Audioquest (AQ) destroying somebody’s else property is, most likely, illegal but who will even consider challenging it in a federal court (maybe a class action would make sense here). The main reason why it is a really bad idea is mentioned already here: after destroying a cable there is absolutely no way for a victim of a scammer to get any portion of his/her money back unless the transaction was insured by a 3rd party. Probably the only way to get money back would be to obtain AQ’s statement which is linked to the specific fake cable. For that reason, AQ could thermally (laser?) brand fake cable’s connector (let’s say with the 3-letter code such as "ABC" for the total of
15,600
unique combinations) and attach a related dated & coded statement stating that the cable is fake. They could charge a fee for such a service because losing all the money on a fake cable is much worse. By destroying fake cables they are serving nobody except themselves. I actually have such a case now: I purchased an AQ cable from an Ebay seller, evaluated it, discovered it is underperforming, returned it to the seller, and he is about to send it to AQ for authentication while my refund is depending on a result of this process.
Fake Audioquest sky cables
One of my friend had bought an audioquest sky cable from someone that i do not know. My friend knows that i am using audioquest sky cables, and when he tried the cables in his system he had some doubts about their fake or real, then he came to me. My friend sky cables has different color shielding and different kind of 72 v dbs and same connectors but different signs on them. When we tried my friends sky vs mine, friends sky has no stage, no 3d images, sloppy bass, and very highs were very harsh. There is no doubt that this cable is fake. He emailed photos of the cable to the audioquest, and they gave very vague answers, as far as i understand from my friends telling, there are two versions of sky, early model looks like my friends sky, later model looks like mine. I think they mentioned sonic improvement between two models, but not like our comparisons. I heart fake sky cables many times, but never met one. My friend is trying to give back cable, i do not know whether he succed or not. Have you ever seenor heart fake aq sky, did you have a chance to compare with a real one, are your findings similiar with us ?