Impacts of a Discontinued Product

[Fish.Bum00]

There are plenty of threads discussing a specific item being marked as discontinued. What I wondering about is two fold.

1)What are the reasons for a product being discontinued? 2) What are the impacts?


1) 1)What are the reasons for a product being discontinued? Sticking to the reefing hobby, is the company coming out with a new upgraded version of a product, i.e. Radion gen1 through gen whatever. Or are they not selling as expected and the company has decided to cancel the product line? Maybe company X got a number of complaints that the product sucks, or they uncovered a defect and determine it will likely flood a persons house or burn it down or something.

Im not the type of person to buy a new model of anything every year or two. I like saving money. If I bought, for example, a Radion gen5 and then Radion write a press release announcing the new GEN 6 with extra special blah blah blah. Am I screwed?

2) What are the impacts? There are a lot of parts to this question. Many I’m not thinking of at this moment. Did I just spend several thousands of dollars on products that are already out of date? Do I still get the same level of support after a product is discontinued? Are replacement parts going to still be available? Did the company go under or is there something I should be concerned about?

My only recent examples was the Autoaqua smart ato. One day, the pump just stopped working. Went to BRS to get see how much a replacement pump was going to cost, and the entire system was marked discontinued. Huh? So I go to Google and type in replacement pump and nothing. I did finally find one on eBay and now have an excuse to get the Tunze ato, but I was frustrated.

The other recent one was the Pan World pumps. I was about to purchase one for my water change station and then noticed all models are discontinued.

I want and do invest in quality gear, but it’d be nice to have some reassurance. Id really appreciate the groups thoughts and experiences.

 

[Doctorgori]

Good topic, I got nothing specific to add but it is interesting that for every Aquaclear or Maxijet you get a Skilter or Aquarium Inovations dud ////
Aquaclears have remained unchanged for close to 40years! ...

Sometimes a new design makes another obsolete and Companies copy cat that design. Skimmers come to mind. They all look alike anymore..
“Rimmed” Aquariums are on the way out...et

 

[Joe's Coral Reef]

I think one of the problems are pieces of equipment tied to an app versus direct network connection. If the company stops updating the app a major release from apple or android could make the app and equipment unusable.

 

[fish farmer]

I bought a Build My LED fixture many years ago, good light, but I noticed some cracking on the cover and wanted to get a replacement. I went online and noticed they had gotten out of the aquarium biz. Although I just did a quick search and found a website for Build My LED again and it is somewhat updated, so we'll see..

I used to buy products from Aquatic Ecosystems for work, which got bought by Pentair, they really got rid their aquarium and some of aquaculture stuff. We bought a specialized hydrostatic chamber from them....many years ago. We can still get a rubber seal for it, but nothing else. Looking into local machine shops to work on it.