[New Product Launch] RW800 - ROSE AIR Lite Launch & Special Promo

[Gorsti]

Confused about this? Mail today from supplier, was supposed to be delivered 18 09 26 ???

We were very pleased to receive your order, as the trust you have placed in us means a lot to us!

Hifi Rose has informed us today that there will be delays in delivery and would like to apologise to you for the fact that your RW800 Streamer is also affected by this delay. The expected arrival date in stock of your RW800 Streamer has now changed to 24.11.26 (dd.mm.yy) .

We will of course keep you up to date and hope that anticipation remains the greatest joy for you.

[duffer5]

The RW800 Rollout Continues to Be a Debacle

Unfortunately, here is yet another example of exactly what I have been talking about regarding the RW800 rollout.

Upscale Audio is now advertising the RW800 at the $249 retail price and states:

“If you have purchased a compatible HiFi Rose Unit from us, contact our sales team about special pricing on the RW800.”

Read that carefully.

According to this dealer’s advertisement, eligibility for the special pricing isn’t simply based on being an existing HiFi ROSE owner. Your existing HiFi ROSE component apparently needs to have been purchased from that particular dealer .

How does that help an existing HiFi ROSE customer who purchased an RS130, RS150, RS250, RS520 or another compatible product from a different authorized dealer?

This is precisely the problem I have been raising from the beginning.

There appears to be no consistent, clearly communicated nationwide procedure for this promotion.

Some dealers I contacted seemed to have little or no knowledge of the RW800 promotion. Others did not know how the existing-owner discount was supposed to work. HiFi ROSE USA told me it does not sell directly to consumers. And now we have a dealer publicly advertising special pricing only for customers who previously purchased their HiFi ROSE component from that dealer .

This should not be complicated.

HiFi ROSE announced a U.S. retail price of $249 and promotional pricing of $179 for existing HiFi ROSE owners .

If that is the promotion, then HiFi ROSE should have established a simple process before announcing it :

Who qualifies?

Which dealers participate?

Is the $179 price available to every qualifying existing HiFi ROSE owner regardless of where the original component was purchased?

What documentation establishes ownership?

How is the dealer reimbursed or otherwise compensated for the promotional pricing?

And most importantly, every participating dealer should have received the same instructions before customers were sent to them.

Instead, customers appear to be encountering different rules depending upon which dealer they contact.

This isn’t the dealer’s fault if HiFi ROSE has not provided and coordinated a uniform promotional program. Dealers can only operate according to the program and terms communicated to them.

But from the customer’s perspective, this rollout has been a debacle.

I have been buying consumer electronics and high-end audio equipment for decades, and this is genuinely one of the most poorly coordinated product/promotional rollouts I can remember encountering.

And again, this isn’t really about saving $70 on an RW800.

It is about execution .

You don’t announce a promotion nationally and then leave customers to discover dealer by dealer what the promotion actually means, whether that dealer participates, what qualifies, and what price the customer will ultimately receive.

HiFi ROSE has already publicly acknowledged that the RW800 purchasing procedure, participating dealers and ownership-verification process should have been properly coordinated.

This advertisement demonstrates exactly why that acknowledgment needs to be followed by action.

HiFi ROSE needs to publish one definitive U.S. RW800 promotional policy , communicate it to every participating authorized dealer, and make that policy equally understandable to customers.

No more guessing.

No more dealer-to-dealer interpretation.

No more sending customers from HiFi ROSE to HiFi ROSE USA to dealers trying to figure out how an advertised promotion actually works.

This should have been settled before the promotion was announced , not weeks afterward.

[Eleven]

d5, I understand your frustration, but geez, you spill a lot of ink on a $70 dollar savings. I know it is the principle and not the dollars for you, but this horse has been beaten to death. If the 800 solves your problems, it is worth the $249 if it is worth $179.

[duffer5]

@Eleven

I understand your point, and if this were simply about whether I personally should spend an extra $70, I would agree with you. I could have paid the $249 weeks ago and been done with it.

But that really isn’t why I have continued raising the issue.

My concern is bigger than my individual purchase. HiFi ROSE advertised a promotion to its existing customers. Those customers should be able to take advantage of that promotion without navigating conflicting dealer policies, contacting multiple organizations, or trying to figure out rules that apparently differ depending upon which dealer they call.

If nobody points these problems out and continues asking for them to be corrected, nothing changes. The next customer encounters exactly the same problem.

So yes, I have spent far more time on this than the $70 is worth to me personally. The effort isn’t for $70. It is about trying to get HiFi ROSE to establish a clear, consistent process that benefits the broader owner community going forward.

You may feel the horse has been beaten enough, and I respect that. But sometimes improving things for the greater community requires someone to keep pushing after it would be easier personally to just pay the extra money and move on.

That is what I am trying to accomplish here.

[Smegel]

I’d call Upscale Audio and ask them about it.
They’ve continued to sell gear at full retail even when the manufacturer went tits up.
Or discontinued products that they currently had in stock.

This is definitely something that should be feedback to Rose, but again… what does Upscale have to say.

[Bonte]

@duffer5

Unfortunately, here is yet another example of exactly what I have been talking about regarding the RW800 rollout.

Absolutely on point! There’s hardly anything else to add to this, except for one bitter truth: all of us at HiFi Rose are basically just unpaid beta testers.

If you look at the forum after every new software update, it regularly boils over. Every time there are so many new errors that weren’t there before that you seriously have to ask yourself: Does HiFi Rose actually test these updates before they are blindly sent out to customers?! You spend the whole day just looking for errors instead of simply listening to music. Sometimes the album covers are suddenly missing, sometimes something else no longer works after the update.

And now the owners are being really ripped off for the second time and asked to pay. I posted this months ago. It doesn’t matter whether you end up saving $70 or not.
The real scandal is:
You need this external RW800 part if you want to use services like Tidal Connect properly and don’t use Roon!
And that doesn’t just apply to the smaller models, but extends to the entire range of devices - right up to the RS130 or RS250. Because the internal software is at an end due to the outdated Android substructure, the problem is simply passed on to the customers’ wallets.

I continue to follow the whole thing here in the forum every day and only see problems: one person can no longer open an app, another can’t access their own data, and the next person suddenly only sees 50 titles in the queue instead of over 100. It’s just a complete disgrace the way premium customers are treated here.

Have fun with HiFi Rose devices and the software!

[duffer5]

@Bonte

Absolutely on point! There’s hardly anything else to add to this, except for one bitter truth: all of us at HiFi Rose are basically just unpaid beta testers.

If you look at the forum after every new software update, it regularly boils over. Every time there are so many new errors that weren’t there before that you seriously have to ask yourself: Does HiFi Rose actually test these updates before they are blindly sent out to customers?! You spend the whole day just looking for errors instead of simply listening to music. Sometimes the album covers are suddenly missing, sometimes something else no longer works after the update.

And now the owners are being really ripped off for the second time and asked to pay. I posted this months ago. It doesn’t matter whether you end up saving $70 or not.
The real scandal is:
You need this external RW800 part if you want to use services like Tidal Connect properly and don’t use Roon!
And that doesn’t just apply to the smaller models, but extends to the entire range of devices - right up to the RS130 or RS250. Because the internal software is at an end due to the outdated Android substructure, the problem is simply passed on to the customers’ wallets.

I continue to follow the whole thing here in the forum every day and only see problems: one person can no longer open an app, another can’t access their own data, and the next person suddenly only sees 50 titles in the queue instead of over 100. It’s just a complete disgrace the way premium customers are treated here.

Have fun with HiFi Rose devices and the software!

Well said. Also not to mention the ever increasing hardware failures. This is not behavior of a company that is thriving. Just saying.

[Bonte]

@duffer5

Well said. Also not to mention the ever increasing hardware failures. This is not behavior of a company that is thriving. Just saying.

Yes, I also follow that here and especially your posts.
All I can do is clap my hands in front of my forehead🤦🏻‍♂️ at what Rose is doing.

I’ll just name three things!
HiFi Rose USA
RW 800 Air Lite
Warranty claims, device replacement and if a hardware error occurs frequently, this faulty part (board) is always installed and not, for example, an improved version is developed.

I’ve already written off my 520 in case it ever happens
Rose-dead suffers. It has to last at least 3.5 years because it cost 3.5K. I gave myself a depreciation of 1K per year. When he moves into Valhalla, the 3.5K won’t hurt me as much anymore. At the beginning I wanted to use such a device for at least 10 years…mmh, that’s too high???

Price at the bottom of the website️ I found three dealers in Germany that offer the part for €125.

Rose RW800 Streaming-Erweiterungsmodul | Jetzt kaufen

Rose RW800 (Air Lite)

[ChrisZ]

Well…it’s Sept 30, and here I sit without the ability to buy this thing under promotional pricing.

Heck, I can’t even find any to buy at full retail price.

I would encourage Hifi Rose to do better, but I don’t think they care to improve their customer experience, which appears to be very evident here.

[Smegel]

Bonte,
Give it a rest.

You think its so easy?
You’re in Germany.

Try running a global company and open a branch in the Pacific.
You’ll start to understand some of the cultural challenges.

[Bonte]

@Smegel

Bonte,
Give it a rest.

Mikey you were actually almost always sympathetic to me, but now I can only do so.
I really doubt your and others’ sanity! You try to open people’s eyes a little here and they flag one. What’s going wrong in this forum.

[Smegel]

Aw Bonte…

The reason I had pointed to YT videos (which could be right or wrong) is that its not just me stating my opinion in a vacuum but that there are others who also share the same opinion. (But you know what they say about opinions and a-holes…)

Unlike you, I’ve had the pleasure of working around the globe and experiencing other cultures.
I’ve also been fortunate enough to have been given the ability to work on a variety of projects in IT as both an IC and as a manager then exec.

I suggest that if you are so dissatisfied w Rose, move on. Sell it and go with something else.
Yes they definitely have shot themselves in the foot multiple times… but hopefully they learn from it.

[ChrisZ]

Came here to say that Music Direct has these units in stock now.
I ordered one, and I just got tracking info.

I paid the full $249 for it, but am happy to finally be able to put my high-dollar streamer back into service.
It’s been a really expensive clock for the past year.

[Smegel]

Music Direct is a good company.
Did you call them to see about the promo?

They might have done something about it. Or at least spoke w Rose.

[duffer5]

@ChrisZ

Came here to say that Music Direct has these units in stock now.
I ordered one, and I just got tracking info.

I paid the full $249 for it, but am happy to finally be able to put my high-dollar streamer back into service.
It’s been a really expensive clock for the past year.

Glad to hear Music Direct finally has them in stock and yours is on the way. Hopefully this gets your system fully operational again.

But the fact that you paid $249 is yet another indication that HiFi ROSE still does not appear to have a handle on its own RW800 promotion .

HiFi ROSE announced a $179 promotional price for existing HiFi ROSE owners . This is the same issue I raised previously: customers were told the promotion existed, but the purchasing process and dealer coordination were never properly established or communicated.

Now, after all this time, an existing owner has finally been able to purchase an RW800 from an authorized dealer—and apparently paid the full $249 retail price rather than the advertised $179 existing-owner price .

That’s exactly the problem. A promotion isn’t really a promotion if the company announces it but still can’t ensure that its authorized dealers know how to administer it.

I would absolutely contact Music Direct and ask about the $179 existing-owner promotion and the $70 difference .

I’m glad you’re finally getting your RW800, but HiFi ROSE really needs to get control of this program. This promotion has been unnecessarily confusing from the beginning, and your experience suggests the underlying coordination problem still hasn’t been resolved.

[StandardModel]

StandardModel

[ROSENEWS]

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you.

We believe that the promotion details were omitted during the online checkout process.

Could you please share your contact information by dm? We would love to help resolve this issue for you.

We once again apologize for the inconvenience.

HiFi ROSE

[Bonte]

@Smegel

Sell it and go with something else.
Yes they definitely have shot themselves in the foot multiple times… but hopefully they learn from it.

I don’t know where I harmed myself. I recognized it early on with Rose and, as you know, got a second device, which was a good decision. Rose as Roon end point okie. I’ve posted this in other forum posts and it’s been blocked by people who just don’t want to think or learn.

[Andre]

So this promotion is for Rose device owners only.

But why would any sane person without a Rose device buy a RW800. ???

[burki]

Why not? You can use it also as a cheap standalone streamer.
In Europa you’d payed in promotion 125€ and now 179€ without any check about being a Rose user or not.
But the US is different in many ways…