Why has Avantgarde Quality Slipped ?

Swampwalker- "I'll be watching you!" jelly doughnut was good.

Rx8man/Onhwy61- Glad to know I'm not the only sick bastard who thinks that was one of the greatest lines ever delivered in a mainstream Hollywood flick...

My heart goes out to you. Give Aventgarde one more chance to fulfill their obligation or the next letter they receive will be from your Attorney. Same thing goes for that dealer. It's obvious you have to take it to the next level.If you have all your receipts and the speaker is still under warranty, they won't have a choice. You could hit them where it hurt's and demand all your money back! I'll bet they will be more than happy to fix your speaker rather than give your money back. Also demand the $800.00 back......Good luck

...with hundreds of transactions, I never once encountered Avantgarde doing anything but the right thing, every time.

Plus, their product reliability was (and I assume still is) exceptional.

Onhwy61, does this sound familiar?

Sour grapes DUDE!!

I've owned my Duos, new, since around the time I started posting here, 2006? Nary an issue, but everytime I reached out to the company directly, I received a response promptly. I'm not going to raise doubts about the OP, but whatever is going on, it is not consistent with my experience with the company (which last replied to a question I had within the past couple months).

If Avantgarde really did that to him I hope they had the common decency to give him a reach around.

"Avantgardescrewedme"?

That moniker alone says a lot plus lack of OP response to-date makes the whole thing very suspicious.

Seems most likely a blatant attempt to discredit Avantgarde for whatever reason as best I can tell.

I would not pay any more attention to this thread at this point.

As an Avantgarde owner, I would like to share my personal experience with the dealers and the company.
I bought my pair new from a dealer about 1 1/2 years ago, and it was delivered directly from Avantgarde factory in Germany to my door.
Speakers were absolutely trouble-free, not even a hint of a problem.
I've met Armin Krauss, one of the Avantgrde principals many times in person at CES, even before I bought my pair, and he's nothing, but very courteous and very attentive person.
None of the arrogance and "HI-Fi" attitude, some people in the industry exhibit.
Since I've had my speakers, I had a number of technical questions, and Avantgarde never failed to respond within 24 hours with very friendly and detailed explanations.
When Armin was away on a business trip, some other guy (I forgot his name now) took over, and answered my concern as promptly.
In lieu of my experience, the OP thread sounds very suspicious and questionable to me, to say the least.
I could imagine, Avantgarde speakers are not immune to technical failures, like any piece of electronics, and since the problem with his speakers occured immediately after delivery, I would certainly suspect shipping damage, like a loose contact, or something else of similar nature, as a culprit.
If I were him, I would also be much more careful about posting my assumptions and accusations in the open forum under these very circumstances- it can damage a good company reputation for sure, and Avantgarde, as a company, deserves much better.
As a last comment, I know quite a number of current and past Avantgarde owners, and has never, even once, heard of a mechanical problem with their speakers. Call my sample biased, if you will, but that's a fact.

Mechans makes a good point.

Open forums are not exempt from such legal scenarios TTBOMK. Slander is never good. You had better have some facts to assert a companies quality has slipped as opposed to expressing dissatisfaction in a particular case.

One should excersize caution when making accusations in writing. I forget which legal term applies but something like lible might be right. One is a written falsehood another is verbal. I hope the OP can back up what he is unhappy with as some might not take it lightly that these statements were written in a public forum visited by AvanteGarde's most likely conusumers. Just sayin

Chadnliz, yes it's an immature username but other than that I don't undertsnad why the person would post this. I guess maybe if it were a competitor of Avantgarde then that's a low blow.

Could be a new second user account that is to hide. Searching all threads with keywords may leave clues but I dont care enough to research it. I thinks its an immature web handle and attack either way.

I think you're jumping to conclusions pretty quickly on the ops post. Just because this is the ops first post and Ska_mans second? Ska_man has been a Agon member for at least three years. Did it ever occur to you that someone would be into hi-fi and not be a Agon member? I would imagine as I would do, he Google searched Avantgarde and Agon showed up. Cut the guy some slack and wait it out a little before you jump to conclusions. If I paid that much for speakers I'd have done the same thing. Things fall through the cracks and people make mistakes. Who's to say Velma Lou at Avantgarde dropped the ball?

Elizabeth- I have had many more posts (mostly replies) that for some reason do not show up. Why? I don't know.

As for the more than 1000 miles from the dealer comment.
I got that from the OP. Click on his/her answers link and you will see the other post. Also from today.

The reason I mentioned that, is because the there seems to be some missing and/or misleading information from the OP.
I was hoping the OP would share more of the story.

The post reads- I bought new speakers from my dealer.
The dealer delivered and set them up.
The speakers were not trouble free from day one.
The dealer screwed me over.
And, now the manufacturer is too.

In this case, unless there is more to the story, something is definitely wrong with this saga.

I call BS on this one also.

I agree Elizabeth.

I've had nothing but superb interactions with Avantgarde, and my 10 year old Duos (which I later upgraded to Duo Omegas with the kit supplied by Avantgarde) continue to perform flawlessly.

My opinion is that the dealer who sold you the speakers has screwed you, not Avantgarde. As already mentioned, if the speakers were new and were bought from an official Avantgarde dealear, they would have been fixed for free.

Some years ago I have written them a mail asking for a price list. They have answered my mail right away.

You bought them brand new? If so you deserve much better!

I had minor problems with my Magicos Mini2 and V3. After weeks of listening,
I detected slight flapping noise in one of the mid drivers from each when
turned up loud, I dared this only after sufficient break ins. The Dealer came to
verify, less than two weeks later (in both instances) they were replaced by
brand new spanking pairs--no question asked, no fees charged!

Similar with Tidal. One of their costly diamond tweeter exhibit a very very
mild/fine sandy noise on certain music materials/tone, ie. notably high pitch
acoustic pianos. A damaged which might have been caused during
transportation/shipping. I emailed Tidal in detail the specifics of the problem,
and within 5 working days I received via UPS a matched replacement pair from
them--Imagine the cost! And I don't even have to send the faulty one back
first as per the usual requisite to determine the problem prior--deep mutual
trust on their part. "For us, most important is a happy customer, and
that I want you to have your speakers running perfect again as intended,
better yesterday than tomorrow" was Jorn's word!

Really appreciate the sterling customer supports rendered by these two
excellent companies. After paying high dollars, these are what one should
expect of high-end, high-quality services--no less.

I am changing my moniker to "noonescrewedmesoIgotintohifitopassthetime"

My curiosity has been piqued by this story. Doesn't AvanteGarde have a warranty period if pourchased through a dealer? I find it very odd that this kind of thing would occur with such a sucessful manufacturer?. They should have been fixed for free, why the $800? Was it really just shipping charges, I know most guarantees don't make any allowance for shipping. Although some will cover one way etc.

Same happened to BMW, Volvo Merc too.

You forgot to include, the part about you living over 1000 miles away from the dealer. This means the dealer has traveled over 8000 miles in the name of customer service.

Is this "saint" of a dealer an authorized reseller?
Did you have an agreement prior to the sale, as to who would pay the service costs to such a remote location?

I hope you don't misunderstand me. As I am sorry you have had problems with your speakers. But, perhaps you are expecting too much.

One specific case does not necessarily mean that product line quality overall has slipped.

Specific issues in any particular case may be real but jumping to that conclusion immediately is not very credible.