I got a response from a Casio rep., about the Casio Forum...here it is:


Mr Wintringham,
Apologies for the forum being down but we are currently redeveloping our website and hope to have a new forum online shortly.
Thanks for your patience,

Alex Dibble
Digital Marketing Executive
Marketing
CASIO Electronics Co. Ltd.
Unit 6, 1000 North Circular Road,
London. NW2 7JD.

Well at least we know its coming back...And in the meantime we have a second home to go to during this downtime

Hi Jim,

Good to see you here.

Could you please PM me? I have a WK3000/Powertracks issue that I am sure you can help with.

Regards

Kevin.

That's good news hearing that Casio's forum is just offline temporarily. I thought it would be strange if they stopped the forum altogether.

But it is good to see some activity on the forum here as well. Some WK users also use the General Arranger Keyboard Forum here. There had been quite a bit of discussion there about the WK-3500 but due to a hard drive crash those recent postings were lost unfortunately. Anyway this forum is always here as a second home for you all to use when you need to.

I found it strange too that they had completely removed the chat/forum link instead of putting out the ol "Under Contruction" message.

By the way, there are LOTS of good forums and conversation out here at SynthZone.
I appreciate the work that you are doing here, Nigel.

Regards.

Ed

Hi Jim and all,

Good to make contact with you, even if away from our preffered habitat.

I hugely hope the Casio UK site can be ressurected...especially the the wealth of information in those posts of the last 18 months.

You really wonder about the grasp of marketing some of these folks have; the vitality and depth of the forum was a wonderful incentive to purchase a WK 3X.

Could the cost of maintaining the site been that much of a problem to Casio?

Has anyone thought of contacting the site admin. people, Snitzer Forums for an explanation?

How about the other alternative site, WK Studio?....looks pretty slick, no?

And some topical news...we've just had a Federal election here in AUstralia this last weekend,and it looks like a Christian values party, Family First, have won the balance of power (29th seat in a 76 seat Senate).
So excited you could just quiver?
I am!

Cheers,

John

Thanks ... err (clears throat)... your Eminence!
I bet my hard earned dollars they closed the Casio forum because some forum members left posts with terms like:
"Casio tech support won't return my messages" and "Casio has abandoned us".

They know they have a great product for the price and that it is selling very well (I guess), so why deal with the negative advertising, even if minimal?

Why do we have to wait until March of 2005 for them to put new files in the Casio website? I believe WK-Studio and all the other Casio WK-3000/3100/3500 websites are just trying to fill the void left by Casio and it's probably non-musician management.

How many more Wk-3000's must they sell before they asign a specialized tech to answer user questions? Someone who knows the product, gives intelligent advice and can take suggestions for the next OS update?
Just my two cents worth! Keep playing!

I also got a response from a Casio rep:

From: "Brian Arney"
Subject: UK musical instrument forum

Dear Mr. Minhinnick,
I understand that the site is being upgraded and should be up again by the end of the month.

Regards

Brian Arney
General Manager
Operational Services Div.
Casio Electronics Co. Ltd.
Unit 6, 1000, North Circular Rd.
London NW2 7JD
Tel: 020 8452 7253
Fax: 020 8450 9139 www.casioextra.co.uk

Here is my reply:

To: "Brian Arney"
Subject: Re: UK musical instrument forum

Brian

Thank you for your reply. I would like you to know that the forums were very popular with Casio keyboard users from around the world.

One issue that many forum users were agreed on, was that they would welcome input from one or more Casio representatives, particularly as contact with customer support quite often goes unanswered. This has a negative effect on the perception of Casio support in the marketplace, but could quite easily be turned around by support of an active user forum.

It would be a simple business to allocate someone at Casio to keep an eye on the forums, and provide contributions or feedback as appropriate. This would be most appreciated by all forum users.

Regards
Stephen Minhinnick.


The next day Brian Arney replied as follows:

Stephen,
Thank you, I will pass this on to our sales people.

Regards
Brian Arney
General Manager
Operational Services Div.
Casio Electronics Co. Ltd.
Unit 6, 1000, North Circular Rd.
London NW2 7JD
Tel: 020 8452 7253
Fax: 020 8450 9139 www.casioextra.co.uk


[This message has been edited by sminhinnick (edited 10-14-2004).]

Good for you, Jim and Stephen.

I have also emailed Casio today, protesting the site disappearance, and requesting its ressurection, especially the last 18 months of posts.

Blessings,

John

Hello Folks,
I also wrote to them. I had just found it and was just getting a "feel" for how the Casio keyboard worked. I hope they get it back up soon, with all the past posts! Smurf