Poor Customer Service

Fortunately I've never experienced that with products I've purchased Emotiva, Parasound, Pass, Ayre and Magnepan where someone always answers the phone or email but agree not to respond is a sign of disrespect and I wouldn't trade with that company again either.
Good luck

No surprise here ….

COVID redux has exascerbated it for sure, but far too many distributors and / or manufacturers had crummy post-sale or tech service even before the pandemic.

That is precisely why I chose BRYSTON as my digital media player and dac as an OEM supplier, Their tech support (and robust build quality and supporting manual ) is top shelf and always there for me ….. full stop.

As an example of the expanding contrasting norm, there are numerous digital streamers etc. that may be sold domestically; but when you check them out, their tech support is actually sourced offshore ( e.g Taiwan) that can only be contacted by a digital mailbox that frequently exhibits your black hole experience.
Yup, the response seems to be at glacier speed or continental drift , if any response at all.
The support workaround is to buy from a local experienced dealer and build that relationship.
Caveat emptor

I've never had a company outright ignore me. BUT....

I HAVE (just recently, actually) had a manufacturer take several days to get back to a question I made via email, but they DID eventually get back to me.

Unfortunately, that several day gap between communication (and I had called twice after opening the case via email) led me return the product for a refund. 

I chose a different option from a different manufacturer.

I’ve had excellent response and support from the companies I deal with with the sole exception of Aurender. I finally became so unhappy with their quality of support that I dumped the damn thing and bought a Bryston BDP-3. Which is what I should have done at the outset.

I know many people praise Aurender support. My experience was that their email responses showed they never bothered to read the initial email inquiries. Support (in the US, at least) seemed to be provided only by one guy named "Ari."

SGC before Covid.

I've never owned Bryston but I hear they have solid cust. service. Good choice.

One thing for sure, the less we share these sorts of experiences the more this lets them get away with it. Jungson refused to honor their warranty even once they knew for certain their amp was defective- because they had seen and heard it themselves! Then instead of replacing it they stopped returning my calls. I will never buy Jungson again and take every opportunity to let people know, so they can be informed and make up their own mind.  

When you complain about something without telling us who and what and why all it amounts to is a "waaaaa!" Everyone knows how bad customer service feels. We have all been there. This is going nowhere. Tell us who, and give us the details. A lot of these guys watch the web for stuff like this. You help us by warning us, help them by letting them know, and help yourself if they decide to do something about it.   

So: Who is it and what happened???

Before I buy the product I contact the manufacturer via email or voice with a question that I already know the answer to. How soon and how accurately they respond gives me an idea of what to expect in the future regarding customer service. Then you can only hope it holds up.
Two thumbs up for Bryston, VPI and Cary Audio.

A little off-topic.. love plandemic :}

I am so tired of everyone blaming their incompetenace on Covid. Some may be justified, but many are just using it as an excuse.

ozzy

As a retired salesman, I cannot overstate the benefits of providing exemplary service to your customers. Good service with help your business grow, while poor service will slowly erode consumer confidence and eventually result in a loss of market share. I recently had an example of both.    

Good service: Oppo. Even though the disk player I had was discontinued and the company had all but gone from the business, they went over and above to resolve a problem with the player's disk tray. They responded promptly, made it easy to ship the unit and did the repair for a very reasonable price. The unit came back with the problem fixed, cleaned, updated, in a new box. Seamless and efficient.    

Horrible service: Tidal. All I wanted to do is update my credit card. Because I never had the option to talk to anyone, could never even get an email response that wasn't generated by a software program, it wasn't possible to resolve the issue and I eventually gave up and switched from a credit card to PayPal. If Qobuz was available in Canada I would have unsubscribed on the spot, but for now I am biding my time until that day.

OP, Some of the manufacturers have their own circles or groups on other websites.  These folks answer questions immediately and often get the techs involved directly.  I know James from Bryston is one example. There is a benefit to choosing a supplier of equipment that is engaged in this way.  The ones who do participate demonstrate a real concern regarding their reputation and usually it is someone at the leadership level and they want to know if employees are dropping the ball. Good Luck. 

There are definitely no supply chain issues involved when a manufacturer can't even respond to emails - ever.  Most of the bad behaviors we see today by vendors with poor customer service were the same bad actors pre-pandemic as well.  And the exemplary vendors are the same as well.  In nearly all businesses solid communications smooths all rough edges.  Engagement is key.

“When you complain about something without telling us who and what and why all it amounts to is a "waaaaa!" Everyone knows how bad customer service feels. We have all been there. This is going nowhere. Tell us who, and give us the details.”

All except when some poor guy tells the forum of the Neg service he received at the hands of Tekton and got ‘jumped All Over ’ you mean 

VTL will tell you to just upgrade to the newest model!  Shameless!!!

@tsushima1

Indeed frustrating. There are reasons forum members are cautious about naming brands and giving specifics because of the responses that it may draw. It gets viewed as a lose/lose proposition because you get slammed if you give details and you get attacked if you don’t.

There have been numerous cases documented in these pages of simply unacceptable service by any measure. You may recall the guy in another country whose speakers were dropped off at a station and he was supposed to drive hours away to pick them up. A forum member instructed him to "Use American ingenuity". "Do you want them or not?" he says. "Just go pick them up, and suck it up." The guy paid for direct delivery to his house.

Or another guy that didn’t get his speaker grills after months of waiting. A member’s response, "why would you possibly want grills anyway?"

More than once we are instructed to "embrace the suck" as if all vendors should assume no accountability - it’s all part of life. I thought by sharing in these types of threads that we are trying to prevent "letting them get away with it."

We can at least have the empathy to reflect on the OP’s situation with an ear of understanding and not mocking them with a "waaaaa". Please all - let’s make this a better place.

@three_easy_payments..  Quite Indeed 

This iswhyi bought USA made products Bricasti is great on every level , as well as Coda ,and Wireworld  never an issue .
mynew speakers will also be from North America ,Wilson, Magico 
Salk sound or someone else from North America .

As much as I would love to buy from my local hifi store, I have had more bad experiences in the store while just browsing that I haven't been back. I'm not about to drop my hard earned money in a store where the employees give major attitude. I've had great experiences with Music Direct, Modwright and Command Performance near DC. All have been very customer service oriented and I've never had any issues. They will continue to get my business in the future.

Thanks for the responses everyone. I don't know a lot of the technical  details of one product and needed assistance and was having poor performance issues wth another that I was hoping they could guide me through. The former was my Parasound Integrated and the latter my pair of REL subs. @MC is right, if we don't call them out by name they get away with it. I know I'm a small fish but if we fishies stick together we might not get their chum. 

Since COVID began, I have pulled out much of my older equipment to tinker. Due to age and lack of use, I’ve need service or help from Benchmark, Audio Research, Gallo and Bel Canto. Despite the fact none of my equipment was punched new, all were extremely helpful and responsive. Gallo is now based in the UK yet someone called me back in a few hours to help troubleshoot my issue with numerous follow up emails. I needed a repair on a Bel Canto amp and none other than John Stronczer returned my emails. Audio Research sent me the resistors I needed.  Just amazing. 

Nice choice of words……plandemic. Lol. I don’t think anyone gives a rats #%s about anyone anymore. Big corporations are the worst and the smaller ones don’t have the manpower. This 200 plus yr democracy may be on its way out. I can say that vpi almost never responds to my inquiries. 

Customer service is at least as important as performance.   I've always had great experiences with Ayre, Vandersteen, VPI.

Really great service with Ortofon. And with manufacturers, if they don't get back to me right away to answer questions, generally their distributor has a go to contact at the factory and the answers are provided within several days. Really over the years I have had a handful of issues but things were sorted out every time....even with behemoths like yamaha, pioneer and sony...where one might expect more of a chance of being ignored.  Dinged corners on books, broken plastic teeth in CD players, broken stylus, questions on firmware and features, corrupt firmware, turntable belts that break in too short of time, and etc etc...all fixed. Even Reverb did what they pledged to do here just recently.

I wouldn’t know, several of my components are from Bryston. Besides from devastatingly underrated audio chops, their build quality is one of the best I have ever had, and the way they stand behind their components is absolutely second to none!

Here that Pass Labs, McIntosh, etc.

I’ve experienced excellent customer service from the following:
Magnepan
Underwood Wally
Peachtree Audio
Vacuum Tube Audio (tubes4hifi)
I agree that “Covid,” has become a convenient excuse for anything & everything.

I bought a new Parasound JC2 from a great local dealer. Unfortunately, it had a defective power supply. I sent an email to Parasound, to which Richard Schram personally replied. The next day, a new replacement was on its way to me, even before I put a return label on the defective one. That's about as good as it gets for customer service in my opinion. 

Regarding equipment issues, there are numerous negative customer service experiences I’ve experienced. Two stand up companies are Belles and Van Alstine. They are great and are willing to go the extra mile.

My beef is with Technics and parent company Panasonic I've made it known on other threads. I bought their SUG700 a fine piece no issues but I wanted to know more about the product than in their manual so I tried the phone numbers in the manual only one worked and referred me to a nonworking email. I started randomly calling numbers close to one of the nonworking published numbers and actually got a guy at Panasonic that gave me a number at Technics to call,I called it and it referred me to a non-working email address. I gave up but take the opportunity when presented to say good product customer support not so much. 
conversely Emotive,PSAudio,I got a human on the other end. 

Agree with the OP. I work hard for my money and when I come to spend it I expect the potential recipient to work just as hard to take it off me!
Some companies these days don’t seem bothered whether you purchase their product or not. Have had many inquiries ignored, but it’s their loss, I just look elsewhere.

Some very good tips here. Love the ’tester’ pre-purchase question
idea!

My best experiences have been with:

Innuos- based in UK/Portugal but always same day responses. Nice job boys!

Pass Labs- Kent will pick up the phone after 1-2 rings ready to give
you intelligent, educated suggestions. Nelson Pass replies to all emails.

My friend Vlad at Audio Mirror. Works another full time job and assembles, upgrades and ships his products. And returns calls in the eves. Talk about a one man show! I love supporting him.

I love when companies like Bryston offer some items with lifetime warranties. 
Sanders Sound- Lifetime Warranty

I say this to all professional reviewers:
In every opening paragraph review always include the length of warranty and whether it is transfers to future owners please!
By putting in the fine print at the end of a review you are saying
"Warranties Do not Matter’.

that's the problem when you but never heard of equipment just to save some money hopefully you won't do that again stick with the name brands.

When I was upgrading my phono amp couple of years ago I wanted further information about the van den Hul 'The Grail SB'.  So I phoned the company.  AJ himself answered the call and answered all the questions I had.
I bought the piece.  It is wonderful.  And so is AJ and his company.

@three_easy_payments
”

You may recall the guy in another country whose speakers were dropped off at a station and he was supposed to drive hours away to pick them up. A forum member instructed him to "Use American ingenuity". "Do you want them or not?" he says. "Just go pick them up, and suck it up." The guy paid for direct delivery to his house.

Or another guy that didn’t get his speaker grills after months of waiting. A member’s response, "why would you possibly want grills anyway?"

Tekton if I recall correctly ?

I own both REL and Aurender, always received timely support from them.

@havocman I'd hardly call Parasound and REL never heard of equipment. 

There are always at least 2 sides to a story and a witch hunts work both ways. Anyone could be next in the sights of someone seeking revenge or just to cancel someone or something.

Unvetted stories on a forum regarding customer service are not always the best source of information on this subject, but they are very predictable.

What kind of customer are you? The customer service you get depends on you and you do not know what is taking place on the other end of a conversation unless you are told. Customers with bad manners, or who seem to have endless insults, or who don't "listen" may not get the customer service or results they are seeking. It could be, when you tell a company you will never buy from them them there is a sigh of relief.

There are customers who buy fake, look-a-like, or counterfeit products who then expects the real company to support the product. According to a GAO (US gov 2008 study) searching for the absolute best price on a product is likely to lead a customer to a fake, look-a-like, or counterfeit product at least 43% of the time.

On the other hand, there are good and bad people and companies in all industries and walks of life.

I have received excellent customer service from the following.

EgglestonWorks
Upscale Audio - from Kevin Deal directly
Audio Mirror - from Vlad Bazelkov
Dehavilland Amplifier - from Kara Chaffee
Manley - from Evana Manley directly
Audio Advisor

These people really care about their customers and their products that they make or sell.

I love when people passively aggressively respond to well meaning posts only to have people like JohnD come back with a declaration that when he calls they always answer the phone while tribute signalling his equipment llst. These shops may have neen responsive now they are part of a conglomerate where nobody answers the phones like at mcintosh where i am still waiting for a call back and yup my next amp purchase was Levinson. Not to mention PS Audio where i am still witing for my DAC update call back.  Both are now dead to me. 

@tsushima1   Yes....those were Tekton experiences

Ha, this is a great list of guilty people that need to trudge before all and feel our shame.  I would like to add to the list:
Van Alstine, B&W and Linn.  Van Alstine actually suggested I just throw their amp away, which I did. 

Great service:  Dynaco (any tech worth their salt can work on it and schematics are public), Magnepan, Decware, Audible Elegance (a local shop in Cinci)
Fortunately the good out number the bad. 

I have to say I've never really had any issues with manufacturers - PS Audio, Denon, Schiit, Buchardt, Denafrips, Periapt, REL, SVS, VPI have all stepped up, gotten back to me in a timely manner and fixed any issues that I've had to my satisfaction - I had problems with PS Audio, Denon and Schiit products concerning defects that were under warranty and all were resolved - Schiit made me pay for shipping and insurance back to them.  VPI sent me a (paper) template for cartridge alignment for a Traveler, SVS took a sub I didn't buy directly from them as a trade-in for an upgrade, REL responded to my questions about crossover settings for use with my speakers, and PS Audio always responded to me with various questions/suggestions for best usage.  So-so service: McIntosh when trying to get parts for my (admittedly) ancient 70's solid state amp - rep couldn't hook me up with replacement volume pots, didn't know where I could procure them, and referred to the amp at one point as a "boat anchor". OK, fine; don't expect companies to have replacement parts for 50 year old products.  I found and customized a couple to work so, happy ending.                                                        If you allow me the indulgence of expanding this to online retailers, I've had very good experiences with Audio Advisor, Vinshine, Apos, Drop (sometimes you can wait a while for products to ship),  Blue Jeans Cables, KAB.  Now this allows me to vent about Shenzhen Audio, from who I was 1.) first sent a Topping D90 with the graphics printed upside down on the front, and they offered me $20 to keep the unit and no other option, and 2.) sent me a Topping (see a pattern here?) A50 headphone amp with an Australian power adaptor - was not given an option to pick on the website, but it was being sent to the US...Anyway, it took a month of emails back and forth with them always being very polite (and always asking for me to post a positive review of them ) but never understanding what I needed, to the point of me sending them pictures of what they sent me with a big "NO" next to it and a picture of what I needed with a big "YES" next to that one.  

I did have the Line Magnetic distributor flag all my ads when I tried to sell the new gear I bought from them 2 years later. Spent thousands wanted to make a change so listed the gear that I bought from them.  I got a few very rude and insulting emails from the distributor and all who inquired about my ad were told it was grey market even after I sent the receipt to the distributor. I lost much on the resale and stopped buying anything they imported YMMV 

^^^^^^^^^^^ That smacks of pure Vindictiveness ^^^^^^^^^^^

 I feel for you and I always dread calling when I have a problem, just me. Have to explain and deal people…  yuck!FedEx obviously dropped a Hegel H390 from truck pretty damn hard on one side of the box It crushed the hard foam packing inside about 3 inches on the source and volume knob side of the amp. No physical damage at all but knobs were inoperable.  The H390 setup was quick and easy and yes it sounded amazing but I had to use the remote. I called the dealer (dread) and an hour later he called back and told me Hegel America is sending you a new H390 I was elated! Also since you have music keep that H390 until the new one arrives. 3 days later I had a new amp. Packed up the damaged one and sent it out per Hegel America instructions postage paid. Happy ending! Good experience with Hegel and Dedicated Audio

I am right there with you. I have a Matrix Audio Element X and the wireless connectivity has died. I've written to them twice already over the past week and absolutely no reply from them. This is a $3400 network streamer that is less than two years old and they obviously feel no responsibility to reply about their product failing. Buyer beware.

Retailer:   Upscale Audio is excellent, consistently.  Music Direct is also outstanding.

Manufacturers:   Audioquest is stellar, I love that brand. Manley Labs is outstanding and Eveana Manley personally contacted me to make certain the issue was resolved.  REL has been very helpful when contacted, and quickly at that.  The ultimate, for me, is Balanced Audio Technology (BAT).  When I call they always answer.  I had a very intermittent problem (about once every three weeks) and one of the owners (Steve Bednarsky) offered to pay freight both ways due to the strange issue/problem (warranty is freight paid only back to the customer, typical of most manufacturers).  The problem was corrected and the unit was returned very quickly.  Other questions I had regarding a new and forthcoming BAT amp were answered each time I called.  I also received additional emails and phone calls regarding updated information and target delivery date on the new model, unsolicited by me.  I bought it and they delivered it on time to my dealer, Upscale Audio.  I'll buy more BAT gear, they have earned my business, for life.  And the product build quality and sonic performance is outstanding.

@benvenuto Now that my friend is great customer service! If I ever make a change from my Parasound Hint I'll keep them in mind.

@audio-union There are always at least 2 sides to a story and a witch hunts work both ways. Anyone could be next in the sights of someone seeking revenge or just to cancel someone or something.

Unvetted stories on a forum regarding customer service are not always the best source of information on this subject, but they are very predictable.

What kind of customer are you? The customer service you get depends on you and you do not know what is taking place on the other end of a conversation unless you are told. Customers with bad manners, or who seem to have endless insults, or who don't "listen" may not get the customer service or results they are seeking. It could be, when you tell a company you will never buy from them them there is a sigh of relief.

There are customers who buy fake, look-a-like, or counterfeit products who then expects the real company to support the product. According to a GAO (US gov 2008 study) searching for the absolute best price on a product is likely to lead a customer to a fake, look-a-like, or counterfeit product at least 43% of the time.

On the other hand, there are good and bad people and companies in all industries and walks of life.

• Wow! That's a leap! It's as simple as I said. I had questions for one company and issues for another. The results were the same for both I called, was unable to reach a live person, left a message with the appropriate department or person as instructed, waited over a week
  in both cases, rinse and repeat. 

@audio-union

•  Unvetted stories on a forum regarding customer service are not always the best source of information on this subject, but they are very predictable.

How exactly are you proposing to vet my or anyone else's story? Is my story so bizarre to you you propose I spun it from yarn?

• What kind of customer are you? The customer service you get depends on you and you do not know what is taking place on the other end of a conversation unless you are told. Customers with bad manners, or who seem to have endless insults, or who don't "listen" may not get the customer service or results they are seeking. It could be, when you tell a company you will never buy from them them there is a sigh of relief.
  

Where did you derive any of that? On my second voicemail I may have let them know I previously left a message and hadn't heard from them. On my third unresponded to call you bet I let them know I wasn't happy. If a company sighs a relief when I won't buy from them again because they couldn't take a minute to answer a question then who exactly is the loser?

• There are customers who buy fake, look-a-like, or counterfeit products who then expects the real company to support the product. According to a GAO (US gov 2008 study) searching for the absolute best price on a product is likely to lead a customer to a fake, look-a-like, or counterfeit product at least 43% of the time.
  

Both items in question were bought new in the box from a retailer and shipped to me directly from the factory. Both items are registered and both still under warranty.

Any other questions?