What's wrong with Velodyne?

My dealer sales person some time ago told me that Velodyne as a company can be difficult to deal with vs other brands (ordering, returns, billing, etc). They sell both Velodyne and B&W. On numerous ocassions, he told me that working and dealing with the B&W Group is so much more pleasant and supportive to their dealers.

As a dealer Velodyne is one of the easiest. But in the last five years we've only had two that needed repair. New amps were sent immediately at no charge even for return shipping. Velodyne also offers free firmware upgrades online.

"-plus no high end dealer wants to carry product that is offered in so-called "low end" places."

I suspect this is more of the case than not. It's always politics, distribution channels, marketing, etc.
I used to deal with Velodyne years ago. Their entry products gave us more problems, reliability wise. Their top end pieces came in for service much less often, however.
Althought I never was a lover of the Volodyne's personally, I felt they made good products. Personally I liked the more accurate sound of the M&K subs, Paradigms even, and the power handling of the Earthquake line in the same genre. But were talking mere preference of course.
That was my experience, for the most part.

You can't get Velodyne's high end subs at low end stores like Circuit City.

Always cracked me up how manufactures start off with those strict and stringent distribution and marketing strategies to the hi-end stores - and how they put the screws to their dealers to stay withing rigid guidelines - so as to keep their products in some upper echelon product image in the minds of the consumers. It's like, "we don't sell our products in chain stores, only high end salons!"
Yeah let the economy slide a bit, or sales figures start to slide a bit, and every manufacture starts dumping their stuff at Best Buy, Costco, and any Flee market that will take it! Er, seems as such anyway.
I remember lots of so called high end product lines that eventually made it into the average Joe's chain store.
In fact, I remember years ago when Krell first came into a high end store I was with, with owner and rep in-tow. They told us if we ever sold any products sideways, sold any floor models even, or even had the appearance of having any sort of "sale" on Krell products, that we would be ousted as Krell dealers! Yeah, the second we said we didn't want to go with them, they changed their tune REAL fast, and started offering us all kinds of flexibility and discounts!
Amazing what a little negotiating and outside influences can achieve when the tough get going...