Just an extra note - If you want a refund / return / exchange, you need to contact the seller, not FiiO. The way their business is setup is that the seller is taking the responsibility to handle everything except warranty repair. So if something is wrong when you first received your device, you ask the seller for help. That's also why it is better not to save a couple of bucks to buy FiiO from oversea seller, especially if they are not authorized dealer and tend to ignore the buyer if anything goes wrong. FiiO has no control over third party seller and the best thing FiiO can do is offering an warranty repair where you have to send the item all the way back to China.
Also note that FiiO sale figure on amps is >10K a month, so there will be quite a few lemon even if the defective rate is very low.
Well hold the phone. After going back and forth with their customer service for a few days, they just offered to send me a new one: no charge, no sending back the defective one. That's something. They seem to be very protective of their reputation.
Reason I contacted them in the first place was that the reseller I bought from had a one month return policy and the defect wasn't present till about 2 months in. They weren't considered one of their authorized resellers, so I don't know how it would have been otherwise, but their Chinese based customer service really came through. They treated it as a bit of a bargaining process, but as a result they're sending me a new E10, free of charge.
I didn't really push the subject. I just said after the original "we're not going to pay the shipping" email that I was just going to buy a different product because of the shipping expense. Then they offered me a free E07K if I sent it back for repair, to which I declined. I have no use for it, didn't want to go through the shipping hassle, and figured it wasn't worth the risk to continue with FiiO products, considering my first experience (and the fact that Chinese manufacturers don't have the best reputations for quality control). After all that, they said that they'd just send me a new E10, with no charge. Can't exactly say no to that. Thus, here I am revising my opinions on their customer service. I'm not sure if the rep I was going back and forth with was essentially following a playbook for this sort of situation or if this is a unique case, but it certainly felt that they were doing everything in their power to keep me from speaking ill of their brand on the internet. The rep said "
Hope you can accept our this offer. O(∩_∩)O". They're on a mission.
Considering the circumstances, I don't really think I could have asked much more of their customer service. Pretty much as good as it gets considering that I'm on the opposite side of the world as them. I certainly don't deserve what they're giving me (because I didn't really read the fine print before buying), but they're setting things right anyhow.
