Service After the Sale


Does service after the sale mean anything to you?  It certainly does to me and has a tremendous impact on my future purchases. This week I sent three emails to three different vendors regarding their equipment that I had purchased or intend to purchase.  Yesterday (Wednesday) morning I emailed Alvin at Vinshine Audio regarding a question about a Denafrips DAC.  I had an answer early this morning (Thursday) when I woke up.  This by the way has been typical for me when corresponding with Vinshine. I've never waited more than a day for a reply.

On Monday I emailed two other vendors regarding their products.  Today (Thursday) I have not received replies from either one.  Isn't three (3) days long enough to allow for a reply.  These are not small vendors and interestingly are vendors who i've seen favorable reviews about.  That's why I choose to deal with them. I won't mention names, at least not yet.  That's not the intention of this post. I will email both again. I know that small, one or two person operations sometimes may not reply as quickly as you may like.  And then of course there are the people who never reply.

I know there have been several other posts like this on A'gon.  But I think Alvin and Vinshine deserve another shout out. I also know where my future purchases will be directed.  Do you?  

128x128marco1

OP,

If it is a high end product, then typically they will rely on dealers to provide the first line of service. They vet potential retailers, train them, and support them… and get rid of them if they do not provide exceptional service. Every company determines their go to market strategy (and should) police it to make sure customers are seamlessly supported. 

If I don’t feel comfortable regarding service after the sale I don’t buy the product. 

I bought an iFi Zen Stream and was initially very happy with it (although I’m not a fan of the 1950’s Jetson’s aesthetics). Then I ran into a technical issue and found their customer support to be basically non existent. I even reached out to the US distributor who, to his credit, tried to help but even HE couldn’t get any help from them. Now, I realize iFi offers relatively budget products, but at a company of that size I find it inexplicable that they couldn’t implement some semblance of product support. I mean, charge a couple bucks more per product and they could well afford at least decent customer support. Well, I’ll never buy another one of their products ever again.

That said, if there’s a high-end product where you can’t get customer support either from a dealer or the company, screw’em. There’s no excuse for that whatsoever.

Support is a huge consideration.   I have had overall very good support with the products I own.   

A company who really  impressed me with their quick action is  Cyrus UK.    I had so e problems with updating my new integrated amp and because they are 5 hours ahead my I received a reply more than once before I woke up.   

It was a simple problem and I flashed the firmware easily.   I ended up loving this amp ,  TMR was very responsive too.     

We all hope to never need support or service but honestly when I think back,  some of the best support has been from small companies that ONLY do Hi Fi....