Major Roon Changes - Devialet Impact?

[Greg]

It’s important to remember that most of us here did not have to pay for the C/I board upgrade. If you remember, at the time the Pro upgrade became available, Devialet offered it at a price, but stated, within a time envelope, a further upgrade to C/I would be delivered for free. There are several of us here who took advantage of that offer, so the only people who should be complaining here for breach of contract are those who, after the initial offer stopped, paid the full amount for Pro/Core Infinity upgrade or the C/I upgrade alone. The rest of us got a potential deal which to date has come to very little, but as it was not charged to us, we have no grounds for complaint apart from a generalised moan about Devialet not keeping to their word, and frankly, that is very old and well smelt horse shit.

Move along. Nothing to see or smell here!

Actually, from a legal and moral perspective this is completely wrong.  If something is given to you for free, that is one thing, but in this case something is offered for free as an incentive to get a sale for a very expensive item.  This is certainly the case for the CI board, I am sure that there are many for whom the offer of a "free" CI board was just enough to make the difference between deciding to buy or not buy the Pro upgrade itself.   It is a bit like buying two pies with a "buy one get one free" offer, one is fine, but the second one gives you salmonella poisoning and nearly kills you.  If you contact the company who manufactured the pie and they say, "sod off, it was free", you might think that was a little unreasonable.  Consider a car offered with "free" alloy wheels, when the wheels shatter, killing you and your passengers, some might think it would be poor form if the car manufacturer claimed this was fine because the wheels were "free".

The test of if something is free is if you can still get it for free without buying the upgrade, other pie, car, or whatever else.  If the answer to this is "no", then it is not free, it is a commercial incentive.  

Plus, if you offered truly free pies and they ended up poisoning people, or free wheels that shattered, you would still get into a lot trouble in most jurisdictions.

Offering something as an incentive for "free" at a later date, which ultimately does not match the original promise, is basically fraud.

Whether someone thinks the CI board has fulfilled its original promise or not, and indeed if the said individual wishes to complain about it on line or not, is an entirely different matter, but this does not change the fact that in reality the CI board was not "free" for anyone.

Ha, I see what you did there   

No, I am not wrong. What I have said stands. What you have said is a different issue, and personally (apart from some concern around the logic of your examples), I concur with the premis of what you have said.