Transcript of Video Titled “Massage Chair Relief Industry Update – July 16, 2012”
Alan: Hi, this is Dr. Alan Weidner from ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com‘ and today is our bi-weekly Massage-Chair-Relief industry and Massage-Chair-Relief store update. Today is July 16th, and we have a few things to go over today. First of all, like usual, I’ll go over the back order status. The only thing that we’re really back ordered right now is the Osaki 7000, still in the ‘Taupe’ and in the ‘Ivory’ colors, ‘Black’ is in stock.
[SCREEN TEXT: Ivory & Taupe Osaki 7000 Still Back-Ordered]
Alan: And Osaki’s also introduced a new color for the Osaki 7000, it’s a dark brown, it just came, it’s a, it’s more of a dark, kind of a, a coffee, chocolate brown, but that color’s available now for the Osaki, and those are in stock.
[SCREEN TEXT: New Dark Brown Osaki 7000 color]
Alan: Also, the WholeBody 2.0 by Human Touch is back ordered, I don’t know for how long, but it is back ordered.
[SCREEN TEXT: WholeBody 2.0 Back-Ordered]
Alan: And apparently all the Inada Sogno colors are in stock right now. Now, I thought I would mention that the Sanyo 7700, even though the Sanyo 7700 has been discontinued, and I mentioned this on my last update, or last couple of updates, there are still stock available, so if you want a 7700, they’re a great chair, it’s a Japanese-made chair, relatively low price for a Japanese chair nowadays, with the weakness of the US dollar and the strength of the Japanese yen. So, the Sanyo 7700’s still available, you can get one, but you’re, it’s just when the stock is gone, the chair is gone. This also goes for the Human Touch HT-5040, which has been recently discontinued, I mentioned that in my last update, and the 5040 as of yesterday, was discontinued, so only existing stock is available, once the colors and the stock are gone, then that chair is done. As was the 3300, which has now gone the way of the dinosaur. Also, thought I would mention that I had an interesting experience with a client, it’s a client here in Utah, they’re a ‘Lasix’ surgery company, and they have a couple of the Human Touch HT-1650 chairs, which we only sold them a few years ago, I think four years ago. Well, they had a problem with one of the chairs.
[SCREEN TEXT: Hard to get parts for discontinued Human Touch chairs?]
Alan: And of course, as you know, the 16-, as you may or may not know, the 1650’s been upgraded and replaced by the HT-9500, and that happened, I think, a little over a year ago. And so now the 9500 is their top signature chair, which looks exactly like the 1650, and is essentially, basically, the same chair, except for some Ipod functionality, and also the arm vibration is gone, and the ottoman lifts off the ground. Well, these clients had a problem with the chair, and so they called Human Touch, and Human Touch told them that they don’t have parts for that chair any more, and that kind of flabbergasted me, and, uh, because, you’d think of course that if a chair, if a company discontinues a chair, they’re going to continue to carry parts, because these chairs are designed to last for years and years and years. And I always think of them as lasting at least 10 years, so you’d think that they would carry parts for that long, well, apparently Human Touch wasn’t carrying parts for the 1650 any more, which, again, really shocked me, flabbergasted me. So, I called Human Touch and I said, ‘Well, what do I do for clients that have purchased this chair?’ Because the 1650 was a very, very popular chair, until the Sogno came along, it was our top-selling chair. Well, I was told by Human Touch that they have now a replacement program, so if you have a 1650, and you have to get a part for it, and the main part that is needed for that chair is the chair back. Now, that has all the mechanics in it, all the computer chips, all the rollers, all the main guts of the chair are in the chair back, and that thing, for a used part, is about $800 anyway. Well, apparently Human Touch has a program now that, where if you need a part for that chair, and the part is not available, which it wasn’t in this case, they will provide for you a refurbished 9500 for just a little bit more than what the cost of the chair back is. And I was pleasantly surprised with that program. So, I called my client back, told them about it, they bought, they swapped out for the refurbished chair, and now are just waiting for it to come to the showroom so we can deliver it, do the ‘White Glove’ delivery for them. But that always worries me when I hear about parts not being available, but it sounds like Human Touch, which is a good company and a big company, and a company that usually takes – well almost always, I’ve never had a poor experience with them in customer support – they will take care of you. How they will deal with the 5040, or the 3300, which have been recently discontinued, maybe three or four years down the road, I don’t know, hopefully they will still have parts for it, because the 7120 is still around, which is part of that same family of massage chairs. But I thought I’d share that experience with you because it kind of freaked me out, and fortunately it’s worked out really well for the customer, they’re getting a brand new chair, and by the way that 9500 is worth 5999, so it’s a $6000 chair they’re getting for just a little bit more than what the cost of a chair back for the old 1650 would be. And so hopefully that’s the way it will work with any of the discontinued chairs, for any manufacturer, not just Human Touch. Also, I’ve been getting a lot of calls lately from Canada, and I wrote a blog post about this, I’m from Canada originally, so, of course, when I get a call from Canada I get all giddy and excited, because maybe somebody on the other line, on the other end of the line, will want to talk about hockey as well as massage chairs, me being a huge hockey fan.
[SCREEN TEXT: Canadian Buyers Must Pay Customs Duty/Tax When Buying From US Company]
Well anyway, we’ve had a few calls and we’ve arranged for shipment of a couple of chairs to Canada, and this is the deal, when you have a, when you want to ship a chair to Canada, or to any country for that matter you’re going to have to pay ‘Customs’ or ‘Duty’ of some sort. And, when we ship overseas, we send it by ocean freight or air freight, then when it lands at the airport or the dock, there’s ‘Customs’ that will be addressed there for our clients. Well, when you’re going to Canada, we ship them by truck, and we usually will have free shipping for all our Canadian customers too as long as it’s not someone in the Northwest Territories or Yukon or some little tiny podunk town up in Northern Ontario or Alberta, where I’m from. But for the main cities, like Edmonton or Calgary or Toronto or Vancouver or Winnipeg or Quebec City or Montreal, we will do free shipping to those places. However, you still have to pay ‘Customs’ and ‘Duty,’ and how that works is, you will need to arrange for a ‘Customs’ broker, and I’ve included the number for a recommended ‘Customs’ broker on my website, and that ‘Customs’ broker will then be called by the truck driver when he reaches the border, then the arrangements for ‘Customs’ and all that sort of thing will be taken care of at that point, and then once that’s taken care of, then the driver can continue on in to Canada to deliver the chair. But you’re going to have to make arrangements for a ‘Customs’ broker. And now that the dollar, the US dollar, is a little stronger than the Canadian dollar right now, if it changed places, years ago the Canadian dollar was very weak compared to the US dollar. I think it was a 20 or 30-percent differential. Well, now they’re almost par and there was a while there where the Canadian dollar was stronger than the US dollar. Well, now it’s weakened a bit and now the US dollar is worth a little bit more now, so that’s probably why I’m getting the calls from the Canadian customers, because their Canadian dollar will buy a little bit more, or the US dollar, the US chairs will be worth – oh boy, make sure I’m not screwing this up – but when the US dollar is stronger, and the Canadian dollar’s weaker, the Canadian product costs more, relatively speaking, to the Canadian customer, so they’ll go to the US to try to get something for a better relative value to their dollar. I hope that made sense, if it didn’t, just call me and we can talk about it over the phone. But anyway, we get these calls, so this is something that people need to be aware of. If you’re Canadian and you’re looking for a chair, and you want to buy it from the US, be aware that you’re, we can still provide, our company can provide free shipping, maybe other companies don’t, but we will provide free shipping for you, to the major cities, but you will have to pay ‘Customs’ and ‘Duty,’ and how much that is, I don’t know.
[SCREEN TEXT: YRC Customs Brokerage (866)-568-5588]
Alan: Call the ‘Customs’ broker, and again, it’s on my blog, you can take a look at the blog post, and you’ll see the address and phone number for, or the phone number anyway, for the ‘Customs’ broker, and you can contact them. So, that’s good to know for our Canadian customers, or for any international customer, for that matter, you’re all going to have to pay ‘Customs’ and ‘Duty,’ regardless. Inada’s warranty, there was a time when Inada’s warranty was, I think, their US, if you bought an Inada Sogno from a US company, the warranty would still apply to the Canadian, which was, you know, 3 year, parts and labor, or whatever the warranty was at the time, it would apply for Canada and US. Well, that’s not the case anymore, as a matter of fact, if you want to buy an Inada chair, we recommend that you go to bodo.ca, which is the Canadian distributor for Inada chairs, and buy your chairs through them.
[SCREEN TEXT: Bodo.ca]
Alan: If, perchance, you buy a chair from a US company, you, your warranty will still be the same time frame, so right now the Inada warranty is 3 years, parts and labor, in home, well, if we ship to Canada, and we typically don’t ship to Canada, but if a company ships to you, your warranty for that Inada chair will be 3 years, parts only, and you will have to pay for shipping across the border or to your residence. So, you still have the 3-year warranty, but its parts only, and that’s important to understand before you decide to buy an Inada chair from a US company. I think that’s about it, that we have this week as far as news goes.
[SCREEN TEXT: “Like”, Share, and/or Subscribe]
Alan: One thing I’d like to ask to do though, with regard to this video or any blog post or any content that we write, if you like like the the article that I write, or the video that I record, would you be so kind as to ‘Like,’ you know, Facebook ‘Like’ the article or the video or ‘Share’ the video on your Twitter or on your Facebook account or Google Plus account or on Pinterest or whatever. If you like what I’m sharing, and it’s important and valuable and helpful, please ‘Share’ it and please ‘Like’ it on Facebook. This helps our business out quite a bit and I truly appreciate that. Also, if you’re on YouTube right now, and you’re watching our video, and you like these videos, and you’re a studious massage chair shopper, please subscribe to our channel and any new video that comes out, and you’ll be notified of it, and you’ll get first dibs at taking a look at it. But we do appreciate you, thank you so much for your patronage, and taking the time to watch this video, for any of the time you take reading our articles or any of my blog posts, I’m very grateful for that, and I appreciate the time you’ve taken to visit with us today. Again, I’m Dr. Alan Weidner from ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com’ and I have you have a fantastic day and we’ll talk to you again in two weeks. Bye bye.
