Axiom had me spoiled. David recently mentioned that he was expected to pay the shipping charges to return his defective... sub amp? Was that it? Anyway, no one thought that sounded right, and that certainly hadn't been my experience with Axiom's service side. I've always been impressed with their willingness to send out replacements before you even ship back your problem unit, minimizing downtime, and shipping was always covered by Axiom both ways. That policy did apparently change, as after the amp for my Audiobytes just failed, I contacted Axiom and was informed that returning the defective amp for repair would be at my expense.
While I'm somewhat sympathetic to their situation, with all of the money they lose on providing service beyond what others are offering, it's a bit underwhelming to suddenly be partially footing the bill for their amp failures. Amp failures have certainly been the number one reason for service for me, but I always found comfort in the fact that Axiom was there to take care of me each and every time. They're still there to take care of me, only now with me covering the shipping one way and with a longer wait for a working product (since now I'll be waiting for a repair of the product instead of a simple swap with a new unit). As I told JC, it's still worth it to me to pay the shipping and have working Audiobytes again, but I wanted to have my displeasure with the new policy heard. I doubt I would be such a loyal Axiom customer if my experience had always been to pay return shipping for the numerous defective amps I've had. The amps are not light. It's going to be a lot harder for me to recommend any Axiom products with amps to other people under this new policy.
