A few things I took away from this:
- This E9 was sold to me as new, while this piece is clearly defective/refurbished, as judged by the soldering "cleanup" and re-solder. So there's no difference between refurb'd and new items when shipped to customers.
- This somehow "passed" quality control, which means they either don't fully test the product before boxing it, or they don't test the dock connector (or, likely, test at all or even do a visual inspection because, COME ON, that would've sent red flags shooting up right away).
- QA, QC & Supply Chain are all in serious need of overhaul, if a defective part that was poorly refurbished can make it onto the assembly line, into a brand-new product, and boxed for shipping without any sort of visual inspection by any worker along the way, or any sort of basic, routine testing procedure.
Look, I really, really like my Fiio gear. It's inexpensive while providing good quality sound. However, I'd be willing to pay more to get quality gear, and I thought I was with Fiio - but this poor soldering job (one my friend called, quote, "looks like a Kindergartner painting with a glue bottle") really kind of crushes any respect I had. I mean, I just bought an E17 - how do I know some similar piss-poor soldering job isn't hiding inside waiting to gimp me of a critical feature down the road? The E9 is fixable with a replacement dock and cable, sure, but I can't fix an E17 should something arise.
If you can, pry open the dock from your E9 (use a small, flat-head screwdriver on the rear, pushing it up on either corner - once the rear is free, it lifts out somewhat) and verify your solder connections are clean as soon as you get it. Otherwise, you may be SOL should you want to use your E7 or E17 down the road with it.
I'd really like to hear from Fiio on this if possible. This is a pretty glaring oversight, and I'm in a situation where a return isn't really possible (no packaging, extra cables, etc like their website says I should send in. Plus, I bought it from Amazon.com from a dealer not listed on Fiio's website now, which likely disqualifies me from warranty coverage. Really, really lame).