For some reason, the unholy destroyer that are my ears have a tendency to destroy any earphones I buy, as I’ve documented a little over a year ago. I went through a ton of cheap Sony earphones, and eventually settled on a pair of Shure E2g’s.
Well, turns out my ears are too strong even for Shure’s materials. To their credit, their luxury gear has lasted me two to three times longer than the cheaper Sony fare, and it’s really just the plastic cracking on the wiring and not any actual loss in functionality (unlike the Sony phones, which have had amps die while they were in my ear and by god it hurt). They also have better construction quality overall and more fulfilling, deeper bass for only twice the cost.
So all the points above would have already made me a happily satisfied repeat customer, and I was ready to lay down another $80 for a new pair if these deteriorate any further. To my surprise, though, Shure goes one step further in garnering respect by including a two-year warranty on their earphones, which covers trivial cases such as cracking plastic wires.
Even more impressively, their warranty repair process is about as painless as it gets: print and fill out a one-page simple form, either include a copy of the original receipt (easy if you buy from an online retailer) or read the manufacturing date on the phones themselves, and send in the earphones. Compared to the usual corporate procedures - talk to a customer support rep, convince them that it’s under warranty, get a bunch of case and RMA numbers, fill out a busload of forms verifying that you are indeed who you claim you are that you have indeed purchased what you have purchased, and wait “3 to 4 weeks processing” before you get anything back – Shure’s process took me a little over 15 minutes to ready all the paperwork and packaging.
They even sent me a receipt Friday saying they’ve already shipped my new phones back, some 3 days after I shipped to them via USPS ground (1).
So yea, Shure did all the right things in nabbing themselves a loyal and thoroughly impressed customer. Sadly, that I’m impressed with their support and service doesn’t say much for other earphone manufacturers…
- possibly the slowest method devised by man, competitive only with “We lose your shipment half the time UPS ground (↩)