Undercover Customer: How do headphone brands handle repairs?

I can't wait to use this very specific pair of headphones off my wall. Oops! Sure hope I can fix that. What's it like if you need to repair your headphones and reach out to a manufacturer for support? Will they even sell you replacement parts? That's what we're here to find out today. We reached out with an email not affiliated with any reviewers at a headphone show or anything like that to see how manufacturers would respond. Because if I reach out, they're probably just going to give me a replacement part. But what if it's someone they don't know? For every brand we reached out to, the issue is related to some part of the headband. Whether it's the adjustment mechanism on the side that lets it click up and down, part of the plastic maybe, or carbon fiber cracking, or if it has a self-adjusting suspension strap, we just say that the strap itself is broken. And for each of these, I made sure to pick a part in the headband assembly that should be replaceable. And the very first one that responded was Grado sending us a link to a part that's $5. Honestly, for all the crap that we give Grado in this hobby, that was pretty good. No fluff, right to the point, a cheap replacement part that you can buy really easily. For Audio Technica, we said there was a problem with the adjustment mechanism on the ADX5000, and they said they have the parts in stock for it at $343.66 each. Not cheap, but that is a part for a very expensive headphone and at least they're willing to sell us a replacement part. I do want to note with all the manufacturers in the original emails I stated that I bought the headphones used hoping to avoid things like warranties or purchase numbers or anything like that. However without asking for any of that information Beardynamics still said that this headphone would be covered under warranty. I probably should have picked an older headphone because this headphone came out within the warranty period but they did say that even if you're out of the warranty period the Service Center has parts available for purchase on their website and provided a link to it. Nice. DCA said, "Unfortunately, we will need to get those headphones back to repair the strap. Our policy is you post the headphones to us and we will pay to ship them back to you." I actually personally have been through this process before and it was pretty fast. Now, Final Audio said that they are going to be closed for Golden Week, which is from April 26th to May 6th, and that any pending support requests would be processed on or after May 7th. However, today's May 15th, and we have not yet heard back from them. That was for an inquiry about the final D8000, which is a pretty expensive headphone. That's kind of surprising we haven't heard back from them yet. For Focal, I said that on my Elysia, the top pad is all worn out, which actually is true. I have an Elysia right there, and the top pad's completely worn out. Focal said they would be able to sell me a replacement part for $229. Again, not cheap, but I believe for Focal, They sell it as the entire headband assembly, which is like two thirds of the entire headphone. So honestly, I understand that price. That makes sense. Meze was a little bit interesting. They said, before we continue our discussion, please send us proof of purchase, a bill of sale or receipt and pictures of the issue you mentioned. We don't have that. And as mentioned in the first email I sent to them, we purchased the headphone used. I found that a little bit frustrating. And not long after receiving this email, someone else showed me that I can just buy a new suspension strap on their site. If I was a customer, I would have just done that. They might have been trying to see if they could give us a suspension strap under warranty or something like that, but it would have been nice if they had also just sent us length and said, hey, you can purchase it here, but let me check and see if your headphone is under warranty instead of just, you know, letting me figure it out on my own. By the way, if you don't want to go through all this process and if you got your headphones from headphones.com, not only do they have 365 but they also have some of the best customer support in the game. Just saying. Heifemann was a little bit odd about it because I said that the issue is the adjustment mechanism on the side is no longer holding. It's just loose and sliding instead of clicking. And Heifemann asked for photos of that. So I don't know how I'm supposed to send a photo of something not clicking, but then they did ask for a location so they could give us parts availability, which is nice. They also responded relatively quickly. Now Grado did really well with this. in my personal opinion, I like the way that Head handled it the most. I said that on my headphone 2GT, the carbon fiber had cracked on the headband. And Head said, thank you for reaching out. Sorry to hear the headband seems to have a crack in it. I can definitely offer to send the headband for DIY replacement. Here's a video for the process replacement with a YouTube link. Now they did say after that, to make sure I can send it out for free, please send the original purchase invoice and the serial number of the unit, which you can find on the indicator plate. We don't have the original invoice, just the serial number plate. I do really love that not only were they willing to just send us a replacement part, but also that there's a video on how to perform the repair ourselves. Really like that. Really, really like that. Now Sennheiser bounced us from one department to another, but eventually said, hey, you can just fill out this form online. We went to fill out that form and it took me to a page that actually shows the HD800S assembly listing out all of the various parts and says on there, spare parts can be purchased on our web shop. What's really cool is that if you go on any of these parts, it says the complexity of the repair for replacing that part yourself. Oh, that's cool. I mean, Sennheiser already has a really good reputation for this kind of stuff. It's not surprising. You can take apart basically an entire HD600 with no tools, which is why I picked the HD800S because I thought that would be a little bit harder, but here it is. We also reached out to Moondrop. No answer, so that's not great. I'm the kind of person where I really like to keep a headphone for a long time, and if something breaks, I'd like the ability to fix it. Aside from not hearing back from Moondrop or final audio, I feel like everyone did pretty well here. Some obviously went above and beyond, but regardless, we always end up in a position where the headphones end up repaired and are able to continue being used. That's something that matters to me a lot. I'm the kind of person where when I buy something, I want to be able to keep it for a long time. If it breaks, I want to be able to fix it and keep using it. I also strongly believe that high-end products should not be disposable. They should be fixable. And from what we've seen today, I think a lot of these companies feel the same way. Let me know down in the comments what your take is on all of this. Who do you think did the best? Who do you think did the worst? And what would you like to see us try in the future? I think that's going to wrap up this video. Guys, if you liked it, leave a like down below. Comment, let me know what you want to see in the future. If you want to get active in the community, you can get the Discord or the forum, both available at the link in the video description. As always, don't forget to stick around, subscribe for more videos like this in the future. Until next one, guys. Peace. Why does this look like the parts from like six different headphones? -