My new E3c:s have finally arrived

As I mentioned a while back my Shure E3c's broke. It took forever to get a replacement pair, but now they're finally here.

I didn't realise how much I had been missing them until I started using them today. The sound is just brilliant. But the build quality does leave something to be desired. This is my third pair. Kudos to Shure for great customer support though, they've sent me a new pair free of charge both times the phones broke down.

Still no reply from Jays

I wrote about Jays's unethical use of www.shure.se nine days ago. At the same time I contacted Jays's through their website and sent an email to their CEO. I still haven't heard back from them and www.shure.se is still hi-jacked by Jays.

I'll post to a couple of forums to see if I can get them to reply. Feel free to contact Jays yourself and tell them what you think about their behaviour.

And do digg the original post.

Jays's unethical use of www.shure.se

I was looking for support when my Shure E3c broke and found out that Jays have kidnapped www.shure.se. This is the cyber equivalent of putting up a store using another company's name to lure customers into entering.

Why would you want to do that? Of course they do it because they think it will increase their sales and build their brand. But will it? Think about a couple of scenarios:

• The potential customer understands that Jays and Shure are two different companies. They were looking for Shure but now find themselves kidnapped by this rogue Jays company. Potential customer not happy and will never become actual customer. (This is where I am right now.)
• The potential customer thinks that Jays and Shure are the same company. Buys a pair of headphones.
• If the headphones are good, they recommend their friends to go get a couple of Shure headphones (because that is what they think they bought).
• If they are bad, they tell their friends to stay away from Shure.

No alternative here increases the value of Jays's brand. The last alternative, bad Jays products, will discredit Shure but what does Jays have to gain from it?

There is one last alternative: the potential customer understands that Jays is trying to use another company's brand but doesn't care and buys their product anyway. Which will increase sales, but it can't possibly be good for the Jays brand.

I'll contact Jays to see if and how they want to comment on this.

Update: After nine days, still no reply from Jays. Submitted story to digg to see if someone besides me cares.

Broken Shure E3C headphones

I got a pair of Shure E3C in February 2006. Great sound and a nice set of headphones. Somewhat pricey, but since I listen a lot on my headphones I wanted something good. After having had them less than a year they broke (as reported by other users). I got a new pair (after first having been sent the E2C:s as a replacement) and all was well.

Until June this year when they broke again. This time they weren't physically broken, but there's no sound from the left speaker (again, as reported by other users). I sent four emails to the local Swedish representative over a period of two weeks until I got a reply saying that they are not a distributor for Shure and got refered to another company.

I'm now trying to contact them instead - keep tuned for updates. In the meantime I'm using the apple phones that came with the second generation iPod nano, which are actually not that bad for casual use. But I want my E3c:s back.