Have your say & ask the experts

Hubble:

In response to Xavier Nicolas

Apologies for the delayed refund. As confirmed by e-mail yesterday this order has now been refunded and the delay was due to an error in our system which has now been fixed. The inital delay was due to the supplier being out of stock and a subsequent change in supplier.

Considering the inconvenience, I can offer something as a good will gesture if you contact us by e-mail.

Kind regards

Alex
Director

At no time did any one from your company call me or email me to discuss any delays, despite numerous promises. This was at the start of the year and some 7 months on these same problems are affecting numerous other customers as is evidenced on these pages.

Surely with a recession on and the rising number of people losing their jobs, it should be very easy for you to employ the new staff that you keep say you need? If you have already employed new staff then things are not working.

There's only so many times you can apologise to all of these customers and your promises are easily made but seem to be proving very difficult to keep.

audioaffair:

Dennis Harvey:

In response to Dennis Harvey.

Dennis - thank you for your comments. You placed this order on Tuesday. We contacted you to confirm that we had run out of brand new units, but after a stock check we have a pristine ex demo unit available (which we understand to be the last twin pack in the country), and we offered this to you at £200 off retail. You refused and requested a refund. Within 5 minutes, a lady in admin had processed a full refund for you and confirmed this by e-mail. Please contact us if you have any further queries.

Kind regards,

Alex
Director

 

Unfortunately i wasn't contacted by AA about the lack of available stock, i was notified today after i had requested an update of the order progress by email and telephone. So this is not true. The website still advertises availability. Again not true. I will be more than happy to report the return of my £949 as soon as it is refunded to my bank account. I will report further tomorrow, as the money should be refunded as quickly as it was taken. If not refunded instantly i will not mess about but contact Birmingham trading standards and/or police immediately.

In response to Dennis Harvey. 

Dennis - we tried to call you Thursday morning at home but the lady who answered confirmed you would not be in until 6pm. We then e-mailed you after conducting a stock check to confirm that we only had one Twin Pack left in stock, which was ex demo. We offered a £200 discount on this, but you requested a refund and this was sent within 5 minutes, though this takes 2-3 days to show on your card. The website was then updated to show that we only have 1 ex demo twin pack available in stock, which you view by visiting www.audioaffair.co.uk

Apologies again for any inconvenience. We can offer you a good deal on an alternative amplifier and/or cd player if you give us a call - 0800 520 0710.

Kind regards

Alex
Director

grdunn123:

In repsonse to grdunn123

Hi, sorry about that. As stated, there may have been these few occasions in the past when a customer was not contacted immediately regarding a delay. With some items which are manufactured abroad, this may have come down to the manufacturer being out of stock, and in some cases, not giving us an accurate delivery date.

However, we have been working hard to rectify this for future delays, which includes hiring more staff and keeping many more items in stock. In fact, we now hold stock of many items which many other companies do not have regular stock of and do this to ensure we can deliver very quickly. Most items which are now shown as in stock online can be delivered for free next day.

As a relatively newer business within this industry, your comments have been extremely helpful as we continue to grow and continuously improve our service

We can not go into exact specifics on some issues in a forum due to data protection, but if there has been a delay with your order, please contact us directly and we can discuss this and offer a good will gift or discount if possible.

Kind regards

Alex
Director

Just a little message to say that I was refunded by Audio Affair on Saturday.

Thank you for that, Alex -  it's just sad that a few posts on forums were needed to make it happen...

audioaffair:

In response to Dennis Harvey. 

Dennis - we tried to call you Thursday morning at home but the lady who answered confirmed you would not be in until 6pm. We then e-mailed you after conducting a stock check to confirm that we only had one Twin Pack left in stock, which was ex demo. We offered a £200 discount on this, but you requested a refund and this was sent within 5 minutes, though this takes 2-3 days to show on your card. The website was then updated to show that we only have 1 ex demo twin pack available in stock, which you view by visiting www.audioaffair.co.uk

Apologies again for any inconvenience. We can offer you a good deal on an alternative amplifier and/or cd player if you give us a call - 0800 520 0710.

Kind regards

Alex
Director

 

REFUNDED THIS MORNING, THANK YOU.

That's a real result! [EDITED BY MODS - PLEASE CAN WE STICK TO FACTS, NOT SPECULATION]

I ordered Audio pre and power a while back, no issues at all, and had interconnects thrown in free......

thought I would add some positive comments...... which if every positive comment was posted here  the complaints would be far out numbered?

I've ordered quite a few things from Audio Affair. I've always found Alex to be extremely helpful and quick in sorting problems out.

I am afraid I too am having problems with these people, I ordered a Chord Co. cable on August 4th and so far have received nothing, I have telephoned them twice and been told "by the end of the week". I have ordered Chord cables from a number of suppliers and always received them quickly even if the retailer was out of stock.

These people have an impressive website, but that seems to be about all. 

OK, I joined this forum specifically to write this post for anyone who, like me, orders something from Audio Affair and THEN discovers this thread and starts to worry.

1. Ordered a Vita R2i (£279) online on Thursday 27 August 2009 at 8.29pm, received instant email confirming order.

2. Received email on Friday 28 August at 1.31pm, saying my order status had changed to 'Shipped'.

3. Having read about others' bad experiences and not having received my order yet, thought I'd ring Audio Affair Customer Services at 10am on Tuesday 1 September (today) to check what was happening. Got through straight away and spoke to a woman who was helpful and polite and looked up my details and was able to give me the consignment number and exact status of my order. She told me that it was in fact shipped on Friday but due to the Bank Holiday weekend had not left the courier's depot until 9.05am this morning and would be delivered sometime later today.

4. 2 hours later, courier arrived. 

Audio Affair still seem to have some ongoing problems (see previous post) but I have to say my experience was a good one, so it's not all doom and gloom and I'd probably use them again. (and the Vita R2i is stunning!!)

 

 

 

I wish I'd read this before we placed an order for a Vita Audio r2i earlier this week.  The website said stock was available.  We placed an order and we understand (from Audio Affair) that our card was debited (bad form in my view to debit a card if you aren't shipping immediately - why do so?)  Then nothing.  I emailed yesterday, 24 hours later.....nothing.  So my wife called and was told no stock of the r2i in black.  Why on earth did they take payment when there is no stock?  Why didn't they do us the courtesy of advising this on the day we placed the order or as seems more sensible, keep the website up to date.  Very dissapointed and just hope that our card is credited back soon as it sounds like others have had issues with that.  It seems to me that to end up with a thread like this you have to conduct your business in a certain way - given our experience I doubt I'd order anything from them again and given that Vita Audio list them as a stockist I've gone back to Vita Audio primarily to find a stockist who actually has stock but also to explain our experience as Vita Audio endorse AA by listing them and giving them stock before other stockists.  Is it that difficult to be courteous and keep customers informed?

After further emails chasing through the refund we finally got it through over the weekend, could've been worse.  Had confirmation from Peter Tyson that they had it in stock and how refreshing to see in their order confirmation email: "Your credit/debit card will not be charged until the day of despatch."  whereas it seems audio affair will debit your card on placing the order even if they don't have stock, not tell you they don't have stock until you chase, then take a week or so to refund.

Peter Tyson also responded promptly and courteously to emails and have good reviews elsewhere.

Hi,

Well, they seem to be able to do fast (next day) delivery nowadays as my order came the very next day!  

However, the box the amplifier came in (the manufacturers box) had clearly been opened previously (opened along the bottom instead of the top) and then taped up and stapled up again.  So, I think they must have sent me their ex-demo unit instead of a brand new unit that I had ordered.  There was such an item for sale on their web-site.  I did check at time of order that the unit was brand new so I'm not sure what happened here.

I've e-mailed Alex about this and will wait to hear from him on Monday.  Perhaps it was just a mix up, and I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now and hope that they resolve this for me swiftly.

I will let you know how it goes.