Amp Warranty Repair - What's an acceptable timescale for turnaround?

My recent experience with Parasound.

I had my gear back in 10 days.  Warranty expired.  No charge...

Pretty good service IMHO...

Buying for warranty, Bryston and Parasound are tops in my book.  Of course, they don't pass the audiophile price test for a lot of folks.

This is not warrantee related but nevertheless relevant. I just had one of my MC30s worked on by audio classics that I sent up the first week of January and it’s still there ready to be shipped back this week. I fear it’s going to get worse because the shortage of technicians working on audio gear and the amount of gear needing to be worked on. My experience anyway.

Mine was not a warranty repair, it was actually elective surgery I sent her in for😁. I have a Simaudio Titan 5 channel amp that is 20 years old. I bought her used a few years ago. Though she was super clean and sounded every bit as good as I had always dreamed, it was a 20 year old amp. I contacted Sim HQ in Canada and though the rep stated they "overbuild" their amps and that "every single Titan is still out in the field" it would be a good idea to send it to them for cleaning and calibrating. This was at the very height of Covid when literally everything was shut down and you couldn't even get in to Canada. The rep told me about 4-6 weeks. It ended up being a little over 8 weeks. But again this was at the very height of Covid so to be expected it would take longer I guess...And mine was elective as I said.

Your situation is different, and yes this is bad communication/service. BUT take him up on the loaner! I ended up buying a Monolith 5 channel ($1299 at the time so I figured why not?) to fill in. Though this amp was nowhere near the class of the Titan, it did get me through. The silver lining for me was as soon as I got the Titan back and connected her I was truly truly awestruck! I think a lot had to do with it really hit home how different amps can sound and what an affect a higher end piece of gear can have on your system. Made me appreciate the Sim all the more...

I ended up returning the Monolith and got a full refund!

Best of luck my friend...

There’s distributors out there that seem to protect the manufacturers like it’s some sort of job security thing. Dealers aren’t allowed to contact the company directly. Distributors attitude is if you want this fantastic product you have to wait, we’re not going to tell you anything about lead times on manufacture or repairs. I wish dealers had the ability or power to just drop these awful companies but it’s the way they make money and there’s always customers to buy this stuff even with the horrendous customer service. I feel bad for the dealers as it’s rock/hard place. To answer your question, anywhere between 4 and 26 weeks would be totally normal. Take the dealer up on the loaner. When the equipment comes back, sell it, tell the dealer you’ve sold it and tell the dealer to tell the distributor. Most likely nothing will change but if enough people stop buying from companies that don’t give a crap about them maybe, and that’s a hard maybe, things will change.

There’s an awful lot of generalization going on here, and not a lot of facts to work with.  What product for example? We had a situation recently with an internationally respected speaker brand that was unable to supply parts for a speaker model still under warranty.  We negotiated a trade up for the owner who was willing to pay for a better model he wanted, and received 100% refund on his unrepairable ones. If the manufacturer is having trouble sourcing parts for an obsolete model, maybe they should offer you a similar deal.