Buying PSB? Read This!

[Woochifer]

I said nothing about the Energy sound - I did say that Energy sent Hi FI CHoice speakers that were falling apart - NOT DUE to shipping. A thread at AA was talkling about the same thing and poor customer service by replacing a broken tweeter with a NON current tweeter with its own set of problems.

Falling apart, or just a defective component? Big difference there. If this is true, then Energy very well might have a problem.

The cheapest part of the business is the product materials. A $300.00 B&W costs them ~$30.00 to manufacture. Basically it would be around 1/10 what it ends up being retailed for with everyone taking their cut along the way. Which is why I say even if Energy spent a whole $700.00 in parts on their top of the line $4000.00 speakers - doubtful - it would be cheaper for them to replace it.

Good gawd, where do you get this information? Is this something that the factory told you? I doubt it, since materials costs and value added breakdowns are typically proprietary information.

And you totally neglected the labor costs, which is really what would go into a repair job on a defective cabinet (assuming that a replacement unit is unavailable). And in any industry economic model I've ever done, the labor costs almost always make up the majority of the output value of a manufactured commodity. Material costs vary depending on whether the input is raw commodity or a value added component.

Since I live in Canada and worked in an office here as an accounts payable clerk I get a general sense of the costs for similar jobs. This person phones how many people. Custopmer service emplyee probably makes $13.00-$18.00 per hour(and that is JUST the cost of payroll add in medical and all that BS and it's probably closer to $22.00), and that is the cheap employee. His or her time running around asking people who probably make 50% more money an hour plus the phone calls - did the company pay the long distance? Was it long distance? There easily in the $400.00 range and we have not gotten in to the shipping charges and the fact that this issue STILL isn't resolved.

A lot of fuzzy math going on here, and just because you worked in a Canadian office doesn't mean that you know anything about how customer service is handled by PSB or what their costs are. Heck, you don't even know if that service call ultimately gets routed overseas to some foreign call center. Even if your final tally of $400 is true (again, this seems like a number fished out of thin air, based more on assumptions and wishful thinking than hard facts), it's still way below your assertion of "thousands of dollars in wwasted workforce time". Your point may be valid, but don't waste it on needless exaggerating and made up nonsense.

Then there is the incalcuable fact that this person probably won't make his next speaker a PSB or Energy like the other thread. Good service increases your chance of future sales. Theoretically, his next speaker might have been a $7k version 10 years from now...next time maybe B&W or some other will get that sale. Theoretically, PSB and Energy are in the hole $7k or whatever the upgrade speaker would have been. This is all hypothetical lost sales but even people in this thread who are bouncing two or three products may just as soon drop them from consideration maybe won't buy a $300.00 Aphap B or $4k Veritas.

Now, you're REALLY stretching things, and just bringing all kinds of other tangents in. Is this fuzzy computation of future value a part of your "thousands of dollars in wwasted workforce time" or is it just more spinning of the subject?

Another poster mentions it could be an isolated instance then again it may not be. I'm not talking about the quality control here either. Every company no matter how good or how expensive or how careful are going to put something out that fails in some way before expected. IT HAPPENS.

What does not always happen is the gross issues provided by this poster. The company is showing a high level of incompetance in dealing with customers - so why should anyone trust them in any other endeavor? Part of buying new is to get service when you need it - otherwise you may as well buy used. Certainly if you want a better sounding product your money goes further sonically...but you risk it with no warranty. In this case the warranty is almost more of a pain in the ass than anything else.

And that's exactly why I asked whether or not he considered returning the speakers to the dealer and letting them deal with the warranty issues. People I know who've worked in audio stores handle warranty orders as part of their customer service. Depending on the type of problem, a lot of dealers can either do the repairs in-house or send it to a local repair center, and at least troubleshoot it and make the initial diagnosis. The dealer's supposed to deal directly with the manufacturer, and handle the warranty fulfillment on behalf of the customer. That's part of the reason why these specialty audio manufacturers hand pick their authorized dealer networks, because they have good track records at handling aftersales support. With this arrangement, a customer should not ever have to deal with the factory while a unit is under warranty. If there are any hiccups in the warranty fulfillment, the dealer should be the one to break the logjam. I know if any issues ever arose with my Paradigms, my dealer would handle it, and Paradigm's website and warranty say that any support issues should first be directed to the dealer. I have a very hard time believing that PSB would setup their customer service any differently, and suggest that customers address all warranty issues directly with the factory rather than first going through the dealer.

When I had a defective driver on a Boston speaker, I took it back to the dealer. They did all the initial testing, paperwork, and coordination with the repair center, and handled the transport and notifications for me. If there were any problems along the way, they were not my issues to deal with. Two weeks later, my speakers were returned as good as new.