A couple months ago I received the type of offer that you can’t refuse. Yet there I was actually trying several different ways to turn it down.
The phone call had come from NuVo Technology’s PR rep, who told me that her client’s marketing team really wanted me to try out a Renovia powerline-based multi-room system in my own home.
“Oh, that’s really a cool and generous offer,” I said, “but I have product reviewers who do such a great job…”
What was wrong with me? Three years ago, when I had first left my rented apartment in New York City for Indiana and my first house, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on all of the toys that I’d written about. So, why was I turning down the chance to live with one of the most exciting new products in our channel?
My reluctance had absolutely nothing to do with NuVo. In fact, I had and have nothing but respect for the David Rodarte-led team in nearby Hebron, Kentucky. It’s just that I had found that systems in our industry are generally sold to people with enough money to maintain them, and I was not a member of that demographic. I also was concerned that the installation would be a huge disruption to my family. Oh, and I’m a Mac guy. If I wanted to make changes to my music library, I’d need a PC, right?
I stated all of my concerns right away, and figured that’d be the end of it. A couple weeks later, however, Barbara at the agency called me back. “NuVo really would like you to speak with Rick Bell in the tech support department to express your concerns.”
Like so many people I’ve met in this industry, Rick is a great guy who really has a knack for talking about his company’s products. The former integrator quickly allayed my concerns about the “Mac thing” and explained how easy the system would be to install. All he needed was a two-hour site inspection to test my AC lines and discuss my system preferences.
A week later, I couldn’t believe how easy the install went. In less than eight hours, Rick, electrician Carl Qucsai, and NuVo’s director of education Steve Horton had the system installed and operational. In that short amount of time they had replaced my two pairs of six-inch inceilings (in the family room and kitchen) with more robust eight-inchers, added one single-point stereo speaker to my dining room and another to my upstairs hallway along with Grand Concerto OLED control pads at each location, and installed an NV-CTP36 color touch pad on my kitchen wall to control five zones of audio and metadata for Pandora, Radiotime, Sirius, AM/FM, iPod, and music from my new NV-MPS4 Music Port.
NuVo’s Renovia system is very intuitive to use, sounds great, and enabled me to add zones where running speaker wire would have been nearly impossible.
If you think I’m exaggerating, just ask my wife. Literally overnight, she became one of NuVo’s most passionate evangelists.
