[acg2424]

Just curious how everyone feels about the customer service from the different companies. This is almost as imnportant as the headphone itself to me, especially when I lay down some decent money. Who would you rank as the best and worst customer service from headphone companies?

 

[bLue_oNioN]

Westone - Most wonderful customer experience, bar none. These people will go to incredible lengths to take care of you.

 

[crazyfrenchman27]

Quote:

Originally Posted by acg2424 Just curious how everyone feels about the customer service from the different companies. This is almost as imnportant as the headphone itself to me, especially when I lay down some decent money. Who would you rank as the best and worst customer service from headphone companies?

Sony has to be pretty bad...if not the worst.

I've personally had good experiences with Koss (replacing my porta pros without any questions asked).

I've heard that shure, etymotic, sennheiser, and grado all have great customer service...as you can see, lots of companies have good customer service. You don't have to endure poor service for good sound.

 

[lindrone]

From what I know/seen on the forum...

Great service -
Sennheiser, Shure, Etymotic, Ultimate Ears

Good service -
Sensaphonics (sometimes they don't respond to emails, but phone always work very well with them; if they answered email promptly all the time, they would be on top of the list), Grado (I remember seeing threads once in a while about how people aren't getting replacement drivers, or something like that... but it's rare)

Can't be tested, because they don't have any official retail channels here, therefore no services offered -
Audio Technica

Absolutely atrocious, nearly non-existent service -
Sony

 

[Iron_Dreamer]

I've only dealt with Sennheiser, and they did a great job for me.

 

[BANGPOD]

Head-Fi'ers --

I would venture to say that Etymotic has the best customer service.
Everyone I know who has them (in real life) has received no-cost repair.
I have had my pair repaired once (it was my fault) and it was completely free.
They even paid for shipping (both ways) and threw in extra filters and foamies.

I don't think any company can beat Etymotic, but some may come close.

Scott

 

[Wmcmanus]

I've never had any direct experience in dealing with the "customer service" departments of any headphone manufacturers, but have had a lot of great experiences with headphone-related gear, most of which was through head-fi.

Top class, all the way, but in no particular order:

JMT who built some portable amps and mini cables for me. What a great introduction to head-fi!

Mikhail at Single Power Audio and Ray Samuals at Emmeline Audio, both of whom are now freinds of mine. But it all started with me as the customer and each of them caring very much about what I was looking for. I lump them together only because they're both such great amp builders, true gentlemen, and easy to get along with. I think of them as twin sons of different mothers!

Todd the Vinyl Junkie and Larry at Headphile.com. These guys are also great to deal with. Larry (Mr. Woody) is really a cool guy. He can make any cable or headphone-mod you can think of and has a ton of patience with customers. Todd is also one of those guys who is always available for whatever your need.

Jan Meier of Meier Audio. I've had several great transactions with Jan, and he recently agreed to serve as my "agent" when I bought an Orpheus system from a guy in Germany that I didn't know. Jan arranged everything for me!

Koji at EIFL Corp in Japan is also highly reliable and will give you the best price every time.

Ultimate Ears was so-so. Nothing too exciting either way. Some people have reported being treated like rock stars, but my experience was that they were polite and helpful, although not always efficient (i.e., did not let me know when the product had shipped or provide any tracking info as I had requested).

I've not had any "bad" experiences, although Ultrasone was pretty useless when it came to answering my questions. It took them months to respond to emails.

 

[dmt1]

As for the companies I've had experience with:

I'd echo Shure, Ety, and UE as having great service--and I'd also add Koss.



And I'd also echo Sony as being the worst. I'll never buy another sony product because of it.

 

[skyskraper]

in australia;

sony: horid.
panasonic: good people, horrible local agents (same guys as sony)
ultrasone (aka: eastcoastaudio): emailed them saying i noticed some cracks in my headband as a bit of a test (only a couple of little cracks that arent in structural places), they couriered a new headband to me in 3 days. amazing. mucho respect to those boys! im keen to buy from them again.

 

[soupy]

Sony USA is definitely the worst. Grado has some excellent customer service, even for discontinued models.

 

[kunwar]

I have never used any but I will say that the only one I needed was for my Marantz receiver and their warranty repair guys in Adelaide sucked big time.
10 weeks to fix an IC.
i just gave up and told them to send a new one.
Thank god they did.

 

[stet]

I've only dealt with Todd and Sennhesiser, and only for pads at that. But for such a small-ticket item, both were real cool. Well, maybe $30 foam isn't small-ticket.

Of course, Todd is super personable and ships lightning-fast. I actually ordered flats form him after about 10 days of waiting for Senn to ship the 414 pads, and Todd's flats got to me two days later and still waited another week on the Senns.

To be fair, though, I don't know if shipping to a PO box tripped up Sennheiser's warehouse, assuming they mostly use FedEx and UPS, and I had filled that out as a web order. Yesterday I actually called in another order straight to the web sales guy, Jim, and he hooked up my order quick and was really acccomodating about it, again for just some measly pads.

 

[Sovkiller]

Quote:

Originally Posted by soupy Sony USA is definitely the worst. Grado has some excellent customer service, even for discontinued models.

Well this is the second time in one page, and I have to add that I do notagree with that coment, in my personal experience, I had never had any problem with Sony USA customer support, my english is pretty bad and evne though they had always assisted me in the best way possible. Of course that everyperson talks for his or her experiencies, and maybe you guys have some deplorable ones, but this is not the standard IME....I had contacted them many, many, times for different issues, and always they were solved in a satisfactory manner, and no complains so far to the date.....I have had more problems dealing with the middle man Sony dealer and warranties, before going directly to Sony, than with Sony themselves later on. My advice with Sony, cut the middle man, go to the company directly, and ask for supervisors and the like....

IMO, I don't expect too much for big companies anyway, and I think that this is the main difference between big and small bussiness, the small ones tend to be more personal and warm, and offer a lot better service, but definitively my experience with Sony have being very good...

Sennheiser was another exceptionally good, and Koss top notch....

 

[robert]

sennheiser -- didn't want to fix the cable/socket issue in 580/600 before they changed the design. i switched to grado at that point.

grado -- then i sent my 325s in when a driver started to rattle, which they fixed, but when i found that the other driver was dead below about 100Hz (and likely always was), they didn't want to know about it. i find that a bit cheeky, especially since they had them and should have tested them.

 

[WulfmanJax]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lindrone Absolutely atrocious, nearly non-existent service - Sony

Indeed. I remember a friend of mine saying to me once they were going to call sony about some messed up player they had. I just laughed and said "good luck".