Seattlehifi,
thank you for your offer of assistance. i am almost certain that an old number is not the problem. while i have generally gotten an automated general annoucement when i called the number listed on the wadia website, there have been a few occasions (i have called numerous times) when a human operator answered the call. one of those occasions was on friday. the automated general announcement gives a list of departments and extension numbers to dial to reach the respective departments. when i entered the extension for the service department, i invariably got another message stating that the person in the service department was unavailable and to leave a message. the problem is that when i left a message i received no return call. on a previous occasion when i got the human operator (who announced that the company was wadia) and asked to be connected to the service department i got to the same announcement (the one about the guy not being available...).
on friday, when i again got the human operator, i specifically told the operator that i was having difficulty getting a person to pick up the call when i contacted the service department and did not getting a return call to the message that i did leave. in response, the operator told me that she would try someone else. but what i got was the voice mail announcement of another person who was apparently not available.
what made this all the more bizarre was that i hung up when i got yet another voice mail announcement and called the main wadia number (at least the one listed on the website). this call was maybe 1 minute after i spoke to the human operator, but this time the call range to the automated general announcement. i made several repeat calls within a period of 20 minutes or so and got the automated general announcement every time (on some occasions the announcement stated the name wadia and on other occasions it stated the name audio research).
this is the kind of stuff that makes me really wonder about exactly what is going on at wadia. based on what you are stating (and i checked and wadia was bought by fine sounds about 1-1/2 years ago and bought sumiko about 1 year ago; they apparently also own audio research), my suspicion is that the human operator (when i actually get her) is not actually located in michigan (or wherever wadia is operating these days). what is even more worrying is that when i got the automated general annoucement, i tried different departments to see whether i could get anyone to answer at any of them, and i did not. one of the departments that i called was the sales department. i would suspect that one department that you would always want to have pick up the phone is the sales department, so when you can't get the sales department to pick up the phone, then something very odd must be going on at wadia. when i first bought my unit 2 years ago, i never had a problem getting someone to answer the phone at wadia. now, i apparently can't get an answer from any department at wadia. |
the guy from whom i purchased my unit no longer represents wadia. even when he did, he had no service department anyway. and as i explained, in the past, i have had no difficulty contacting wadia (for example, i had previously contacted them to get a replacement part). that's why the current difficulties seemed so suspicious. the reason why i posted on audiogon is because i wanted to get a sense of whether other people have had the same problem with wadia. after all, a lot of these high end audio makers are shoe-string operations that are susceptible to cash flow crises. so when i had problems even getting someone from the sales department to answer a call, i started to wonder about what was going on at wadia.
frankly, it never occurred to me to contact some dealer from whom i didn't buy the unit because the warranty is written from wadia to me - as the warranty is written, i am the one who is responsible for getting the product to wadia. |
i don't fault seattlehifi for providing vigorous defense of wadia; after all, as a dealer of wadia products, he has a vested interest in protecting the integrity of the wadia brand name. it is not my objective to assail the reputation of wadia. |
excuse me "jwmazur":
seattlehifi posted questions about why i didn't contact a dealer with my service issue. the point of my subsequent post was to answer the questions posed by seattlehifi. if you think that my comments constitute "bemoaning" then you don't have to read them.
aside from the fact that the wadia website says to contact wadia for service, as i explained, it did not occur to me to contact a dealer from who i did not buy the player for assistance in getting service. what you may not know is that there is a fair amount of turnover among wadia dealers in illinois, and it makes even less sense for me to contact a dealer for service on a product after he is no longer dealing in the product line.
i wrote the next post to explain that i did not fault seattlehifi for defending the reputation of wadia. since the guy is a dealer it made sense to me that he would do so and i thought that it was a nice gesture for him to make the offer. but if i am going to contact dealers from whom i did not a product, it makes more sense for me to call a current local dealer since they would presumably have the same information that i could get from seattlehifi. |
excuse me "jwmazur":
seattlehifi posted questions about why i didn't contact a dealer with my service issue. the point of my subsequent post was to answer the questions posed by seattlehifi. if you think that my comments constitute "bemoaning" then you don't have to read them.
aside from the fact that the wadia website says to contact wadia for service, as i explained, it did not occur to me to contact a dealer from who i did not buy the player for assistance in getting service. what you may not know is that there is a fair amount of turnover among wadia dealers in illinois, and it makes even less sense for me to contact a dealer for service on a product after he is no longer dealing in the product line.
i wrote the next post to explain that i did not fault seattlehifi for defending the reputation of wadia. since the guy is a dealer it made sense to me that he would do so and i thought that it was a nice gesture for him to make the offer. but if i am going to contact dealers from whom i did not a product, it makes more sense for me to call a current local dealer since they would presumably have the same information that i could get from seattlehifi. |
seattlehifi:
i noticed that you do not carry the krell product line. if you did, you would realize that when a customer wants service on a krell product, they contact krell. it's the same with bryston.
i appreciate that you want to provide good service to your customers and you extended an offer to help me, a non-customer, but you might want to make yourself a bit more familiar with the wadia service policies and what is actually stated on the wadia warranty. a warranty is legally binding, so a customer has to rely on what is stated on the warranty and not on the statements of dealers or other parties not named in the warranty, no matter how well intentioned those statements might be.
in your case, your hypersensitivity and somewhat over-the-top defensiveness of wadia make your offer suspicious. from my perspective, you could post the information that you have to offer and be of service to not just me but to anyone else who might need service from wadia. |
08-04-12: Seattlehifi
I will forward the link to this thread to the powers that be at Wadia as I would still like to see a resolution and because I believe Wadia, being the company that they are, would also wish to see Paperw8's issues handled professionally and expediently.
this would probably be a better way to go because there is a problem at wadia, and if making the higher-ups aware of the problem leads to improvement then everyone who needs service on a wadia product benefits. my thinking was that it would be better for you to post the information that you offered to share with me privately because anyone who attempted to contact wadia for service would almost certainly have a similar experience to my own. but i would appreciate if you would follow up and inform your contacts at wadia about this thread because what i am reporting is something that definitely needs to be addressed.
i have been attempting to contact wadia for weeks, so the audio show to which you referred is not the reason why i have been unable to contact anyone at wadia.
for your own information, i would suggest that you go to the wadia website and attempt to follow the service information posted there and you might better understand what my experience has been.
as to the warranty obligations, unless wadia declared bankruptcy before being acquired, the warranty obligations of wadia are now the warranty obligations of fine audio SpA so it doesn't matter that the warranty was written by the truewave llc (dba as wadia digital) entity. it may very well be the case that fine audio prefers the service model that you propose (where customers contact local dealers) but we as customers have to rely upon the information that is publicly distributed by the manufacturer.
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yes i did send an email message to wadia last week. since you said that there was a big audio show last week maybe i shouldn't have expected a 24-hour reply (although i didn't think that the service department typically went to trade shows).
just to get you straight on the sequence of events, sumiko did not acquire wadia; fine audio SpA acquired wadia about 1-1/2 years and fine audio SpA acquired sumiko about 6 months later.
one final comments, while i appreciate you offer of assistance, one thing that i do not appreciate is your tendency to misrepresent my statements. i explained the protocol that i followed to get service and why i followed it. i also explained wadia has fairly high dealer turnover and the dealer from whom i bought my unit no longer represents wadia. adding to the annoyance is your mitt romney-esque tendency to take different positions on a given topic: on the one hand you assert that manufacturers would of course expect customers to contact dealers because that is why they set up dealer networks, and on the other hand say "well gee, if you need repair then of course the customer should go to the manufacturer since dealers aren't equipped to deal with repairs" (i note that this thread is about getting repair service on my wadia 381).
if you want to assist, i appreciate it but i think that you would do well to leave it at that and stop editorializing on my possible motives or actions. because in the latter case, you are not helpful. |
to make a long story short, i finally got through to someone at wadia. he was familiar with this thread (and had apparently been in contact with seattlehifi). he conferenced-in someone in service and we were able to make headway. the guy from service will contact me with information so that i can return the unit for service. hopefully i will be able to send it off later today.
apparently the problem is that wadia is in the middle of moving its facilities. the move is apparently scheduled for completion some time next month.
i would like to thank seattlehifi because your intercession got things moving. |
as a update, when wadia was made aware of the problems with the service department (and apparently i have not been the only person who had been trying to contact them) they actually did something to address my comments. for example, if you call the service department now you get a message explaining that they are moving the service department and will be shut down until after labor day. yeah, that's a bummer if your unit is out of commission now, but at least now you know what is going on. besides, companies don't relocate every month, so you can think of the current situation as being of an extraordinary nature, so you can't judge wadia based on current conditions.
from my interactions with wadia (after i got past the automated messaging system) i get the sense that they will attempt to accommodate people to the extent that they are able. but i think that the takeaway here for wadia is that it is critically important to keep customers informed and to not leave customers on a lurch when extraordinary conditions exist. |
08-24-12: Bizango1
They should have handled their move better and had a plan to take care of their customers. I bought a 121 that didn't work properly in my system a couple weeks ago. Called and didn't get a response to a VM in 24 hrs. Since I read about their communication issues I called back and got a very nice and concerned cust serv rep on the phone who said he would run it by engineering and get back to me. It has been two weeks and I haven't heard back. That's too long in my book. No worries though, my online dealer has already swapped it out for the Rega that works perfectly. So I'm not really unhappy in the end. I've had no issues with their phone system or emails-they just didn't call back (yet). Maybe the note flew out the window on the highway to their new facility.
it seems to me that the fundamental issue is that you just didn't like the unit. if you don't like the produce *and* you perceive poor service - that's doubly bad. in my case, i actually like the cd player, and my previous customer service encounters had actually been pretty good. my sense is that the current problem is temporary; the biggest problem that i had was that i just didn't know what was going on which led me to wonder if the company was going under. |
bizangol,
i think i did a bit of projecting of my own thinking here (which assumed that you would think that same way that i would). my thinking is, if i had a unit that didn't work, i don't think that i would like it very much. if i contacted the manufacturer and they didn't/couldn't do anything about it, then i probably would have liked the unit even less; and likely would have ditched the unit, as you did. |
dr_john,
i can't speak to the way things were in 1996, but shoddy customer service was not my experience a couple of years ago. so for me, the recent experience (although i have had admittedly limited experience with wadia) was a new one. |
