I've had similar problems with other vendor's as well. It's a common strategy to prevent products from moving between regions and actually introducing competition in the market place. I moved between Europe and the USA 4 times in the last 20 years and I've tried to get the multi-voltage tranformers installed when ever possible. What would they have done if YOU were moving? Ask you to throw away your investment and buy them new from the European distributor? I even had to provide one vendor a copy of my relocation agreement before they would complete the conversion.
ARC Support
FWIW, I'll relate my recent experience with Audio Research Corp. I've been a customer of AR for some years, on and off, including the purchase of reference gear over the years. I recently have had to place most of my system up for sale due to personal reasons, and this included a pair of Reference 300 MKII amps purchased new in Dec 2000. I accepted an offer from a gentleman in France at a fair agreed upon price. He asked that I ship them to AR to have them swapped out to 220 for use in Europe, and have them shipped on to him. The cost of the service was not an issue. Anyway, without going into the agonizingly frustrating details, heres what happened in a nutshell: AR told me basically they wouldn't do it because it would mean the possibility of losing a NEW sale for them and their European distributor. They were/are seemingly more concerned with selling a new product, in Europe, than supporting a long time customer who purchased this product at a local US dealer at 10% off list price of 30K. I explained the guy wasn't going to buy new anyway, it was beyond his price point. Didn't seem to matter. My point isn't to engender debate between AR supporters and detractors. This is merely my experience, take it for what it's worth. I personally am incredulous, find this to be in poor form, and certainly am not inclined to patronize AR in the future.