I think that whoever wrote this post (and from what it seems like a bunch of comments here) needs to do some serious self-reflecting about whether they're really owning the unflattering market reception of their product launch.
I would advise a more customer centric approach and attitude. The hostility and defensiveness is poison in the well. If you alienate the customers who are supposed to be the lifeblood of your company, you can risk quickly gaining a bad reputation that becomes terminal. Then your company dies.
"non-guitarist Mom of skeptical daughter who didn't want or ask for Thingamagig but 'hey it's free'" is not our market, though. Thus, it is not a valid read on "market reception".
The whole point of my post is that Vine is pushing units onto the wrong people and for the wrong reasons and that others in my shoes should avoid it. I.e. I'm admitting an error using Vine at all.
The customer persona of "Mom getting something to support her daughter to be musical" is valid though, particularly considering teaching is one of the use cases.
On the first point, Amazon should strictly prohibit gifting free Vine items to others. It is inherently antithetical.
On the second point, no. I don't think it's possible to give free items to people and get honest reviews. The free-ness will often induce either charity or laziness in reviewers. The only way to get an accurate review on a product at its price point is to sell the item at its price point in the wild.
You may want to chalk this up as a lesson about positioning and price anchoring well learned. But with that said, it doesn't change the fact that your response as a brand to what is honestly a very minor setback was alarmingly disproportional and customer hostile. What would you do if you get hypothetically successful and Behringer rips you? What if you tore into the wrong reviewer and they put you on blast to their 80k twitter followers to get you de-platformed? There are a million ways your product can get torn to shreds even if people /like/ it. Is this really the hill you want to die on?
I would advise a more customer centric approach and attitude. The hostility and defensiveness is poison in the well. If you alienate the customers who are supposed to be the lifeblood of your company, you can risk quickly gaining a bad reputation that becomes terminal. Then your company dies.
This is a common failure mode for companies.