Focal Headphone Repairs?

Why not contact your dealer for help? Perhaps he knows where it can be repaired under warranty locally. Perhaps he'll loan you a demo pair while it's being serviced.

What cleeds said.

Tried that, and no go. Needs to ship back to France, at my expense.

Wow. Great reason to cross Focal off your list. Too bad your dealer did not tell you that ahead of time. Almost sounds like a no win. Blow the bucks to fix them just to have them break again. Fix and sell them--I’d have a hard time doing that with a known quality issue. Sorry to hear your misfortune but your post is valuable to others looking to purchase headphones.
P.S.  I'd find a new dealer as well

Given that your dealer has proven useless, I suggest contacting the distributor, which looks like Focal Naim America, in writing. If the best they can offer is that you return the product to the country of origin, I’d ask my dealer for a refund.

If the dealer refuses, I’d take him and Focal Naim America to small claims court and argue that the product hasn’t met its implied warranty of suitability.

This all assumes that your dealer is an actual authorized dealer.

Sorry to hear that, my headphone dealer who is also a Focal dealer told me to stay away from them because he was so upset with amount of repair work he had to coordinate.

Unlike the OP, sounds like you have a good dealer.  Again, he ought to dump his.

For a company to have the technology available to them and brag about it, for Focal, this is absolutely inexcusable. 
Not to mention the fact that you have to ship it to France on your own dime? 
Forget it.

 I'm glad I sold my Clears when I did.

Not sure how to reply to each post individually, so I'll attempt to do it collectively here.

I guess I can't hold the dealer accountable since the 'phones worked fine initially, and asking him to do a replacement loaner for a $1500 headphone for at least 3-6 weeks seems unreasonable. However, I very much hold Focal accountable. These are well-known issues, and inexcusable for a a high-end manufacturer. They seem content to let customers deal with these chronic problems rather than improve quality control. I also own 'phones by Beyerdynamic, Sennheiser, NAD, B&O, among others and never had an issue. Pre-Apple Beats is the only other company where I experienced such shoddy QC.

I appreciate the tip about contacting Focal Naim America. They may indeed offer a satisfactory solution. Maybe they'll understand that posts like mine can be death to a brand. Then again, some folks still don't understand how word of mouth can make or break a brand in this age of the Internet. I'll let you know,

As for dealers, as we all know, some are great and go the extra distance, and some just plain suck. The ones that are honest, fair and trustworthy get my repeat business--for years. The others that are less than that can go out of business as far as I'm concerned, Burn me once, but never twice.

Thanks everyone for your comments and concern.

Audiogon is a pretty big deal. If Focal had any marketing savvy they would fix the OP headphones immediately. A thread like this one is not going to help sales and perceptions.

Update as of 8/20/20:

Wrote Focal Naim America. Received a reply within a few hours. Filled out the form required to get return authorization. Then...nada.

Four days have passed, three emails sent, and zero follow up by the company. I called their 800 number, tried to get hold of four different people, and again...nada.

It's as if this company is no longer in operation. More likely, their customer support is as bad as their quality control.

Stay tuned.

This reminds me of my time when my wife wanted to go from the hotel to Louis Vuiton in Paris.. Until I pronounced the store name correctly, the taxi operator couldn’t "understnd" what I meant.

That is very disappointing to hear.... i was about to pull the trigger on a pair of Clear Professional....    no thank you, nothing more irritating to me than poor or zero support after sale.   

I am so sorry to hear about your poor and Inexcusable experience. I am grateful that 6 month in, my Stellias are working well and sound delightful. But now I am worried—what will my recourse be if a $3000 set of cans has problems?

I have a problem with the Focal Utopias....

check out my post too

Purchased Elegia for about 800$ from authorized retail dealer. Cable failed TWICE before I replaced it with a third party cable. And now the headband has snapped (I've seen multiple posts with the same problem). Focal does not sell replacement parts. Instead you have to send for repair which will cost 400$. As for me I will never buy anything Focal again.

It’s so sad that Focal makes great-sounding headphones that are, by many users accounts, unreliable and not well supported.  Thankfully there are several other great headphones out there that more than compete with Focals sonically without the headaches.  I’ll give a shoutout to Hifiman — I own 2 of their headphones and have had zero problems even though I bought both as open box and came across as nothing but brand new.  Focal’s poor quality control and product support is unforgivable IMHO, especially at the price points at which they sell their products. 

Upscale audio has great closeout pricing on Focal phones.  After rereading this thread I would never consider them, even at steep discounted prices.