[Giogio]

Hello fellow Head-Fi'er.
 
 
I want to warn you about the careless attitude of this Company.
Having found, finally, the perfect pair of headphones for me, the Audio Technica ATH-WS99BT, I only had one obstacle on my way to the musical happiness: the thin earpads which let my ears touch the drivers.
So I wrote to almost each single big producer of headphones and almost all possible sellers of earpads in Amazon and Ebay.
For a couple of months.
Almost everybody tried to help and was ready to sell replacement earpads even knowing that they would have not been used on one of their headphones.
A few answered rather coldly, like AKG, but still ready to help.
But Kicker showed the most careless and unfriendly attitude.
Not only I had to write thousand times to even only get an answer, but when I said it was for a non Kicker Headphone they refused to sell earpads to me, although I had explained how important it was for me.
They then showed a growingly unfriendly attitude and even refused to sell the headphone as a whole, saying it does not accomplish with the EU standard, which is a total lie because they were sold in EU once, till the EU distributor got sick of their attitude and stopped selling Kicker.
 
So, it may be I was unlucky, maybe you will have a better luck, but, I felt like warning, because for me the Customer Care is the most important thing after sound when I buy Headphones, and this is a clear example of Customer WE DO NOT Care.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

You do realize that some companies' unwillingness to sell you parts to be used for another headphone is because they don't want to have anything to do with something they cannot make any claims they know for sure will work? It's highly likely that whoever you were dealing with could have dealt with something along the same lines of them making a general claim then get a rant about it on the internet like "my K701 sucks on this Harman Receiver! sucks sucks sucks customer rep is ignorant but somebody told me to Heed his advice and get a CanAmp, but it's $400..." (when people on audio forums already accept that SQ can be highly relative) or some other obscure request like "B&H won't go out and check if the HD650s they have are silver or black driver screen version!" (when the rep is probably not even in the same building as the warehouse, if not in a different state/country altogether, and this isn't exactly something printed on the box).
 

Also production levels can be finite so they'd rather guarantee supplies for the owners of the headphones for which they were intended; for example, you can't just order HE60 and HE90 earpads from Sennheiser - you have to give them the serial number for your unit.

 

That said these are just guesses for AKG and maybe a few others, I can't really do the same for Kicker because 1) the only other generally popular brand I would avoid more than Kicker is Audiobahn (basically the Beats of car audio) and 2) the EU distro basically did admit that they have customer service issues. Still, barring info like that, there can be a completely understandable reason why some companies' reps are unwilling to deal with more obscure inquiries that they may not have enough experience with (although in the case of amping the K7xx then dealers who sell amps will likey have a better idea).

 

[Giogio]

In the case of AKG it was just a cold impersonal way of writing.
I must also say, being or latin origins and living in Germany I became allergic to unfriendly, impersonal, overly formal (in the cold aseptic "scifi-movie-where-emotions-are-forbidden" way) Customer Care.
So my standards are probably higher than most people who would not mind a cold answer from AKG.
So, no hard feelings there.
And they did not refuse to sell me their earpads. They've just warned, like you say, that they cannot assure their earpads will be compatible with other Brands' headphones.
 
But Kicker completely refused to sell, earpads or headphones, although I said it clearly, I take full responsibility, even for eventual problems with the Custom.
Their attitude shocked me so much that I felt like writing this thread.
I will never understand how can people behave like that.
I mean, they produce Audio products, they are supposed to have passion for that and to be sensitive and empathetic with people who share the same passion.
 
I had never heard, though, of this kind of Sennheiser serial number possibility.
I am not sure why it must be so, considering that they can keep producing them if they need more.
 
But I do not think it applies to Kicker, because, honestly, how many people do you think ask Kicker to sell them earpads?
 
Anyway. It is a possibility. My intuition tells me that it is not the case, but you are right, it COULD be.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

 
I must also say, being or latin origins and living in Germany I became allergic to unfriendly, impersonal, overly formal (in the cold aseptic "scifi-movie-where-emotions-are-forbidden" way) Customer Care.
So my standards are probably higher than most people who would not mind a cold answer from AKG.
So, no hard feelings there.

 
It's a cultural barrier then; some feel that more affectionate displays are in a way rude. Over here we're generally used to all types, it's a matter of what sort. There's "cold" but of course it's a spectrum from "straightforward, no BS" all the way to "condescending dick," and what some call "robotic" is a full spectrum from "no BS expertise" all the way to "idiot interface (get me your damn supervisor!)." As long as we're not dealing with the negative spectrum we're generally good.
 
In the end it still depends on the business though; I mean, if it's a caterer, wedding dress designer, brothel staff, etc, then there has to be some more of a "human touch" that we have a word for it but depending on what language we're using sometimes we use "amor" for it but I'm not sure if it's used the same way in traditional Spanish. When it comes to audio it's more about the dealers than the manufacturer and the reps, like the owner of the car audio shop that you chat up, since at least over here we don't just leave the car then come back in two weeks - we tend to drop by and hang out with the owners mostly because that's likely how we met them in the first place.

 

[Giogio]

Hmmm, are you a Customer Care man?

 

[ProtegeManiac]

  Hmmm, are you a Customer Care man?

 

Nope but I'm used to dealing with different sorts of people, both from buying stuff as well as professionally (I handled international affairs for our education ministry, but college and graduate levels are separate from the basic ed and are run very differently).

 

I am however familiar with how customer service reps have to work as I have friends who run such businesses, and there's one policy we all deemed problematic. To discourage front line reps from laziness they hit them with penalties when they have to escalate and pass the call to a superior; as a customer, my response was "well no wonder whenever I have issues with the service they're all just 'sorry but I can't help you with that' but they can't patch me through to someone who actually has the authority to do this!" It's not as big a problem as in their companies though since they're given more authority than local companies allow the other call centers, save for this one supervisor they found out was marking his underlings if they so much as mute the call and ask a question over the cubicle wall.

 

[Solrighal]

I've only just returned from Manila and we in the UK could learn a thing or two about customer service from the Manilans.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

  I've only just returned from Manila and we in the UK could learn a thing or two about customer service from the Manilans.

 

I'm honestly kind of confused - normally over here we rant about how people in California or in (the parts of) the (American) South (that aren't infested with Klu Klux Klan members or anything like in Deliverance) are always so full of sunshine 

 

That said, we never really understood why some people (mostly Americans) complain about rude waiters in Paris  - I mean, we don't expect a guy who sees different people all the time (tourists) to act like the Italian guy who owns a small brick oven place near a residential area.