ditto on the sony stuff. We have such a poor time getting a hold of Sony merchandise. We would call our rep and try to get more product, try to become an ES dealer, Try to become an XBR dealer. Believe it or not, when I explained this to the Sony president of telesales, he told me that I would have to find another brand. Since then we have started doing more Denon, Fujitsu, and Samsung. Sony has poor tech support as well. Samsung, infocus, xantech, jamo, velodyne, and vutec are all great manufacturers to work with. Denon is a pain to get anything accomplished with, but they do make a superior line of receiver.

Mike

That is odd. I just had a four year old IPower go bad and I am getting a full refund from Niles. They have always been excellent to deal with...

I have found Niles service to be among the best. They are however, sometimes picky about who installs their product and they require their dealers to attend training, pass tests to become certified and invest in installation tools. As a Dealer, I like this about them.

Sadly, I think the lousy service issue travels around from company to company.

Most I deal with will make things right if PUSHED hard enough. But some have seemingly always been predisposed to having lousy dealer service, just as some distibutors have shown over the years. Dare I say that name? You know who I mean, so I need not say it......lol

Hitachi, Samsung and others have the same lousy set up as Sony with regards to DOA items. If you get the products through distribution, then they require local service center repair. I don't know who came up with this idea, but it does present a LOT of problems.

Best company I deal with? Russound, without a doubt (where's my shirt/s John?---inside joke).

So you pretty much have to speak to India now when dealing with any large American corporation? I have been trying to confirm a recent Dell laptop purchase, guess who I am speaking with...Sabna! (in India)

Just to confirm!
Definition of Tech Support.
english press 1
espanol press 2
for sales info press 1
for automated hook-up info press 2
for concerns regarding your purchase press 3
to register your product press 4 --- please go to our website at www????.com
if you are experiencing tech difficulties press 5 (leads to automated hook-up info)
pause
pause for tech support press 6---"we apologize for the inconvenience, but our tech support reps are currently handling other calls. your estimated wait is 23 minutes.

10 minutes later your cell phone drops the call and back to the beginning.

Did I miss anything??

Geralds,
The only thing you missed was the honorable " did you update your firmware ".

That's a major problem with anything computer related these days. In fact, try calling any computer hardware manufacturer and see if you don't get connected to someone who barely speaks English.

It's sad that companies like Dell make their millions selling computers to American buyers; yet at the same time they're taking jobs away from American workers.

I have friends with IT degrees who can't find jobs. Meanwhile Dell is hiring Sabna from New Delhi.

Having said all of that (and starting this post), I have to somewhat retract my earlier post about Honeywell video.
After 50 phone calls, I finally found someone who was helpful and really went out of their way to fix the problems that I was having.

Fujitsu service is about the worst I have come across. We had to send a 1 year old plasma out for warranty service (in home service in Sarasota, FL sucks). The service company had if for 4 months, ans still couldn't solve the problem. The display was then sent directly to Fujitsu, who d**ked around with it for 2 months, couldn't fix it! At that point, they sent us a B-stock unit, told us to pass it off the the client as a new unit. Now, I can understand replacing the unit with a B-stock set, but the shadiness (outright lying to the client), weeks of non-returned phone calls from management, poorly supervised repair facilities, and general sense of indifference, has left a bad taste. **This leads me to a suggestion to all. If you aren't already, fully test all of your displays within 24 hours of reciept from the shipping company. Fujitsu, Sony, Mitsubishi, will not replace anything reported damaged after 48 hours. They will only repair. And who wants a brand new, recently repaired display?

It's not just Fujitsu, Sony, or Mitsu that have this lousy service policy with regards to BOB (bad out of box) units. I've seen the sam ething with various supplier. Most seeming to be from the other side of the world. Maybe it's their way of getting even with the US for import duties?

Anyway. The BEST policy is to bench test ALL electronic devices, immediately, upon receipt. I know it's a pain, but that's the only way you can protect yourself.

I was going to make this a rather verbose bash, but in light of some well-considered replies to this thread I will keep it simple..

I would never buy a single thing from Panasonic, Bose or Monster Cable or Gateway.

Those of us in our thirties and older can actually remember when customer service was the norm rather than a pitifully small rarity these days. I think that's the saddest fact of all, whatever the company name.

Sometimes lousy service can come from complacency due to being succesful and having a large market share. Sometimes it can manifest itself in the attitude "you should feel honored to be a customer" Nice work if you can get it. While this is rare, it happens, and unless I really need that supplier, I punt them. CYA! Sometimes you can feel like you are being treated poorly by a supplier simply becuase one or two of the front line employees' (shipping, accounting, order desk) treats you with less respect and attention to your needs than you feel is deserved based on your prior buying history and length of the relationship. Keep in mind. These front line employees don't make decisions to treat you badly for any specific reason. They can simply be lousy front line employees not sensitive to the big picture.

The funny thing is that the front line employees are paid by the higher ups to enforce the policies that the higher ups have made, but when confronted directly, the higher ups usually fold.

In the above post by Atik Rat......wow, I really sympathize with you. There's NO excuse for that type of BS, and that's the type of thing that I was talking about where a manufacturer costs you customers!

I know it's a different thread, but how many of you are benching and burning everything coming thru your warehouses. We recently (3 months) made that policy, and it is now one of my many jobs. In my setup area, I have dedicated power, 2 sat feeds, cable, network and phone. I have 2 empty 43space racks w/shelves for burning equipment, and 5 speakers wired to the ceiling for full SS testing. Anything you guys may have in place that I'm not thinking of or any tips ie. length of time to considered "burned in". the sales staff is making a real effort to include some form of a Middle Atlantic rack in every job. We are building, programming and testing these racks in shop, now, including wiring flashers inside non-rs232 controlled components, or pieces with IR jacks on the back. Any hints would be appreciated, as we have recently been "acquired" by SMG (Signature Media Group), and I need all the productivity I can get!! Thanks.

I've long considered this, but more often then not, I'm finding out how easy it is to overload the IR inputs on a great many components (hi-def satellite receivers are particularly troublesome in this regard).

How's that worked out for you so far?