The first round of new Braun shavers have landed with a resounding “thud” at the doorway of Shavers.com. The new “series-3″ shavers, as they’re called, promise a whole new experience of good shaving fun for all us unbearded boys.
Yeah, right.
Y’see, there’s a problem. Now I hate to start off resoundingly negative, especially when I have yet to touch of those new beauties to my face as of yet. The problem started even before the shavers went into production. As many of you may have noticed, for some reason the Braun company (aka P&G) feels that there are far too few numbers in the universe and therefore must reuse them continuously and promote mass confusion in those who have bought a Braun shaver prior to…well, today.
While this new line has many of these examples, let’s focus on one in particular. A shiny new example called the “Braun Series 3-370″. Sounds simple enough, right? It’s a series 3 shaver and it’s the 370 model. What’s the problem?
The problem is that up until about a month ago (as of this writing) the Braun series 3-370 was a completely different shaver. It was a shaver that used to be called the model “5885″ which was changed to “series 3-370″ in order to conform to the new naming and numbering system that the young suits at Braun are all frothed up about.
Confused yet? No? Don’t see the issue here? Wait…it gets better.
You see, the “old” series 3-370, formerly the 5885, takes a foil and cutter set called the “5000/6000 series”. Why? Because when it was still called the “5885″, that made perfect sense to all the existing Braun customers and shaver sellers. 5885=5000 series, and it was good. But then the name was changed to include the words “series 3″ which said to existing Braun customers that it must be the 3000 series foil and cutter set that fits that shaver. That would only make sense based on the way Braun did their numbering system for the past 60 years, right? Wrong. Not anymore.
So what do we have here? We have a brand new “series 3-370″ that just came out to replace the old “series 3-370″ that uses a different foil and cutter set (not yet available for sale) that has no relation to the old (5885) model, that comes either with or without a clean & charge system, and no way for the poor customer to officially differentiate the models they have for the purpose of purchasing parts.
OH! And did I mention? The number “370″ also refers to a Braun pocket shaver that is still out for sale today, but has been officially been renamed the “P70″, despite that there are literally thousands of Braun 370 pocket shavers out there with the little “370″ imprinted on them. What fun!
All summed up, my fine fellows, this is a mess. And not just some crumbs on the table, mind you. We are talking mud on the celling, lost all control of the hose, dog ate the ex-lax kind of mess that makes you want to just suck the thumb and cry for awhile. We’ll do the best we can on the website to keep the confusion under control, hopefully Braun will learn from mistake backlash they’re going to get from all this. Maybe.