Bit of a beef with ALO - Page 3  

Personally, I found Ken's reply more hurtful to his image than anything.

Saying that it "hurts" to have someone post their dissatisfaction in an open forum. That is very unprofessional. People should know others will not always be happy with what they do, and they better be able to suck it up. Especially when you are trying to run a business.

As for everyone bashing the OP, get over it. He has a right to complain about what he experienced, and he did it very clearly and calmly.

@wakeride, your comment is useless. The only way he can find out if a product is worth the money or not is after it is purchased. And then it is too late. The whole point of the thread is something was purchased because it was supposedly worth the price being asked, but when received it wasn't up to par. And now by sharing his experience, he can help others avoid the same problems.

And if it affects Ken's sales, so be it. He will be forced to alter how he does business. Which is exactly how businesses are run in the real world, they adapt to what the consumers demand.

Absolutely. I had no doubt in my mind that Ken would make an appearance in this thread and attempt to rectify the situation, which I feel he did adequately, because I was confident in his good customer service. Since I'm also a user of his products I also have faith in his workmanship. Neither of those things were affected by this thread. It was not an attack at all on the OP's part, but you have to expect people to jump to Ken's defense anyways. Start a thread with criticism towards Ray Samuels or Vinnie R. and watch what happens.

If poor workmanship was a consistent practice of ALO or any other manufacturer than I would have no problem with it being voiced in a public forum. In that instance, the manufacturer presumably would have had opportunities to remedy the issue and not make appropriate changes. This doesn't appear to be the case here. The OP had an issue with shipping. As was said earlier, don't buy it. Wha't the point about bitching about an $8 extra charge for a product that can't be bought anywhere else. If it was that important you should have passed.

As to the workmanship issue, that should have been addressed directly to Ken. I realize no one wants to get a product where the workmanship is not up to par but give the guy a chance to fix it before complaining in the place where he does most of his business. No one is perfect, mistakes are made. It's when those mistakes are not fixed that there is a problem or when they occurr so often it appears to be a business practice. As far as I can tell he was not given that chance. This is the guys livelihood. I hope you each hold yourselves up to this same standard in your own lives.
It seems to me that a number of posters in this thread have an axe to grind, complaining about a single instance of alleged poor workmanship or whether this is the appropriate way to handle an issue such as this.

The idea that people ask him for a response and when he does, they maintain that the only reason he said what he said was because he had to say it a perfect example of this. It is because of these comments, that it serves no useful purpose to start a thread like this. There will always be those that for one reason or another will use threads such as this, not to rectify the situation, but rather to pile on the manufacturer. It happens all the time. This should have been handled with Ken directly first then if no solution is found, post feedback.

If people can "pile on" the manufacturer, does that not also mean there is more people unsatisfied with ALO for some reason? And a thread like this gives them a place to voice it?

The cable warrior mentions is mine. As far as what caused it to fail, it arrived to me from ALO with a short. The short was annoying when I used it portably (not very often) but didn't create much of a problem at my desk. I should have sent it back immediately, but it was a busy time for me, and right around the same time my little nephew passed away, so I had bigger issues to deal with. Eventually it stopped working entirely, and I asked warrior to look at it for me.
I agree with warrior that we don't know if this is an isolated incident or not, but paying a premium price should IMO provide me with premium workmanship. At least that's how I operate my business.

Get a grip!
This forum is expressly for commenting on all things headphone related. If the only comments allowed were the positive ones what would be the real purpose of the site? I want to be informed of the good and the bad. And warrior05 was pretty fair and honest in his post, there was nothing remotely slanderous, and certainly no personal attack on ALO. Why you have such a strong reaction is beyond me.

$15 shipping cost for a LOD ?

@#$#%Y^%$&%$#&#$^%&#^%&*#*^*^%$*^%#*



Edit: Go check out your buddy Turbo for a quote.

I have had a few dealings with Ken and he has treated me very nicely. I own the ALO Six Shooter and it is a phenomenal product, at $70 or so it sold for a good deal.

The company has taken a turn for the upscale and that is fine. Heck many of us started with a base Chevy or Ford and now drive Lexus, Porsches, etc. However I truly believe that we should all be able to voice our opninion or experience with a given product. Be it bad or good.

In the case of ALO I would say the good post out number the bad by a very significant margin so I have no problem with the OP choosing to post here. I will add that I expect far more from a premiun priced product.

I gotta side with the OP, and I will just say upfront that I have had good experiences with Ken. His stuff is a tad expensive but his customer service is great and in my opinion CS is hard to come by in this industry. However- I want to know these kind of things, and it is the price of doing business. We come to this site to be educated and discuss. To the OP, I applaud you for having a set.

I wouldn't waste your breath repeating it anymore, people are just seeing (or perceiving) what they feel is a negative post towards ALO and are automatically going into attack mode. I have no idea why people take negative posts about a manufacturer of some gear they own so personally but they do and they really makes it impossible to have a real critical discussion about almost any product here.

you got guts warrior05.

too strong defence would sometimes yield a negative effect.

While I understand the point you're trying to make I respectfully disagree.
Ken is a businessman and the idea that he's making these docks as a favor to some Head-Fiers just doesn't make sense to me. You can bet that the profit margins have been scrutinized closely as any good businessman knows he needs to do in order to run a successful business.

As far as to Ken not being given the chance to deal with the issue of the short in my dock, I've explained why I didn't contact him already. I'm sure that if I had contacted him he would have made every effort to resolve the issue. It just wasn't on the front burner for me at the time. But warrior already stated that the dock wasn't his, so attacking him for not contacting Ken to resolve that issue is unfounded IMO. As to the soldering job itself, that one is not so easy to gloss over in my book, because it is a premium price point for the cable, at least in my mind.

And I too have issue with that kind of S&H charge on such a small unit, and I don't agree that a respectful post about said issue is the wrong way to bring it to light. Ken certainly has every opportunity to respond.

I'm not sure I understand what you wrote but I will give it a try. Have any of the naysayers stated that they had a problem with ALO? We have a feedback forum for voicing our opinions about people or manufacturers we purchase from. The point I was making, which you seemed to have missed, was that the people that tend to pile on have no dealings with the person they pile on. They seem to do it for some ulterior motive. If you have a problem with someone that sold you something shouldn't you first go to them to resolve the problem. Is that concept so difficult to grasp.

Nope not difficult to grasp at all and that is what most people do but in this case swt has explained why he didn't do that. The OP also never mentioned anything about poor customer service. He simply stated his opinion on the shipping charges and his opinion on the workmanship of the cable. The only reason this thread has turned into a circus is because the OP's opinions happened to be negative.