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RE: Jeez.

Or they tweaked them and they still suck.

Seriously though - stuff gets shipped badly - not long back Air Canada employees were found to be dropping bags and packages from the airplane 25 feet or something. Amplifiers and CD players etc can be packaged great but the sheer jarring of such a drop can easily knock loose a solder joint and it only takes one to be knocked loose or even ajar. And that doesn't even get to the disgruntled overworked UPS/Fed-Ex/Purolator/DHL folks who could care less if something says "Fragile" on the box. And then if the company isn't checking the unit before the reviewer gets it is possible that the off the shelf components the VAST majority use in their components could be defective. The company buys Caps from XYZ cap maker but the cap is DOA and you find that out when you turn the thing on.

I bought a Pioneer Elite flagship receiver back in the day and it was DOA - dead transformer.

This is one reason I am debating shipping my gear from Canada to Hong Kong - I could pay the expense and have it possibly damaged or sell it all via consignment and start again. (always looking for an excuse to upgrade!!)

One thing to do where possible is to get a dealer demo delivered. A) it works and B) you don't have to waste the time on break in.

As a consumer I love buying demo units. I bought my Cambridge Audio CD6 in 1996 which had the glass top on it showing consumers the inner workings. I insisted they give me that model - it was on all year every day and being handled by all sorts of folks who probably hit the sides of it to test whether it would skip etc. Works perfectly to this day in spite of the unit having a bit of a temperamental track record.

I think it is very frustrating for manufacturers who ship out perfectly working units to wind up not working right when it arrives at a reviewer. The issue is obviously then magnified dramatically because it will be associated with poor quality control when there isn't much you can do if the thing is dropped 25 feet out of an airplane (or just 4 feet from the back of a truck).


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