Sennheiser is a brand known for its premium headphones and other audio equipment. It recently released a pair of open earbuds. However, the company once sold more consumer-friendly headphones that competed with the likes of Sony, Skull Candy, and others. Well, Sennheiser is being fined for fixing its prices while selling consumer headphones.
This case actually involves more than one company. In 2022, a company named Sonova took over Sennheiser’s consumer headphone business. While the business was handled by a new company, it continued Sennheiser’s actions, so it has also been roped into this drama. Lastly, several employees who knew about these shady practices are also on the chopping block.
Sennheiser is being fined for fixing the prices of its headphones
When you think of Sennheiser, the word “affordable” doesn’t come to mind. Even its consumer headphones were on the pricey side. It appears that the company didn’t want to price its headphones too competitively, as it was caught fixing prices.
According to the report, Sennheiser was keeping an eye on how much its distributors were selling Sennheiser-branded headphones for. The company did this through methods such as “web-scraping tools and manual checks.” If it saw that a distributor was selling its headphones at a price lower than the MSRP, the company would pressure it to jack the price up.
This practice would keep its prices higher. This would negatively impact competition, as it would give other competitors leeway to keep their prices higher. Unfortunately, these headphones would rarely go on sale.
When Sonova took over the consumer business in 2022, the new bosses didn’t bring any changes. The company kept up with this practice. However, it was only able to do so for a couple of months. Sonova kept it up from March to September that year. Sennheiser, on the other hand, had started doing it in 2015. All in all, this scheme ran for seven years.
It only stopped because Austrian and German regulators started looking into businesses without any warning. Sonova stopped the practice, but both companies and several bosses were still found out. The employees who knew about this referred to the practice as “selective distribution”. However, we know that Sennheiser has been fixing its prices, and there’s no getting around that. Sennheiser, Sonova, and the employees were fined around €6 million for this practice.
