Bogus Bose
More crap electronics and more crap service from the bozos at Bose. This time it’s desktop Bose computer speakers of middlin’ quality, about $260. The power supply started buzzing and whining, practically minutes after the warranty expired — just like everyone always jokes about!
So I call Bose support warily and, of course, encounter phone menus with irrelevant options, holding for minutes, the may-be-monitored rep insisting on getting information I’ve already punched in — the usual phone support drill that makes us all want to never dial 1-800 ever again. I want them to send me a new power supply. They want to “troubleshoot.” How do you troubleshoot a buzzing wall wart? Try a different wall? Already did that. But it’s not under warranty, and regardless they would want me to send in the whole system for replacement, but only after “establishing that the unit is actually malfunctioning,” naturally. For a buzzing AC adapter? Really?
*blasts phone* Boring conversation anyway.
So I call the Bose store I bought it from. They quickly agree to replace everything … if we can “verify that the unit has an issue.” Thanks, Bose store manager, for emphasizing that we can’t possibly just take my word for it — as a customer, that always makes me feel so nice. (And verifying a sound like a biggish mosquito in Vancouver’s busiest mall? Yeah, that’ll be a hoot.) But I don’t even want to replace it! It’s a serious pain in the ass to box the thing up and bring it in, not to mention a careless, stupid waste to replace something that is 95% fine, and has one obviously malfunctioning and thoroughly replaceable part. I don’t even care about the warranty! “Can you just sell me a power supply? Hell, you can even charge a crazy markup!” No, not possible, he tells me — cannot give it away or sell it for any price.
*blasts phone* Boring conversation anyway.
You know what else isn’t possible? Buying anything from Bose ever again. I hate you Bose. I hate you very much.
P.S. My pair of Bose Soundlinks are still a crappy pain in the ass too. And applying a firmware update to them last month, in the hopes of resolving chronic bugs and flakiness, was outrageous — half an hour of my life I’m never getting back, glaring inconsistencies and glitches from start to finish. And when I finally had my shiny new firmware? Absolutely no difference in functionality! They still suck, in exactly the same reproducible ways. What was I thinking? Those things are the worst thousand bucks I have ever spent.
