Poor Customer Service

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.