As a prospective buyer in my view this cosmetic issue / damage is totally unacceptable. If it's a transport issue, then transport rods might be required to prevent the case halves from rubbing. If this damage occurs when the stand rods are inserted, then the issue is the coating and B&O need to use a much less fragile powdercoat. I have motorcycles with powdercoated subframes and these show no chips or scratches and hardly any wear although they are subjected to lots of abrasion from rough ballistic nylons, rocks and insects! B&O needs to resolve this ASAP.

The old B&O items where shipped in styrofoam and soft form, too and they where not damaged everytime you received them :)

So, I personally think that the quality goes down, too: I have Beolabs 3500 "Made in Denmark" and "Made in Czech".
The younger "Made in Czech" one did "stink" out of the box like some chemicals... the "Made in Denmark" ones where perfect without smelling dangerous. ;-)

Lower quality due to cost saving and outsourcing because the management is greedy? Most of the time the same and the 1st sign that they'll go down.
A company needs to make revenues and profit but they need to make very good products, too. If not they must go bancrupt from an economic point of view because the marked does not need low quality companies. Even the discount practice is a very bad idea!

Simple example:
If e.g. Ford offers 20% discount on all their models it would increase sales.
If e.g. Porsche offers 20% discount on all models they'll start to fail and go down.

Instead of making embarassing videos, the CEO should care about maximising Service, Productquality and Innovation to keep up with the competitors in the market.

Actualy it is not safe to buy a new B&O TV.

TWG wrote:

Lower quality due to cost saving and outsourcing because the management is greedy? 

The V1 is made in Struer, Denmark. Kind of refutes any discussion about products from Denmark being vastly superior to others. Like I've said before, a lot of this is vague xenophobia, sadly. Westerners clinging on to the belief that British is best or only our factories produce quality. The Chinese-produced Beosound 8 and Beolit 12 are, ironically, some of the best produced products. I see few complaints about the BS8 build quality.

If anything, the "low quality" debate isn't about greed (as I said, the V1 is made in the traditional B&O factory, in Denmark), it's more to do with B&O cutting back on staff numbers - didn't I read that a third of the staff had been cut in 2008/2009? This is bound to affect production quality and there's no surprise we had lots of software issues around the same time. QA and post-production checks are often areas which are cut back first.

But it's not limited to B&O. As we've said earlier in this thread, luxury cars suffer from production issues and recalls. In fact, I read in the latest What Car that some of the so-called German luxury brands suffer far more from mechanical issues than their Japanese and South Korean competitors.

Same with the watch market. I'm a collector and some of you guys would be amazed by some of the issues found in this market. For instance, I had a deposit down on a Panerai PAM 386 composite watch. Was delayed, now cancelled. Although they produced a small number of these watches, they found that they....faded in strong sunlight. Seriously.

As I've said before, buying luxury and spending thousands of pounds of products, doesn't always result in perfection. In the watch market, you can pick up a £15 quartz watch and it will keep better time than a £10,000 automatic mechanic watch. Cheap Japanese cars often out-perform their German equivalents for mechanical issues, whilst top quality clothing brands are also not immune from production errors.

The problem is that humans have this belief that "spending thousands = top quality" and we need to get away from this as it nearly always end in disappointment. No, spending thousands actually means you get something relatively unique. When you get something unique and made in small production numbers, you also find that you live on the bleeding edge. In the watch market, buying a carbon case or a composite watch. You pay a premium for this material, but it's not always perfect.

When you buy something expensive the only certainly is that you payed a lot of money for it. We've said time and time again that expense does not guarantee quality. What you may have is exclusivity due to low production volumes, note also that exclusivity doesn't even guarantee desirability to many. Moxxey is a fan of watches, this isn't a dig at him or his hobby but I've seen watches costing thousands that look like a kidney dialysis machine strapped to your wrist i.e. not in any way desirable or aspirational (to me at least).

Your expensive purchase may also have been designed by a small team on a very limited design budget, it may lack the results of huge research and development budgets spent by more mainstream, higher volume manufacturers. Therefore your money may not even guarantee you have the best of components.

The above may not apply to all products or every niche supplier and I'm certain the marketing departments of such companies would love you to think that only their products are lovingly carved by hand from solid by a Geppetto looking character who has done it every day of his life since puberty but in the high tech AV market this isn't really the case either.

After all that my point is - consider each and every product on it's individual merits, don't assume all speakers are fantastic or that each TV is the best in it's class. Don't even pay too much attention to folk on Beoworld 😮 after all it's your money and you who has to live with it day to day, view/listen to it critically, compare it to what else is out there and then decide for yourself. Finally, only buy something to impress yourself, never anyone else.

There we have it, the world according to Punch!😛

One thing I forgot to add. Went to my dealer this afternoon to view the BL12-2. Whilst I was there I had a good look at the four V1s on display.

Sadly the black/dark grey V1s in the store display the same paint issues that a couple of users posted earlier in this thread. There's definitely an issue. Looking closely, there are sharp edges where the TV connects to the movable stand part. This might be causing some of the chipping through transit.

However, there was a gash on the black V1 on the main part of the TV, which tells me that the paint clearly chips off very easily.

It's important to point out that these issues only affect the black V1, the white ones on display were blemish-free!

According to my dealer, and like others have said, B&O are aware of these paint issues. Maybe they'll release some official paint for users to do a touch-up? :)

I'm going to side with Moxxey and Puncher here.  B&O are a small. niche manufacturer.  The V-1 is a brand new product using a unique assembly technique, made from a material and finish which are both 'new' to B&O.  They are aware of the issue, and are searching for a solution.  

To their credit, I think, B&O have historically taken great pride in delivering a high-quality product to the customer.  Do you know the story behind the soft foam paper used to wrap many of their products?  It was developed by B&O after it was discovered that BeoLab 8000's were arriving at clients homes with untoward scratches in the aluminum, caused by the Styrofoam packing.  Russ

This is certainly frustrating for customers, and embarrassing for B&O.  But they will figure out a solution.

RussR wrote:

Do you know the story behind the soft foam paper used to wrap many of their products?  It was developed by B&O after it was discovered that BeoLab 8000's were arriving at clients homes with untoward scratches in the aluminum, caused by the Styrofoam packing.  Russ

I have never seen that kind of soft foam, it has a plastic surface on the outer side with text in danish and english saying this side out. And it seems to work also. 

I have not unpacked my V1 completely but on torsdag(which day is after wednesday thursday?) I will have my wall mount installed. Been scanning the walls for tree-poles inside the wall with a special scanner and it seems that I have to put it very close to a door, but It will probably be very nice anyway =) Just have to wait and see.

The wall mount is extremely good quality, never seen anything like it. Having it here in my hands it looks much better than in the store. Such quality. 

Michael wrote:

on torsdag(which day is after wednesday thursday?)

Good luck on Thor's Day :-)

link

Torsdag and Thursday mean the same thing ! and are the same day :-)

Be careful with the hammer ... we don't want big holes in your wall or door 

In fairness there is an issue and I understand B&O have acknowledged this and are replacing any sets which have this fault.  New sets will not have this fault, deemed unacceptable.  These things happen, nobody has died, it is certainly not the end of the B&O world as we know it.  Regrettable but not an irretrievable situation in my view.