Ethical HiFi Companies
- Thread starter Charlie_1
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wylton
Naim and Mana member
Wow! I have no clue what it sounds like, but that is a work of art!
Tin
Well-Known Member
That is a valuable question. Can I keep it?
Lee T
pfm Member
Had the complete opposite when I have dealt with Naim service, always found them polite, quick to respond & very helpful, though this of late, their service must have improved, 15 years is a long time to judge, quashed a few Naim myths for me a long the way, hardly sounds like a company out to get you.
Rega I found extremely unhelpful, impossible to get hold of, when I did, the advice was poor, their stuff is great but service, nope.
Quad & Exposure service was top drawer.
JemHayward
pfm Member
Having worked in the electronics industry (40 yrs ago...) I sort of knew how much things cost, and i was pleasantly surprised by how little Naim charged me (30 yrs ago) to repair my NAC42 when I damaged it when carelessly testing a home made power amp. I was even more impressed when they sold me a NAP110 case to build my own PSU (for my Sony Pro walkman) into so my rack looked consistent. One more than one occasion they have phoned me back to answer a query, in one case about a product that wasn't really an official Naim product (a staff build x-over).
Servicing my NAP250 about 20 yrs ago seemed to be good value and quick turnaround, but what they charged in 2009 to replace the tants in my NAC82 put me off Naim, and now I own nothing by them, and can't afford most of what they do anyway. So, Naim, in my experience, have gone from being excellent, to being somewhat out of touch.
Meridian, excellent service, they have sent me schematics on two occasions and when I had an issue with my M20 speaker, for which they didn't have a schematic, and had a dreaded intermittent problem, they repaired it at nominal cost, and kept in touch with me throughout the process. the engineer even too my speaker home with him over the weekend to soak test it before shipping it back to me, so he was absolutely sure he's fixed the problem.
EAR Yoshino - very cheap servicing, very cheap shipping, and they will talk you through a DIY repair over the phone! Tim DeParavicini will talk to you, and in fact, getting him to stop is the main issue!
No direct personal experience, but friends have found Densen excellent, Rega are always helpful.
I've worked all my career for a company who's only USP is excellent service as we are to small to compete with the big boys in our industry on price. We do sell items that are, possibly, seven times more expensive than the cheapest on the market, but what we are really selling is the whole experience, not just the product.
Servicing my NAP250 about 20 yrs ago seemed to be good value and quick turnaround, but what they charged in 2009 to replace the tants in my NAC82 put me off Naim, and now I own nothing by them, and can't afford most of what they do anyway. So, Naim, in my experience, have gone from being excellent, to being somewhat out of touch.
Meridian, excellent service, they have sent me schematics on two occasions and when I had an issue with my M20 speaker, for which they didn't have a schematic, and had a dreaded intermittent problem, they repaired it at nominal cost, and kept in touch with me throughout the process. the engineer even too my speaker home with him over the weekend to soak test it before shipping it back to me, so he was absolutely sure he's fixed the problem.
EAR Yoshino - very cheap servicing, very cheap shipping, and they will talk you through a DIY repair over the phone! Tim DeParavicini will talk to you, and in fact, getting him to stop is the main issue!
No direct personal experience, but friends have found Densen excellent, Rega are always helpful.
I've worked all my career for a company who's only USP is excellent service as we are to small to compete with the big boys in our industry on price. We do sell items that are, possibly, seven times more expensive than the cheapest on the market, but what we are really selling is the whole experience, not just the product.
YNWOAN
100% Analogue
I don’t understand this thread. It sets itself out to be about ethics (somewhat strangely) and then the thread, almost immediately, morphs into one about back up service; which I would say is a separate issue from whether a company is acting in an ethical manner (well, outside of the audio industry it is).
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In the past I have always found Naim to offer excellent service but I recently had a query and subsequently left a voicemail and emailed them - no reply to either. How times change
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In the past I have always found Naim to offer excellent service but I recently had a query and subsequently left a voicemail and emailed them - no reply to either. How times change
.I don’t understand this thread. It sets itself out to be about ethics (somewhat strangely) and then the thread, almost immediately, morphs into one about back up service; which I would say is a separate issue from whether a company is acting in an ethical manner (well, outside of the audio industry it is).
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In the past I have always found Naim to offer excellent service but I recently had a query and subsequently left a voicemail and emailed them - no reply to either. How times change
While superior after-sale service may be a matter of prudent marketing and customer retention, keeping electronics goods functioning and out of landfills is clearly a positive ethical step as regards the environment.
Helen Bach
if it ain't Baroque ...
My partner's company (nothing to do with hifi) deals very well with customers, offering to replace (free of charge) bits that the customer might break by accident. This has always paid dividends. But as always, there are one or two customers (I call them COTU [centre of the Universe] as it appears that the whole universe revolves around them) that spoil it for the rest of us. They get what they want, but only once!
Morphing of threads is an inevitability, it will happen sooner or later. My recent query about sheep wool stuffing turned into one of drive unit spacing very quickly. I suppose not many people are into sheep's wool. Shame.
Morphing of threads is an inevitability, it will happen sooner or later. My recent query about sheep wool stuffing turned into one of drive unit spacing very quickly. I suppose not many people are into sheep's wool. Shame.
JemHayward
pfm Member
It's difficult, as a customer, to work out how ethically a company operates. It's sometimes difficult from the inside too. One man's ethics is another man's stupidity and so on... good question, but maybe not one that could be answered in a forum.
Fretbuzz
pfm Member
I get it in the sense that ethics are around behaviour, conduct, and principles; all of which will manifest in the way a company treats its customers. Especially after first sale.
Good ones I've personally encountered on that front are Rega, Croft, and Audio Note.
Conversely there are a few hifi companies that I'd never touch because of it.
Arkless Electronics
Trade: Amp design and repairs.
Crossing over from another thread, it is seen as ethical then to con people into believing that the impossible not only happens but can benefit your hi fi and be bought by the metre? All on the back of endless advertising, bought reviews and Chinese whispers on forums which have given such expectation bias to many that they actually believe it?
Alan Sircom
I dü werds, me
You recall part accurately. Lexicon did rebadge an Oppo player - as it did with rebadging Bryston amps with the Lexicon name. This happened because buyers who bought top-end 'home theater' stopped buying pick 'n' mix systems and insisted on buying everything from the same brand, and wouldn't buy a Lexicon processor unless the brand included player and amps. From a tactical view, they couldn't do any major changes to the Oppo without it costing substantially more than Lexicon's client base would stand, but they also had to provide a player at 'Lexicon price points' - which meant they stuck a front panel and changed the splash screens... and paid the price.
Ayre, on the other hand, pretty much ripped apart the Oppo and rebuilt everything to make its player. They kept the transport, the logic board, the DAC board for the multichannel output and some of the frame. Then put in a linear PSU, their own DAC, their own clock board, and some other tricks. At the time, they had almost no choice in this as no-one was supplying SACD transports (TEAC was winding up its OEM division at the time), so they had to buy them as complete players at dealer trade - not even landed trade because IIRC Oppo was 'technically' not allowed to produce players made for OEM under its SACD manufacturing charter. Charlie even put a post up about this at the time, with a full bill-of-materials and a challenge to people saying if they could make a product that performed to the same level at a cheaper price, he would hire them on the spot.
This is ancient history now, as both the player and Charlie Hansen have ceased to be. But there was a reason why that Oppo player almost destroyed Lexicon, but left Ayre's reputation untarnished.
Alan Sircom
I dü werds, me
You obsess about the wrong symptom, like treating the toothache while ignoring the gaping, suppurating chest wound.
A somewhat deeper ethical concern is distributors on the other side of the world holding some parts of audio to ransom: if it ain't big, hot, heavy, shiny, or costs less than a Ferrari, they ain't interested. Rules about 0.5W stand-by, be damned - they demand an amp that puts out more heat than the surface of the sun, even when it's asleep. Why? Because it can!
Those demands so dominate the production of smaller companies they have to jettison the products that attracted their original core buyers. Then, when that market has grown tired of your product and moved on, goodbye cruel world.
Audio in the West today is like a bespoke Northampton shoemaker, producing extremely expensive handmade shoes to someone who made their fortune running a sweatshop that makes cheap shoes destined for Shoe Zone... in Northampton.
MikeMA
pfm Member
It wasn't that long ago (or was it?) that nearly all hi-fi and TVs etc. came with a proper user manual full of schematics and circuit diagrams sufficient to enable a competent person to carry out diagnostics and undertake repairs.
As an American, I hope that our current urban renaissance will tamp down some of the suburban home theater excess that had overtaken our upper-middle class. When everyone in the high-end audio market had an 8,000 square foot house with a dedicated media room for massive Wilson speakers and 10,000W Krell amplifiers, that's what drove the market.
As our wealthy young professionals increasingly move into small townhouses and close-in suburbs without dedicated home theater rooms, I think we'll see a resurgence of normal-sized hifi. The current vinyl obsession seems to be spreading to tube amps, so we're well-situated to see, if not a SET-lovefest over here, at least a rebirth of the EL34.
But for how long is "made in Northampton" (or increasingly "designed in Northampton") going to continue to add value for a few in the East for a product that can and is being designed and manufactured more efficiently and cheaply locally in the East? At some point reverence, if that is what it is, for something that ceased to exist in the West decades ago must surely register?
Arkless Electronics
Trade: Amp design and repairs.
'Twas always thus and not an issue IMO. At Alchemist Products we made stuff shiny bling bling 'cos that's what the Far Eastern market wants...
If there is still a demand for smaller cheaper equipment in UK, EU etc then it makes sense to also produce for this market.
