I've had similar experiences in stuff I've tried. What you're describing is a marketing and/or product problem. I was coming at it from the angle of once a market has been identified, it's better to be on the high-end of the price range (or my favorite, way above it and there's ways to make that possible) than on the low-end (think WalMart but even they're under a lot of pressure to raise prices).

Warning: boring marketing stuff below. These are just thoughts and not necessarily specific to this topic.

I'm guessing here, it seems like either the $999 group is the wrong market (bargain conscious) or the $2100 wasn't presented in a way that they understood. One of my marketing rules is sell it in a way that makes the cost go away. Lot's of ways to do that. A quick example is a car dealer wanting you to sit in the car within minutes of you walking onto the lot. They know that once you're sitting down you're not thinking cost. Another example is "testing" a multi-hundred dollar vacuum cleaner for the price of shipping (e.g. $15). They know once you have it at home and cleaning your house (meaning you unwrapped it, threw away the box and got the thing filthy) you're much less likely to pay to ship it back on time before the $500 bill comes. As an aside, one of the best inventions in the world is shrink-wrap. It's cheap and people will hesitate to return something where they've destroyed the shrink-wrap.

For items that aren't tied to a monetary benefit, they have to be sold like insurance (one of the hardest things in the world to sell). Look at any insurance commercial and all the successful ones have one common tactic. They try to scare the bejesus out of people. A famous marketer taught me that any savings benefit can be converted to an income benefit. When you can make the income and emotional benefits powerful enough, the cost goes away.

Cheers