In October I purchased a pair of Beats By Dr. Dre headphones (in-ear type) through Swoopo.com, a pay-per-bid website (considered an entertainment type of shopping). I paid $0.60 for each bid and for a discount price bought a pair of the above headphones. Swoopo.com does not stock these, but once I was the winner, Swoopo.com bought them for me from Amazon.com (and for receipt category purposes, they were considered a "gift" purchase). I received the earphones from Amazon.com with a gift receipt (bought for me by Swoopo.com).
These headphones have a great sound quality, and from that standpoint, I loved them. However, there were two defect problems with them (which I attempted to report to the OEM on multiple occasions). The first problem is that there was included, a set of various size/shape rubber ear piece adapters. You pick which ones fit your ears and preferences the best, put them on the earphones and listen that way. On one occasion when removing the earphones from my ears, I noticed a missing earpiece adapter which I figured out had been left behind in my ear. No injury, but a family member had to remove it with tweezers (or I may have ended up in an emergency room). The second problem is that at the Y junction where the cable splits to L and R ears, the cabling separated. These are not major issues, however, my expectation is that I should be able to send them back to the OEM for warranty repair or replacement. Herein is the problem.
Monster Cable has a LIMITED WARRANTY that they must be purchased from an authorized dealer (of which Amazon.com is authorized). I discovered the problems around April or so, which is without any debate within the warranty period. However, because Swoopo.com bought them for me, Monster Cable considers them NOT to be covered by warranty. I disagree and believe they owe me warranty support. I have debated back and forth with their customer service but to no avail.
A further mitigator (which I don't know if they have fixed yet) is that the FTC (Federal Trade Commission requires that warranty limitations be available near the item description for who ever is buying the head phones prior to sale. The best I could find on Amazon.com was that no, that warranty limitation was not available near the item description. I recently reported this detail to the FTC, and am awaiting response from them. Additionally, as I was the end buyer, it was not made available to me prior to the sale. So I did not know about this limitation until the defect problem arose.
My final comment regards their customer service (at Monster Cable). I submitted my problem to their website numerous times and only after repeated attempts over a period of months did I even receive a reply. My perception is that Monster Cable does not want to support these headphones properly. I feel stuck and ripped off. Although I got a discount price through the bid process (that was a matter of luck), these are aroud $150 headphones (the most expensive type headphones I have ever owned). I am so extremely disappointed that they were defective, and I am stuck with them. I have wrapped a loose knot near the breakage in the cable, and I am very careful regarding the rubber piece (as their sound is so good).
I'd love to hear if anyone else knows how to get recourse in such situations. I have tried to be honest and not editorialize about them, as I don't want vengeance, just fair service. They aren't a terrible company. It is just a mistake, in my opinion, for them to have such restrictive and I believe unfair warranty practices., I believe it is to protect themselves from knockoff units sold elsewhere. And in that regard, I believe this is at the least, a mis-application of warranty. If they are to have a (reasonable) limitation to honor warranties only when bought from authorized dealers, (which mine were), they need to slightly alter their warranty practices to cover my circumstance, and do a better job at disclosing these warranty limitations to consumers prior to sales.
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