the 10 + years I’ve been in this business, and as a chiropractor, 17, you know, 17 years in practice, I never saw an insurance company pay – a general insurance company pay for a massage chair – I have seen two massage chairs sold, that were paid for by the government, for certain disabilities, and certain situations, that were not covered by general insurance, but covered by the governmental disability insurance, but not by mainstream insurance, you know. And so, but here’s the gig, a customer will call their insurance company, and say ‘Now, I need, I want to know if you guys will pay for my massage chair. The insurance company says ‘Yes, just have your doctor bill a code, because there’s a code that we need to get from the doctor that says that they’re billing for this massage chair.’ So, the customer goes to the doctor, or the patient, he goes to the doctor, and says ‘Hey, I called my insurance company, they say they need to know this code, you need to bill this code to get this massage chair paid for.’ Well, the doctor has no idea what the code is, so the doctor calls the insurance company, and asks for the code, and the insurance company won’t divulge the code number. So, here is this insurance company that says that they need a code from the doctor, doctor doesn’t know what the code is, of course, calls the insurance company, insurance company won’t give them the code, the doctor is supposed to figure that out on his own, and then the patient, in the middle, or the customer in the middle, never gets the chair paid for. And this is the loop of crazy, I call it, with the insurance company, and I don’t know if it’s malicious, I don’t know if it’s just some misunderstanding, but I have run in to this so many times, I’m beginning to think that there’s some kind of a strategic denial for payment on a massage chair, and if there was a payment, I don’t know if it would be a full payment, or a partial payment, or 5%, 10%, 80%, I don’t know. But anyway, I get asked about the insurance thing all the time, and I thought maybe I would address that here a little bit, just so that you can understand that it’s not – what we recommend to people that want to know if their insurance will cover it is – buy the chair, get your prescription from your doctor, submit the prescription, and your invoice for the massage chair to your insurance company, and then see if they’ll reimburse you. Now, of course, you’re out of the money, you know, at first, and if they don’t pay you, of course, you’re still going to be out the money, of course, you’ll still have a wonderful massage chair, but I’m just telling you, don’t count on your insurance company to pay for a massage chair. And if any of you have had an experience where a massage chair has been paid for by general insurance, please let us know, enter it in on the comments here on this YouTube video, we would love to hear about it. As a matter of fact, I think that’d be great if you had any information, or any feedback, or anything, that I’ve talked about here, or above and beyond what I’ve talked about, it’d be good to hear from you. So, anyway, that’d be pretty cool.

[SCREEN TEXT: 888-259-5380]

Alan: Well, I think that’s about it for this week. If you have any questions, feel free to call me at 888-259-5380. You can always email me, there’s the email address on our website, the phone number’s on the website, you can chat with me on the website, you can leave comments on our YouTube channel, you can leave comments on our Facebook page, or our Google Plus page, or tweet us, or whatever. There’s lots of ways to get a hold of me – and get a hold of us, so feel free to do so, we would love to – I’d love to chat with you about any massage chair topic that you’d like to chitchat about. Well, that’s it for this week. I’m Dr. Alan Weidner from ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com,’ please feel free to thumbs up ‘Like’ this video if you found it helpful. Spread the word by sharing this video on your social media properties, but we do appreciate you spending the time to visit with us today, and to take the time to listen to this, and watch this video. I hope you have a great week, and I will see you again in two weeks. Bye bye.

Click on the following link to watch this Massage Chair Industry Update on our YouTube channel.

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