[Midgetguy]

Honestly, with absolutely zero support from Head-Fi and the way so many have gone at them out here while they were down (yes I realize update communication was sparse if any, I also realize many of these issues were uncharted territory for Trinity especially Bob) it is a no wonder they are pulling any kind of Head-Fier's discounts. From what I've seen very few Vendors ever offered member discounts much less pre-order discounts. As I've mentioned before they sure need to up their game at transparent communications but on the same token I am not sitting in Bob's shoes, he seems to be a rather smart guy and I'm sure he has learned some real life lessons over the last year but by all means lets just keep trashing them Unlike a lot of you the only issue I've had to date is the delay in my Icarus III so I'm not near as agitated as a bunch in here but then again I also feel some of the angst in here has caused part of my delay I'm an old dude and I can understand so many being peeved but then again I also understand letting ones Steamship mouth over run their Tugboat azz What I do know personally is all my 8 pair of Trinity iem's are very good ones and so seem the Icarus III according to the Panda and esm87, thinking this may just end up being a blip on Trinity's map after the ship rights itself OK, fire at will

I'd love for this all to be a blip once they get everything going again. The thing that sucks is they're still a small crew so they limited their own shipping ability by continually releasing items with overlapping shipping dates. It's what we've all known for a while now, but I got a response from Kieran earlier today when I asked him about how progress was going with shipping Airs; he said they're getting shipped out, but the process is slow because they're also shipping out the Icarus III. Which means Icarus III shipping process is going slowly because they're also shipping the Airs. End result: shipping process is slow because they decided to release several IEMs simultaneously without the capacity to actually ship them in appropriate time frames due to the known fact that they're a small crew. Therein lies their issue; they almost literally keep shooting themselves in the foot. They keep piling on new products that are supposed to ship out before they even finish shipping out the previous products which means they'll be perpetually backlogged and that just results in the continuous frustration you see from customers. We're just about at the point where even good transparent communication might not have prevented consumer disappointment, not because their products are bad, but because they keep making the same (and every time, wrong) business decisions. And they keep demonstrating that they don't understand they're making this mistake. The latest example: promotion, soft launch, and proposed release of the Phoenix headphone. Don't even put it up yet as a possibility; people are still waiting to receive the product they bought literally 3 products ago! If you know you don't have the crew or capacity to do that many products in a reasonable amount of time, just stick to doing one product at a time.

Yes, this situation is compounded by the fact that everyone these days wants to receive an item within a week (thank you Amazon for making us so impatient with online ordering ), but even without that expectation, this has been a year-long wait for a pre-order that was originally promised to be a 5-month wait. One could defend Trinity Audio saying that there are other companies that had the same original timeline and now have longer wait times and even companies that still haven't delivered the proposed product 3 years later. I say that's not a defense; that's adding Trinity Audio to a list of companies that have done a HORRIBLE job at making and releasing products. It's not a list of companies I want to mix Trinity Audio's name into.

We don't want to trash Trinity Audio's reputation, but realistically, they're doing it to themselves. I'm a firm supporter of the quality of their audio products, but not so much their handling of business.

 

[Podster]

I don't think that anyone disputes that they are very nice iem's at all.

I fail to see what Trinity has learned from this when yet another offer (a headphone) appears after so many back orders haven't gone out. Doesn't make Bob as smart as all that does it?

There are people on here with hundreds of pounds or dollars invested in items that haven't appeared.

I couldn't care less about any of their offers if the gear hasn't gone out. Never mind Bob, I've learned a lot over the past year and one of those things is that preorders can be dodgy to say the least.

There are alternatives that are actually available and those other firms may be losing out because of these pre orders. I.e., people might well have bought something else if they knew they'd be waiting a year for anything to turn up.

The company has behaved very poorly so I really feel for those folks with a lot of money tied up, not the company who should know better.

Like I said, I'm not giving them any props for what has gone down and like I already said I'm not in Bob's shoes. He made the decision to hire Jake and as far as I know Jake could have been a long time friend of his but that does not mean he should have hired him. It is obvious by reading the threads Jake deceived many here more so than anyone else at Trinity. I feel when Bob stepped away from the threads to try and get manufacturing on track those handling customers were not looking out for what made trinity who they used to be in the first place one of the best customer service Vendors who really had awesome input to the members of this site. Bottom line for me is I'm not Bob and don' stand in his shoes therefore I find it hard to judge.

Also IMO most of you who have contemplated refunds should have just done it along time ago and put your money in these other firms or at least after your second negative experience ie: dealing with someone other than Bob direct. I'm not sure where you are but where I'm at it's a free country and one should always do what's best for oneself I guess lucky for you is that you do not have as you say near as much invested as some!

I hear you @Midgetguy , we can sure all agree Trinity's wagon ended up getting in front of it's horses! I myself would have surely tried to establish a solid base of products that garnered praise and slowly worked up to new lines but un-organized ambition can be counter productive as we've seen first hand, as much as I fault Bob I also (Still) have empathy for him.

 

[sososerious]

Let's all remember that as far as I can tell Bob doesn't run the company, so it's not really fair to put the weight of all this on his shoulders.

If we are still saying the iems sound good then that is Bob's goal, he also wants to deliver them at rock bottom prices, discounts an all, unfortunately that might now be being challenged by those higher up from the looks of it!

 

[barondla]

It is possible the recent headphone intro was unavoidable. Manufacturing requires many tasks coming together in the future. Trinity said the headphones would likely move forward after the two crowd funding failures. It is likely Trinity had these in the pipeline long ago. Their IEM projects had problems, switched suppliers, and were greatly delayed. Perhaps parts of the headphone are ready now. Trinity is a small business and can't afford to sit on them. Especially after the Phantom delays and refunds. Not saying Trinity is error free.

 

[Midgetguy]

I hear you @Midgetguy , we can sure all agree Trinity's wagon ended up getting in front of it's horses! I myself would have surely tried to establish a solid base of products that garnered praise and slowly worked up to new lines but un-organized ambition can be counter productive as we've seen first hand, as much as I fault Bob I also (Still) have empathy for him.

Indeed. The way they handled everything thus far in recent memory has been far from good. Doesn't mean I wanna see them die in a hole though. Still, they gotta stop going in the wrong direction.

It is possible the recent headphone intro was unavoidable. Manufacturing requires many tasks coming together in the future. Trinity said the headphones would likely move forward after the two crowd funding failures. It is likely Trinity had these in the pipeline long ago. Their IEM projects had problems, switched suppliers, and were greatly delayed. Perhaps parts of the headphone are ready now. Trinity is a small business and can't afford to sit on them. Especially after the Phantom delays and refunds. Not saying Trinity is error free.

Weeeelllllll......The problem I see is that they're gonna do pre-order, then production, then everything's gonna take forever to go out yet again. If things are ready for the Phoenix to go out, they've either gotta be literally finishing production of at least several hundred units arriving to them within a week or they have to be completely done with the production run and release it as an "available now" product and not a pre-order product. Deliveries of the Phoenix being faster than the PM6 and Hunter are actually quite understandable because of exactly what you said: production runs are set in motion for the future and the Phoenix has existed since almost the beginning of Trinity. Still, it would of course bring up some amount of uproar from people that products announced earlier still haven't been sent out which means they're back to square 1 again.

 

[fearlessleader]

Not only do the discount codes stated the email end in 7 days, so does the Head-fiers discount. No more 20% off for us anymore.

What really sucks is: I'm still waiting for 3-4 items from them. It feels like a slap in the face to not deliver and not deliver and... yet suddenly cancel discount codes (some of which NEVER had ANY expiration date listed!!!) before we get our products.

 

[Intensecure]

yet suddenly cancel discount codes (some of which NEVER had ANY expiration date listed!!!) b

Indeed. And they never mentioned the other discounts such as the Head-fiers one in any communication, I was curious and emailed to ask and then was told. That's why I've posted it here, to save anyone down the line getting a surprise when they try to use the code and wonder why it no longer works.

 

[Podster]

Indeed. And they never mentioned the other discounts such as the Head-fiers one in any communication, I was curious and emailed to ask and then was told. That's why I've posted it here, to save anyone down the line getting a surprise when they try to use the code and wonder why it no longer works.

The Head-Fier discount had been long standing from year ago, it was not re-announced as in Bob's mind (I believe) was something they wanted to offer Head-Fiers in addition to pre-order discounts (if you were purchasing back in the original Hyperion, Techne & DV1 era you knew of this offer). I'm curious as well and to my knowledge their points system has been left out of all the perks that once were. At some point staying afloat needed to be considered as you can't run a company much less a start up by offering too much then being over ambitious, plus getting hit with production issues IMO put them in a negative spiral. Then not having the experience to communicate all these issues had them going Further down the spiral ala NIN!

 

[fearlessleader]

Re: Suddenly adding expiration dates to a coupon

I don't know about elsewhere, but I recall that is illegal here in California. Might even be so in the UK. Regardless, if a company I've bought stuff from sends me a coupon for a discount with no expiration, it's just WRONG to suddenly state that coupon expires in a week. Just... wrong...

 

[rantng]

For anyone that didn't receive the email from Trinity:




Dear Customers and Backers,

Its time for a Trinity update and this one is pretty packed with info!

Master and Icarus III


Thank you to all of you that have provided feedback on the Master and Icarus III so far, its always great to hear such positive feedback. For those that have not received their Icarus III, all UK, EU and rest of the world Icarus III have been shipped and there us just a handful of USA order left that will ship on Monday.


Discount codes


Well as many of you know we recently announced the stopping of our discount codes and our headphone (Phoenix) is our last big pre-order discount. We have been listening and many think this unfair or silly but the reality is that as Trinity has grown and so have the costs and offering such huge discounts does not work for the future of Trinity. Having said that the Head-Fi discount code will stay in effect for the foreseeable future and we will issue a special code for backers shortly offering the same discount as Head-fi.org members.


Now lets answer some pre-order/kickstarter questions like, where is my Phantom Air, Master 6, Hunter, Delta or Atlas Delta?!

• We have shipped 928 Hunters globally leaving just 72 left to finishing building and ship (will ship within 21 days)
• We have shipped 792 Master 6 (pre order and kickstarter) globally leaving 208 left to finish and ship (will ship within 21 days)
• We have only 58 Delta to ship and have emailed those 58 offering upgrade options
• We have only 176 Atlas Delta upgrades to ship and should take less than a week to ship
• We have shipped the updated Phantom Air to select backers for testing and evaluation and all reports are now back and we will begin shipping again once all updated units are back from our manufacturing partner which will take 7-10 days from today.

What happened to the customer service?

Many of you may have seen a dramatic dip in customer service. Sadly as many of us have been concentrating on various other aspects such as shipping and manufacturing we had taken our eye off the ball and allowed a customer service staff member to get away with exceptionally low standards of service and has caused huge issues of concern for some customers (as well as our selves). This staff member has now been removed permanently from customer service and Kieran is now taking over his role. Kieran has been doing an amazing job with his friendly yet brutally honest manner but he does have a little catching up to do as he works his way through the other staff members emails.

What else is news worthy?

Behind the scenes there has been many things going on. First of all lets Welcome Dan Nundra as the new head manager of Trinity Audio. Dan comes with years of experience in the Audio industry with his last appointment at one of the worlds most renowned audio manufacturers.


This appointment also marks the end of another. Bob was Trinity’s lead designer from the beginning and helped shape the sound and design style of Trinity. Bobs last day is officially 31st July but has agreed to stay on for 4 weeks to help with any hand over to Dan. Bob has asked us to convey this message to you all.


“I have thoroughly enjoyed being part of Trinity and making people smile with new audio gear, my only goal has always been about bringing as much audio enjoyment as possible. Along this journey I have learnt many things not only about audio but about myself. I cannot imagine ever leaving the audio game but it was time for me to make some big changes to my working and personal life. I have lived and breathed Trinity as the head design engineer but its time to move on. I wish Trinity all the best for the future and hope to see many of the amazing customers around at shows and events in the future”


So thats all for now and as you can see from above we are almost back on track. We have had some major mountains to climb over these past 6 months and feel positive about the future.


Thank you to all our supporters who have weathered the storm with us and its great to see the light at the end of the tunnel.


Thank you


Trinity Audio

 

[rantng]

Don't know about anyone else, but I've always associated Bob with Trinity Audio. Even through all the issues, I've always enjoyed Bob's interactions with the head-fi community. @Bobtrinity best of luck to you! Hope to see around!

 

[swannie007]

Yes, happy trails Bob and thanks for all your positive input on this forum over the years. All the very best for your future endeavors. Cheers.

 

[31usive]

Is today the lastday of all the discounts?

 

[Midgetguy]

Is today the lastday of all the discounts?

I haven't counted, but has it been 7 days since that last email update about it? Because if so, then yes. But the Head-Fi discount will continue to exist.

 

[James Mourby]

Had emailed Jake today asking for an update on my item I returned in FEBRUARY and he promised he'd send back to me in MAY and got diverted to Kieran.

Really hope he's better with the responses than Jake was!