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Quality issues with Tekton speakers....

I was reading all the buzz about these Tekton speakers and after sorting through all the reviews, decided to order a pair of the Pendragon (the big ones... $2,500 a pair).

When they arrived, I found them to be boxed well and in perfect shape, although one thing was very noticeable once I looked at the speakers. The woofers had a slightly different tone (color). The upper woofer in each tower was basically dark gray or black (like most paper woofers you might come across) and the lower woofers were slightly blue in color. After looking on the web some, I could not find a Pendragon speaker photo ANYWHERE that had this color difference. Since they did not come with speaker grilles, I knew the color difference would bother me as long as I owned the speakers.

I contacted Tekton (Eric Alexander) via e-mail and explained the issue. After almost a week of not hearing back, I sent another e-mail and his response was...

(copy and pasted right from my e-mail)... " I'm sorry. Please refresh my memory. What seems to be the problem? Thanks, Eric"

I described the issue again and he offered to exchange the speakers. I said there was no need to ship back a huge pair of 85 pound speakers and have him send me another pair and suggested maybe he just send me grilles at no charge to cover the speakers and I could live with the slight color difference in the woofers. I really feel that grilles should be included in a $2,500 price tag however.

All of these e-mails took several days to answer by the way.

He agreed and said he would get the grilles out right away... they were sent a few days later and upon arrival, I realized there was a pretty big problem. I had a normal type speaker grill with 4 pegs on the back and a speaker with no peg holes. After all the time, e-mails, no answers, etc., I was not interested in wasting any more time with the matter and asked for a partial refund through PayPal and asked a simple question... why send me grilles for a speaker that he just shipped to me with no holes to put them in? His reply was to offer to make new grilles and send "velcro dots" to affix them to the speakers with.... WOW.

The WORST part about all this: Within 30 minutes of making a PayPal claim about the issue and asking for a partial refund from him, Eric tried to call me right away... now that there was money at stake.

The really sad part of all this is that the speakers actually sound pretty damn good now that they are broken in... I just hope the quality and communication come up to the same level for the sake of Tekton as a company.
audiofreak32
charles1dad's avatar
charles1dad
10,250 posts
 
I don't agree that most speaker manufacturers include grills. Really this seems like such a small matter (at least to me). Regarding the off color drivers, he acknowledged that and offered to exchange the entire speaker! This is going beyond the call of duty. The reality is that different things upset different people. Based on the information stated here, I'd be happy to do business with this company.
Charles,
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,627 posts
 
If the vendor offered to make an exchange to set things right, then they did the right thing given the situation.

Different vendors/products view and handle grills differently. My preference is to always have them included, although I can understand where some value oriented companies, like Tekton perhaps, might look to keep costs down anyway possible. I like that, as long as accompanied by timely customer service to address any issues when needed.
czarivey
5,946 posts
 
It's innovative and cool. Right is black and Left is white or visa versa or whatever colors. It's modern arts touche, so don't be obsessed with different colors! I'd rather enjoy it and would advice to OP same.
roxy54's avatar
roxy54
8,128 posts
 
I can only speculate that if the OP doesn't want to exchange for a new pair, which seems very fair, maybe he just wants to keep this pair and get a refund for a certain amount of money which he has still not specified.
bcgator's avatar
bcgator
355 posts
 
Wow, this thread has me bewildered. People talking about how everything is cool because the company offered an exchange. But nobody is asking if the company offered to pay for the shipping to enable the exchange. Otherwise, how is it "very fair" for a buyer to eat the cost of returning speakers that SHOULD HAVE BEEN QUALITY CHECKED IN THE FIRST PLACE. How can one say it's "beyond the call of duty" to offer an exchange without knowing who's bearing the cost burden of that exchange?? I see comments like "Can't get much better service than that" and think "well, yeah you can, it's called having the speakers be right the first time". Speakers, to many people, aren't just sound-producing devices...they're furniture, to be admired visually. Having matching driver colors, where the match was intended, isn't trivial.

This isn't like ordering a 6-piece McNuggets and getting to your table and finding only 5 in the box and having to spend 90 seconds walking back to the counter to ask for the missing food. Re-boxing and re-shipping those things isn't a walk in the park, yet people seem to be trivializing that process.

You can toss out the delayed communication, the grill issue, the refund request, all of that. There's no getting around the fact that one of two things happened at the point of fulfillment of this order. Either 1) The builder never noticed that the drivers didn't match, in which case...WTF? Or 2) the builder did notice that the drivers didn't match, but thought to himself "eh, wtf..."

It seems like too many people here have been conditioned to accept mediocrity and just take it and keep smiling. Either that or there are some Tekton fans here dealing with a truckload of cognitive dissonance and no matter how this went the OP was going to come out of it looking unreasonable.

If Tekton did in fact offer to pay the cost of shipping both ways, I'd be happy to know it and would adjust my thinking accordingly.



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