Is good customer service about dead?

Odyssey Audio goes out of their way for complete customer satisfaction. Esoteric is also wonderful and Jack at SpearItSound went above and beyond for me twice. Also, Audible Illusions has come a very long way in providing great customer service Audiofeil has also been excellent and Joe Abrahms who sells MIT here has been equally great.

The worst has been Sony. Their service is God aweful. It's a sad day when you ship them their "flagship" $5000.00 SACD player in perfect condition with zero scratches/blemishes and it arrives back to you all scratched and nicked, probably because the low paid tech couldn't be bothered to put the unit on something soft while he/she was working on it. The total indifference Sony showed me when I filed a complaint was hard to believe.

Paul, you were offered FULL refund and we made it clear that we have a buyer ready now. I always have a list of people wanting a pair immediately.

Vapor1, you only had a possible buyer from Canada when you made your so called "FULL REFUND" offer and were waiting for more details. You said I can enjoy my speakers while I waited. Of course you are going to say the person is NOW ready in this thread but I never agreed to your offer in the first place and only questioned it. This is why I said I thought your company would be paying me through a paypal account the same way I had to pay you. The reply back to me was, Vapor Audio does not have those kinds of funds laying around.

We just have two different meanings of what FULL REFUND meant I guess and no I am not doing this on a third party contingency upon your inspection approval. Too risky for me.

You sent speakers that had flaws and did not disclose this to me before I made my final payment plus all the UPS issues we went through make it very difficult to trust you with an escrow service. Again you have to be the one holding all of the cards and take zero risk.

Talk about good customer service, Salk is in the process of bringing out a way for customers to monitor online the progression of their speaker build through the various stages.
This is a win/win, the customers are more informed and it takes away many of the emails they have to answer.

My word!! That's why we have to take into account the stregnth and reputation of those components on which we spend our hard earned money. There are quite a few manufacturers that make excellent sounding equipment....why anyone sends money to companies that are on the fringe is unbelievable....even if their products may seem superior to those made by solid brands like Ayre, Audio Research, Vandersteen, VPI, and the many more that fall into this top category.

I only dealt directly with Harbteh company when I was buying SHL5.There was no dealer in my country.Everything was fine.No troubles so far.