• 09-17-2004, 03:55 AM
    BluesDaddy
    How Much are Cable Companies Ripping You Off
    In light of the story at http://www.avrev.com/news/0904/13.tara.html one cannot help but wonder what other types of shenanghans (notice other cable manufacturers say there is "much worse" going on) these guys are engaged in. Apparently it is a small step from engaging in exagerated sonic claims and pseudo-science marketing to full fledged fraud.
  • 09-17-2004, 05:49 AM
    kexodusc
    I love the comment "Critics say cables make no difference in an AV system, but they are wrong." Guess the writer's a "yeasayer" :D

    Not sure what the problem is here, if there's any altering to the final product, then the cable is in fact "made" in the USA. Just because raw materials are assembled elsewhere doesn't change that...must be more to the story than that short article.
  • 09-17-2004, 05:54 AM
    markw
    There's a fine line between saying "Made in the USA" and "Assembled in the USA". Big difference, though. It all revolves on where the components were made, not where they were put together.
  • 09-17-2004, 06:33 AM
    kexodusc
    I agree 100% markw. But don't kid yourself for 1 moment that a great deal of manufactured items are made with foreign components or raw material but made in the USA. According to customs definitions, an object is made in the USA if it become what it is inside US borders (simplified). So a cable made in china with no connectors, that has connectors added or something could be justified as made in the USA.
    Like I said, though I'm sure there's alot more to the story than this. You usually have to do something pretty underhanded to be taken to task for this type of misrepresentation.

    You see this stuff all the time in textiles, half the time it's protectionism, half the time there's sweat shops or something crooked at the other end.

    The scary part to all this is how little Tara Labs probably paid for the "repackaged cables" in the first place.
  • 09-17-2004, 07:10 AM
    markw
    Here's a link that was posted here last week on this. I do wonder what his meaning of "Accident" is, though.

    http://www.mailtribune.com/archive/2...ries/02biz.htm
  • 09-17-2004, 07:19 AM
    kexodusc
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by markw
    Here's a link that was posted here last week on this. I do wonder what his meaning of "Accident" is, though.

    http://www.mailtribune.com/archive/2...ries/02biz.htm


    Good link...I hadn't actually heard anything of this story except what was in this thread...my guess about the connectors was just that, a guess.

    I use to work as a customs officer/broker when I was in university. We saw this happen alot. Looks to me like they purposely labeled the cable as USA country of origin to avoid paying import duties (as high as 12-17% for electronics, more if they're from China, Korea, and some other countries we don't always get along with).

    I highly doubt this was an "accident". Often times a product from chinese origin (and other countries) is subject to "excise" taxes or duties just because it comes from China or a country with artificially low labor costs. Comes down to trade agreements.
    If Tara was trying to sell these cables to foreign markets, this might have something to do with it too. Some countries ban importing goods from certain origins.

    Not much point in me guessing what the whole story is but I highly doubt nobody in Tara knew they were doing something wrong.
  • 09-17-2004, 03:07 PM
    BluesDaddy
    Hmmm, do you think it just might have something to do with the fact that people know that labor is dirt cheap in China? That Tara Labs charging a few hundred dollars for a few feet of cable that they get from China for a fraction of that would hurt their sales? You think maybe it would hurt that Tara "mystique" just a bit? Yep, Tara Labs, gotta love them chinese cables!!
  • 09-17-2004, 04:55 PM
    Woochifer
    Kex is right. Some of the rural clients that I work with are actively recruiting Chinese companies to set up fabrication facilities in the U.S. It's a benefit to those communities because it does involve building a local facility and hiring American workers. The only thing though is that most of the value added occurs overseas. Most of the stuff would get shipped over here in an almost finished state, and only the final fabrication would occur over here. It gets around the duties, but at least provides some local economic stimulus for the community.

    Tara Labs it seems is cheating everybody. They're not paying duties when they should. They're claiming that their products are U.S. made when not even the final fabrication is done over here. They're lying to their customers who might buy a Tara product over another because it's American made. So, basically they are trying to have all the benefits of having something made here, while getting the cost reduction of manufacturing in China, yet not paying any of the duties that would ordinarily accompany an import from over there. It's like they're picking and choosing all the benefits while presuming that none of the tradeoffs apply to them. Pretty slimy business practice if you ask me.

    The author of that particular article gets on some pretty ridiculous soapbox crusades. Read some of his rants about the music industry sometime. It's like the guy's living in a baby boomer time warp where everything about that era was all that mattered, and the music industry is in a decline because they decided to change with the times. Just as pathetic as his rant about how people who can't tell differences between cables are "wrong." Well, I can tell a difference, but within the context of everything else in an audio system, it's hardly worth obsessing about. And with Tara's little tax evasion/sweatshop promotion plan, it also seems that there's at least one lie that's been confirmed. If they're willing to lie about country of origin in order to evade duties and send jobs overseas without telling their customers, who know what else they'll say to make a sale.
  • 09-17-2004, 07:28 PM
    Tony_Montana
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Woochifer
    And with Tara's little tax evasion/sweatshop promotion plan, it also seems that there's at least one lie that's been confirmed. If they're willing to lie about country of origin in order to evade duties and send jobs overseas without telling their customers, who know what else they'll say to make a sale.

    That is true, and sad at the same time. For example, somebody tore apart a $9,800 speaker cable (Transparent Reference XL SS) to see what is inside of those network boxes, and all he found was a 25 cent capacitor, resistor and inductor.

    http://cable.tcnerd.com/whymit.asp
    <img src="http://cable.tcnerd.com/images/why_image017.jpg">