We have been selling new and used audio for over 4 decades and have seen speaker drivers damaged in shipment more than we can count. If we put you in a crate and shipped you across the country in a non cushioned tractor trailer and the whole time slamming around the inside of the trailer how do you think you would fare? Even new speakers are not immune to driver damage from shipping no matter what their cost. In this case it appears that a salesman at a B&W dealership was just doing a customer a favor and selling his speakers that were under warranty for him, that is not unusual since most people do not possess the knowledge and skills to undertake such a task. Their may have been a chance the speakers were never checked prior to being boxed up by the dealership and were assumed to be in perfect working order and the sales person was innocent of the fact that the tweeters were bad. We never take anyones word on the condition of their equipment, we check everything before we buy or trade When faced with losing thousand of dollars many people are less than honest about what they are selling. It is amazing how many times we hear " I did not know it was bad" right after the half hour speech on how great it sounded last night and what perfect condition it is in. If you have any kind of knowledge at all about the audio industry right now you would know that 6 months for parts or service is not unusual, the OP should be elated he did not have to wait longer. If you have any knowledge at all about B&W diamond tweeters you would know they are very fragile and have been known to break often ( yes even in transport) Why do you think they are out of stock so often? We normally do not stock parts, but when it comes to B&W we stock pile their parts because they are so hard or near impossible to come by most of the time. In this case the seller should have supplied the buyer with new tweeters (yes they are available through other avenues than B&W) and paid for them to be installed professionally and sold the other tweeters when they came in or we would have paid for return shipping and given the buyer a full refund so we could do a first hand investigation on what caused the damage to the tweeters and checked to see what other damage may have occurred. We have seen many circuit boards in crossovers crack during transport which can cause very serious damage and expensive repairs if not corrected.
Buyer Dispute
I would like to have some opinions of a remedy for this issue:
I purchased a pair of B&W 804D3 loudspeakers through Audiogon in August 2021. They were shipped in original containers by freight. The boxes arrived damaged with some holes in the boxes, but no damage to the speakers accept for one very small spot, which could be repaired with a drop of stain. However, neither tweeter was functioning. A multimeter revealed an open circuit across both voice coils. The seller said that they worked before shipping but offered to send me replacement tweeters under the previous owner' warranty which I agreed to. However, and here is the rub; Because of supply chain issues, Bowers and Wilkins did not, and still does not have the tweeters in stock. I have been waiting 6 months for the seller to provide the replacements from B&W, but they continue to be out of stock. In short, I paid nearly $7,000 in August 2021 for speakers that I still cannot listen to.
Any opinion on a path to resolution?