Approximately one year ago as I was leaving the Home Depot parking lot (April), I was approached by 2 guys in a white van asking if I would be interested in a great deal on a surround sound system. At first I said no because I thought the merchandise might have been hot, but they showed me some "legitimate" looking receipts and IDs with their names and pictures so I thought "what the H"... I'll at least look at it because I had a little extra cash and wanted to buy a surround system anyway.
They said they were installers... Two descent looking white guys... About 25 years old who seemed real hyper-happy that they had these two "extra" systems that they were to install but the "company" had given them the ok to resell the system because their clients had cancelled the order. It seemed reasonable to me, so I looked at the systems. They had several systems to be "installed"... All new in boxes that appeared to be never opened. The one guy who did the majority of the talking showed me some magazines and glossy reports saying that these systems were worth about $3,500 but he could sell one to me for only $650.
I thought "this is to good to be true"! But I negotiated the price down to $400. I only had about $200 on me but they said they would go with me to the banks' ATM to get more money. He actually put the system in my truck and said "he trusted me" & he followed me to the bank. I got the additional money needed and paid him $400... He then asked it I could give him a few dollars to buy some beer... I thought normally as a Christian man, I would never do that but I gave them an extra $10 since they gave me such a great deal.
I got home, unpacked the system & read the manual. Everything looked high-end fine... Especially the gold plated audio cables however I noticed the manual said this model was silver color but my system was black. I got suspicious but continued installing the system. Hooked it up, it played and quite frankly, I thought it sounded pretty good from the CD/DVD, computer and Direct TV sources at moderate volume but the FM tuner section was very weak... Then I noticed that the remote control did not seem to work consistently. I tried to call the number on the "receipt" I was given but the phone was disconnected.
At higher volumes, the system did not seem to have the fullness of sound that I was expecting from a "high end system".
Afterwards, I started comparing this system with other brands in Best Buy and very quickly found out that this system is definitely not high end. It's probably worth about $200-$300 so I got taken for about $100-$200. I chaulked it up as a loss but remember, if it sounds too good to be true, its probably not. Do not buy it. Go to legitimate stores, shop, compare, catch a good sale or deal with a warranty. For $400, I could have bought a much better system.
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