Is good customer service about dead?

I've had customer support that is extraordinarily supurb from Ayre, and VPI

I have had excellent customer service, responsiveness, and guidance from many
companies in the high-end and I won't list them all, but since you do mention
speakers at that price point, I would say Merlin provides a great product and a
lot of guidance of how to get the speaker to perform it best with other
equipment and room issues. The speakers are not shipped from the shelves, so
don't expect delivery the next day, they are handmade and take some time to
make, but that is the nature of handcrafted products from small companies,
and well worth the wait, what you get for the wait is a very well sorted and
refined speaker, and the furthest thing from flavor of the month.

Truemaineiac is right. Sometimes the best thing is to pick up the phone. . . even in this era of email, text messages, Twitter, Facebook, etc

In this economy many company's have had to reduce staffing to bring costs in line with slower sales in addition many company's have had to lower their selling price as well as competing with on line sellers who provide no customer service. This means they have fewer resources. I run a small manufacturing company and it amazes me that we continually get clients who are comparing our pricing to on line or chinese vendors and give very little value to service until they need it. In the U.S. this must be what consumers want as they drive by local merchants on their way to walmart or use a local retailer to evaluate goods and then buy on line. In luxury goods its even worse as buyers feel they can now bargain to the point the vendor has no margins left. I could rant forever but you get it.

VPI! - I purchased a "new" Classic 1 from this site at a nice discount, but it showed up with what I would consider a build flaw and a small ding to the wood. I contacted VPI and sent pics. Even though this table was purchased from a non-dealer, and seemed to be a shady audiogon transaction, they offered to replace the entire chassis for me for free (and pay 1 way shipping from NJ to CA!), without me even mentioning anything of the sort. Incredible customer service.

K&K Audio - I built the Maxxed-Out, first time doing such a thing, and Kevin was always there to quickly respond to emails. I ended up soldering two bits into the wrong place and Kevin instantly sent out two replacement pieces just to be sure there was no damage to the ones I de-soldered.

Salk Sound - Jim is fantastic in his email responses, very helpful, timely, and doesn't try and sell you what you don't need.

I sent in a twenty year old Tara IC and they fixed it for free including shipping. Also Rogue replaced a (damaged in shipping) amplifier with a new one at their expense.

pretty impressive imo...

Gary Dodd is another great guy who exemplifies customer service. I can also add Blue Circle to that mix

I have had great customer service from Zu,over and above. Also Steve McCormack with his amps evan after he left the company.

One other thing we should all keep in mind is that an unsolicited e-mail does not necessarily hit its target, it can easily get lost in spam folders or even go to the wrong address. If I don't get an e-mail response I look at it like a potentially wrong number and try to call these people on the phone, which is always the best method of communicating. The other issue with e-mail, unless you write it with laser precision it is still likely to be incorrectly interpreted.

I have also received great customer service from VAC (Kevin Hayes and Brent), K&K, Musical Surroundings, and Shindo.

I started with Zu Definition 1.5s then upgraded to Def 2s, and now to Def 4s. Zu customer service is unbelievably good - especially if you pick up the phone and call. (Sean personally delivered my Def 4s at 7a one October morning and spent a couple of hours on set-up, including the controls of the inboard plate amplifier.) Anyone at Zu who answers the phone is over-the-top helpful. At the worst, emails sometimes take a few days to be answered. Most importantly, Zu is proactive in making sure that customers are happy; I get emails to check the progress of speaker break-in, etc.

My second positive experience is with Ancient Audio in Krakow, Poland. I bought a CDP and eventually an amplifier after being picked up at the airport and spending an afternoon listening to music in the principle designer's living room. Recently, Jarek has helped me to negotiate purchase of a specific pair of low-current 300b tubes from the Takatsuki distributor in Japan.

My third positive experience is with Sophia Electric in the DC area. My initial pair of Royal Princess 300b were not compatible with my amplifier. Susan and Richard opened their office on Sunday to test the pair of 300b that I had been using successfully to identify a two Royal Princess with the same parameters.

Not when provided by your brick and mortar dealer. The dealer is key, in that he is a 'multi customer' of the manufacturer so the latter will always respond to their requests, if they want to stay in business. It is called leverage the relationship.

My Best is Keith Herron of Herron Audio. He responds to e-mails quickly, has done upgrades at a reasonable dollar value and helped me with some trades. It doesn't get any better.

The best customer service in high that I have received in high end audio has come from Manley Labs and Zu Audio. When I had an issue that concerned my Manley 300b amps Eve Anna Manley herself contacted me directly, answered my questions, solved my problem and joked with me in her peculiarly jovial manner. When I purchased a pair of Zu Audio cables--on Ebay at great discount, mind you--Gerrit from Zu Audio made sure that the spade terminations were the precise size for my amps and speakers. He contacted me immediately and made me measure the posts on my amplifiers to be certain of the proper size. His actions made it clear to me, especially since mine was a bargain basement sale, that customer service was a matter of manufacturer pride for him and Zu Audio.

There still are some companies who truly understand great customer service. Unfortunately, there are also those who don't care. Then again, perhaps they're following the trends of most consumers (not us here for the most part) - buy as cheaply as possible, regardless of who's selling it.

A lot of the manufacturers on Audio Circle are in tune with customer service and will bend over backwards to ensure their customers are happy. I owned Bryston before I started looking at Audio Circle, but James Tanner has really helped his customers over there. People have posted about buying new gear and are all excited about it, James will ask which dealer it was sold by, and he'll personally double check the order and try his best to fast track it. He's also caught a few dealer order mistakes. I've called the Canada service department a few times, and Mike Pickett has always been great and easy to understand.

Bryston isn't the only one like this.

I own Audio Physic speakers. I've had nothing but bad experiences with their distributor - not responding to emails, giving me the run around on the phone, not giving me a complete list of dealers in my area, etc. but I love my speakers and will never let them go.

I hear Vandersteen, DeVore, and Shahinian have great customer service, among a few others. Never owned either of them, nor tried to contact them. One of these days when/if I need new speakers, I'll be sure to give them a shot.

The best customer service I've ever had, from any business, has been from Thiel.

I terms of speaker manufacturers, I have had exceptional service from both John Devore and Albert Von Schweikert, who both have set-up exceptional shops that support their customers but will also personally jump in and make sure that the customer is being taken care of.

"I wanted to audition a rather expensive pair of speakers that were not available in my area. I contacted the manufacturer (from his own website) to ask where I could go to audition and purchase these--but no response."

Dat1...Moving to a smaller house will necessitate selling my Dunlavy SC-4 speakers and going for something scaled down as well. Just the other day, like you, I e-mailed a very well known manufacturer who makes one of the handful of speakers I'm interested in. I also asked him if he knew of anyone close to my area where I might be able to audition. His reply was, "I can make you a pair for a good price." I wrote back, respectfully indicating I wanted first to hear his speakers and find out if they gave me the kind of sound that satisfied me. I got no other reply from him. I'm certainly not using this single episode as a means of indicting customer service in general. It's just that based on the very positive comments from other Audiogoners about this manufacturer, I expected a more helpful response. My shortlist is now a bit shorter.

I've had very positive customer service experiences with all of the the following:

Vandersteen, Clearaudio, Rogue. and Eastern Electric.

Day1, it sounds like you had a couple of negative experiences and a couple of positive ones. Given 50% of the four experiences you've related were positive, how is good customer service dead?

BTW, email can be flaky. Pick up the phone, call the speaker manufacturer and ask. Vandersteen is notoriously poor about handling email, but they always pick up the phone. Everyone is different.

I don't agree. I have received great customer service from these companies:

1. Revel speakers.
2. ATI amplifiers. Outstanding in this case.
3. Benchmark Media.
4. Emotiva.
5. Velodyne.
6. Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs.
7. Blue Jeans Cables. Another outstanding one.
8. Parts Express.
9. LL Bean. If every retail worked like these guys do...

I could keep going and going. Yes, some companies need an enema. Mark Levinson certainly did not impress me last time I needed service. Some companies are very slow on email; I usually pick up the phone and call.

Check out Audiokinesis speakers or Daedalus

I'm a manufacturer and I go out of my way to please the customer. But it seems that I'm a dying breed.

Not really,try SYMPOSIUM OR AUDIENCE!!

I have had great service from PSB, Acoustic Zen, Rotel, BAT, Parasound, and Wyred4Sound. In four out of six cases I rec'd attention from the owner or principal. In every case they were friendly and concerned and a couple even sent free parts as upgrades or out of warranty replacements even when I told them I had purchased their unit used. Far and away better than service for home appliances or cars in my experience.

Great Al. Your link had almost everyone mentioned ONE business (except Merlin, mentioned a couple of times) with good customer service. Not good enough. Generally speaking, customer service everywhere is DEAD. I only shop based on customer service. Most products cost within a couple of cents/dollars at various retailers, therefore, customer service decides how and where I spend my money.

I recently needed Zu Audio's support because of a mistake on my part. They came through with excellent customer service.

My friend has a VAC based sytem and he gets great support from Kevin Hayes. I have a Coincident Technology based system and the support given by owner Israel Blume is simply superb. That`s two companies that I`d rate grade A in high quality product and service.Coincident has speakers in your price range.

Is good customer service about dead?

No. Check out this thread.

BTW, Daedalus Audio, which is commended twice in that thread, makes excellent speakers in your price range. By their nature, though, they do take some time to build, their website indicating that the wood finishing process itself requires 3 or 4 weeks.

Regards,
-- Al

For speakers, I have heard great things about Salk Audio and Selah Audio.
You may take a peak over on AudioCircle to learn more about these companies. Rick from Selah,and the owner of Salk really understand killer customer service. Salk literally has a huge , huge cult following with over the top happy customers.
Good luck, actually you won't need it with these two companies.
Todd

Yep, in every aspect and almost all retail.