I'm the manager of a Jaycar Store. Let me point out the things that aren't supposed to happen.
Response is generally a high quality, low priced product. The amp you had problems with won amp of the year in HOT 4's, beating Kenwood and Alpine.
You have had a shocking, unbelievable experience, from unexperienced staff, that in my opinion, should not be working in a Jaycar store. I can't believe what they told you. I would have expected that s**t from a kid behind the counter at Dick Smith Electronics, but not a Jaycar.
I sincerely apologise for your treatment, even though it's not my store. I urge you to write a letter of complaint to Head office, and get the people of this store to pull their heads in.
The point is here that it's a
disappointment. It's just not what we're accustomed to from Jaycar / Electus. I've been a customer of Jaycar - and then Electus - for well over twenty years. I have seen the quality slide dramatically in the recent past, and the emphasis now seems to be a "Toys-R-Us" for the electronic gadget fraternity. Cheap and NASTY Chinese made JUNK. And all of this aside from the blatantly unprofessional behaviour of the staff concerned with Matt's problem in the first place - such a situation would never have arisen if the equipment had been properly tested during manufacture/distrtibution. And even if it did - the amp should have been REPLACED - striaght up, no question. Yes the oddball can sometimes "sneak under the radar" during QA, but this is becoming the norm. (of course, if the replacement amp did the same thing, then maybe the amp's not at fault...)Oh, by the way - I'm now up to my FOURTH 4 x 50W amp failure - still waiting on the paperwork to arrive, as promised by the "friendly and helpful" head office staff. (that was promised a month or so ago...) I've been ordering from them as a registered business customer for over 2 1/2 years now - I've never had as much as a phone call from a customer "area rep" or similar.... I wonder if they'd notice if I stopped sending orders....
How sweet it is to pick up an olf Jaycar catalogue from 10 or 15 years ago and idly flip through the pages - there was no spruike on the cover about how many products were stocked, it was simply a good reference list for the average hobbyist enthusiast, and could be depended on as a reliable source of good quality products - from the individual components themselves, tools, cases, connectors, and just about everything else. For example, I refuse to buy my connectors from Electus any more, because they are RUBBISH now!! The last lot of RCA line sockets I bought - 100 of them - had to be individually opened up and the tarnish ground off with a ball end burr on the Dremel so I could get the solder to wet to them! Additionally, I had to get the soldered terminations done in record time, because the insulator was made from cheap plastic, and became deformed if too much heat had to be applied... :bang:
Sadly the same has happened to the other products in the range - Quality Assurance has slipped dramatically at a high level, and is trickling all the way down to the customer now. There was a time I would highly recommend Response amps and speakers for my installations - but now I'm very pleased to say that I've recently been made a JBL Car Audio dealer - so bye-bye Response I'm afraid..... I would never have pusued that in the first place if I'd remained happy with your stuff. Think about that....
