[uelover]

Hey Parrots I am just saying that I am anticipating many people to exploit the twag v1 replacement program after you have made such a successful public awareness. I believe that twag v1 owners should be made aware of the problem but I also cannot help but lament at how greedy people can be. I am not pointing finger at you saying its your fault.
 
Maybe next time Craig will just send everything for extra lab test and thus the production time will be extended and the prices will be even higher to pay for those extra test.

 

[Stevtt]

If anybody is trying to exploit this by telling someone they can by the v1 used then trade it in or raising prices because of this,

Shame on you

 

[563]

No proof of purchase directly from Whiplash, no exchange, I would say.  While someone's original V1 might be just fine, in the end, this is the best solution, provided they don't "double dip" and keep the original V1 and get a new V2 as well.  That's one way of ensuring against anyone profiting from Craig's woes.
 
Apropos - There's no question that Craig is the real victim in all this, and I'm not sure it would have been reasonable for him to check every chunk of wire he received, whether or not he advertised his cable as 9.99999 percent or whatever.  For goodness sakes, Craig's doing all he can to make good on this, and, to my way of thinking, this should enhance, rather than harm, his reputation.  Heck, one of the most "reputable" vendors on head-fi pawned off a used HD-800 on me as "new" a while back, and that is a heckuva lot worse than what happened here - even if the V2 is 99.0 percent and not 99.9 percent.   This kind of nitpicking is rather embarassing, and frankly, quite unfair to him.
 
Which raises another interesting question - already alluded to by others before - and that is whether any of the other cable vendors here (or other manufacturers with respect to their high/overpriced products) have verified the content of their cables or the veracity of their claims about their so and so product.  I can't believe - though anything is possible - that every one else has been able to achieve the magic 99.99999 percent or whatever mark they've advertised.   
 
Please let's cut Craig some slack finally here ....
 

 

[uelover]

If I am not wrong, Craig merely copy and paste the entire description of Twag from Cryoparts. He didn't write them out himself.

 

[Currawong]

How many retailers test whether the specs of things they sell are actually true or not? Lets be realistic here in that it's not Craig's job to do that. Whatever issues have arisen between Craig and Lee, however, are for them to sort out amongst themselves. I don't think anyone who has returned a faulty or not-as-advertised item to a retailer has asked them about what they will do with regards to the manufacturer that sold it to them.

 

[warp08]

Quote:

 
Apropos - There's no question that Craig is the real victim in all this, and I'm not sure it would have been reasonable for him to check every chunk of wire he received, whether or not he advertised his cable as 9.99999 percent or whatever.  

Yes, he is.  It wouldn't have been feasible for him to do this kind of involved lab testing on every single pool or even every 10th pool.  People wanted their orders yesterday, I still remember the TWag OM preorder craze...it wasn't a pretty thread.
 
He advertised the cable based on data what his supplier provided.  The only visual cues for him would have been the wires turning green while on the spool.  Knowing him he would have never shipped them to be overmolded, much less sold it to his customers had he been aware of any potential issues.  This is an honest man, period.  
 
Not to mention, having to recall any product is far more expensive in any industry than halting production, nobody involved, meant this to happen by design, save perhaps for Cryo-Parts unnamed supplier.  This type of validation, must and will occur from now on at the distributor level, not at the customer-facing dealer-level, according to Lee's own announcement.
 
To be fair, I've seen several posts in this thread from Parrots echoing similar sentiments towards the role of Whiplash Audio in this situation.
 
 
 
 

 

[SACD-Man]

 
Hey guys...
 
Sorry from being away from this thread. I have been at my Son's baseball game for most of the later part of the day. If anyone is a Little League fan, he won!
 
Well, its interesting to see how all of this came about. Here are some facts that might help with all of this. What I'm saying has been said before, while some might be new. I don't know. But its for sure that the damages have been already done to what was a great sounding cable that everyone enjoyed and still enjoy. I have received many emails in supporting what Whiplash produces and of course, many very very hateful emails echoing some of the points in this thread. 
 
I receive wire that I purchased as being "x". This comes in several spools of wire, and usually a rather large amount since you cant buy good wire or most wire in small amount unless you want to pay a fortune. In this case, a certain order size is required. I receive the wire, cut the wire to the proper length, perform whatever is necessary for the wire to be sent to the over molder. This process can take up to 10 days since there are many steps. In this process, many other companies with certain "facts' are involved. If I were to verify every fact, it would take me 10-20x longer for prep and the cost of this verification would have to passed to the final price. So, in the case of v1, I relied on CryoParts to provide me with data. I only copied and paste the information provided to me. CryoParts did the same thing as well. He was provided data form the manufacturer and thats how numbers are generated.
 
Usually a "batch" of wire can last for about 2-3 months MAX. So testing every single batch which includes several spools of wire, would be costly and time consuming. This understanding can be applied to many other products including connectors, solder, headphones, caps in equipment, etc. 
Since the cost of buying wire, having employees, renting space and shipping has gone up significantly, my margins have disappeared since I only passed a some portion of the increased cost to the current price. 
 
My reputation is on the line here since I sell the cable to the end user. I have not slept since this has happened. I can say the same thing for Lee as well. Both of our businesses has suffered permanent irreversible damages and we are working hard to fix what has been done. On my side, offering to replace cables that were made 1-2 + years ago seems to be fair since they will be receiving a cable that cost approximately 30-40% more since my cost have gone up that much. Also they are receiving the newest cable which has cost Lee a small fortune to develop and cost me a small fortune to buy and stay exclusive with. 
 
Here is how my business works. I need current sales in order to pay employees, wire, parts etc. In order to replace v1 cables, I have to take current stock and use it to replace cables that were made years back. This means I have nothing to sell. In addition, sales have stopped. So the fate of whiplash being responsible or honest is not my biggest issue since I have already proven to THOUSANDS of customers that I back up my product and I care for each and everyone that works with me on placing an order. My biggest problem is being able to continue providing great products and paying the people who provide them; my employees. Also there is rent and other expenses that go into making a product. 
 
So if you need to put me on a Guillotine, then please go ahead and do it. Since this thread is about how bad I am and others around me, I guess not much can be said more on how people want to treat the folks that try to make better music. All we can do is try. So this is what I'm doing and I have said this MANY MANY times.
 
I will replace any v1 cable through my RMA process. I need order information first since I have receive cables that were not made by whiplash. 
So the customer needs to send me the v1 product and I will replace it with v2. Right now I have a VERY limited amount of clear wire for replacement (accept headphone cables). Most of my stock is Eclipse which is the black color version of Twag v2. Turn around times will vary based on volume of orders and replacement cables being made also projects that I'm currently working on. 
 
If this is not good enough, than I apologize again. It seems people have decided to move on to other options for new cables so the backlash of this has been felt. What other public whipping do folks what to see? In my mind, the damages have already been done. I can't change it. Of course I wish I could. 
 
Also thanks to those have been trying to support me. I truly appreciate it!!
 
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. I will be unavailable personally from June 10-18th. You can email custserv@whiplashaudio.com if you need assistance. I will be checking my emails during this time, however not on a regular basis. We will be open during this time and photos of the Jazz Festival will be posted. 
 
Thanks!
Craig

 

[Kodan420]

The saddest part of this whole deal is that neither of these companies may recover. As Craig is so honestly pointing out he is basically using his future stock to replace whats wrong and may not have any thing left for continuing to do business. I agree this is a bad situation all around but lots of people might lose their lively hood over audio cables.......

 

[grawk]

I'd think anyone in Craig or Lee's situation who wasn't supplied with the (incredibly expensive) components they contracted to get would have a fairly strong case for a lawsuit, for triple damages (not just replacement of the originally contracted parts).  If the contract was for what they got, on the other hand, well...I'll leave the rest of the interpretation as a scholarly exercise for the reader.

 

[563]

What gets me is how quickly the winds shift around head-fi.  One day, a product is the cat's meow, and the next, the whole world seems to be ganging up against it.  I'm wondering how long it'll be before folks start slamming the JH-3A, or the Stax SR009, or, or ....
 
So much for the FOTM....

 

[caracara08]

the damage has been done parrots, you can stop now.   ppl can read the thread and know what happen. you dont have to restate it every page.

 

[The Monkey]

Usually, I side with the consumer on these types of issues.  Especially where cables and other such goods that lend themselves to specious claims.  But I'm finding it hard to get too worked up on the behalf of those purchasers of the 87%-93% silver cables.  With cables, you're already making a kind of leap of faith aren't you?  I'll answer that.  Yes, you are.  And to those people who have purchased the "not-up-to-spec" cable, what are your real damages?  You certainly can't hear any difference (to claim otherwise strains all boundaries of reason).  It turns green.  So what?  If I were the vendors in this situation (which of course I am not), then I would offer, at most, to refund a percentage of the purchase price that represents the percentage off of 99.whatever% these were supposed to be.  I don't know enough about their businesses to know if that is even a plausible solution.  Maybe replacing is actually easier than having that cash go out the door.  But some "recall" and replacement program seems like a bad solution to a relatively minor problem.

 

[TekeRugburn]

Usually, I side with the consumer on these types of issues.  Especially where cables and other such goods that lend themselves to specious claims.  But I'm finding it hard to get too worked up on the behalf of those purchasers of the 87%-93% silver cables.  With cables, you're already making a kind of leap of faith aren't you?  I'll answer that.  Yes, you are.  And to those people who have purchased the "not-up-to-spec" cable, what are your real damages?  You certainly can't hear any difference (to claim otherwise strains all boundaries of reason).  It turns green.  So what?  If I were the vendors in this situation (which of course I am not), then I would offer, at most, to refund a percentage of the purchase price that represents the percentage off of 99.whatever% these were supposed to be.  I don't know enough about their businesses to know if that is even a plausible solution.  Maybe replacing is actually easier than having that cash go out the door.  But some "recall" and replacement program seems like a bad solution to a relatively minor problem.

well... while i think its just a bad situation in general, replacement would be the only option. lets say you bought a laptop thats supposed to run at 1.6ghz per core. later its revealed that these cpus are only running 1.2ghz. most people wouldnt notice the difference... but if people paid for 1.6ghz, thats what they should get.... noticing the difference between the 2 is irrelevant.... so advertised specs can be innacurate as long as the consumer dont notice it?

Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk

 

[The Monkey]

I think the difference between the advertised specs and the actual measured specs are immaterial here. Further, while the "you should get what you paid for" argument has some validity, it kind of falls apart when it appears that no one did this knowingly (yet). I'd be interested if someone could actually articulate the specific harm they suffered as a result of the "tainted" batch.


Edit: if I were the vendors, I would also explore the possibility of offering a discount on the next purchase instead of recall/replacement. Would they lose some customers? Maybe. But it would be far less costly and disruptive and I'm sure most HFers would get over it pretty quickly. There are other vendors out there who have done and/or continue to do much worse.

 

[grawk]

Well, 99.999% silver has a much higher value per weight than 87% silver plated copper, so that's a fairly significant harm.  Beyond that, it's all in the ear of the beholder.  Whether any given customer is satisfied is up to that customer.  I'd think any harm to the various businesses flows up hill until you hit the person who knowingly supplied something other than what was advertised.