As Mark Twain once said " It is never wrong to do the right thing."
Honesty is the best policy...I think.
Heres a question for the Forum. I have my PS Audio Perfect Wave Transport for sale here. I purchased as a refurbished unit directly from PS Audio. In use, it will occasionally freeze up and by that I mean the remote or touchscreen will not function. And by occasionally I mean not more than once a month. The first time it happened to me I called PS Audio who told me to turn it off at the back, wait 10 seconds and turn back on to cause it to reboot which solved the problem. They told me it was normal like with any computer. I think it happens more often when I am playing discs I have burned at home of hi-res files. I have also done some research online and see that this is very common with this transport. So, now that I am selling the unit, I have mentioned that this is something that can happen. I don't want someone to purchase the unit, have it do this and then accuse me of not mentioning it. It has, of course, freaked out potential buyers. At the same time there are several other units just like it for sale with no mention of this and I know this to be a quirk of all of these units - not just mine. It works fine and I have enjoyed it for several years. I am selling only because I purchased a DMP that, what a surprise, occasionally does the same thing. What would you do?
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@oldhvymec has made the edit for the ad to sell. It's not a big deal for anyone who understands that computers are in a lot of products and need to be reset. |
Me, I would read other honest people’s descriptions, see who found a darn good way to mention it
I offer 30 day UNCONDITIONAL RETURNS on anything I sell, and describe things/issues so I don't get returns. In your case. offer 60 days (far past 1st month, so buyer will experience the frequency themselves. If it gets worse, you sold em a unit on the brink, give em their money back.
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I have a PerfectWave Transport and I've been dealing with this problem for a few years. I'm going to tell a fairly detailed story to be fair to PSA but I am really disappointed. At the end I will give you a specific recommendation on how I would proceed if I were you. My unit was termed "B Stock" but it was sold to me as a new unit. It only had a one year warranty. At about 13 months of age the drive quit working after being glitchy for a few months.. I figured it was under warranty so no problem. When I called PSA they told me my unit was B stock and it was out of warranty. They were sympathetic to my plight, however, and they agreed to fix it for free which meant a new drive. Worked fine after that. BTW, I figured that I must have gotten a lemon drive and I was confident it would be OK with the new one. After about 6 months the transport started getting glitchy again (skips, freezes, had to turn off unit and reboot) and finally it would get stuck and not open. I then checked the all-knowing Google and found out this model is notorious for breaking down. I also found instructions on how to replace the drive yourself. I called PSA and they told me that they would charge $500 this time to fix it. I told the guy that there was no way I was putting $500 in this unit and that I would use it as a doorstop in my stereo room. This made him very uncomfortable and he put me on hold. He came back and told me they would fix the unit if I paid the shipping to their factory. I agreed to this and they replaced the drive again. The second drive fix was about a a year ago and it's starting to get glitchy again. BTW, I play maybe 5 or 6 CDs a week in the unit. My research has turned up that PSA used the cheapest commodity grade drive mechanism they could find. At retail a new drive costs about $17 (wholesale would be about $10). That means that PSA put a $10 drive in a $4000 transport. Just for reference I have a Marantz SA8005 player ($1200) that has played way more discs than the PSA and the drive has never had a glitch. You can replace the drive yourself but you need to buy some special screws from PSA to make the job easier. You can install a better drive than they used by buying a Plextor PlexWriter PX-891SAF and putting it in yourself. On the PSA forum for transports there is a thread regarding how to do this. I'm not totally confident that a new drive will solve your problem but it is the most likely culprit. Regarding ethics, I decided that I could never sell this drive to anyone because I would not knowingly sell a bad piece of gear. You may be more flexible and I have two suggestions: 1) Replace the drive before you sell the unit and see if that fixes the problem. If it is working perfectly for a couple months you could be comfortable selling it without a warning or disclosure. You should mention in the ad that you recently replaced the drive. 2) State in the ad that the unit is glitchy and that the new owner can send it to PSA for repair for a fixed sum of $500. You will have to price the unit at substantially less than your normal price to account for the cost. There's another reason I will put up with this transport for the long term. It has a "Digital Lens" that totally buffers and reclocks the data before going to the DAC. That feature alone can cost $1K or more in a separate unit. At least I can be comfortable that the signal going to the DAC has extremely low jitter and timing errors. I've owned several pieces of PSA gear but I will never buy another one. To their credit they bent over backwards to be fair but I just can't forgive them for putting a rot gut cheapo drive in their $4000 transport. I just don't trust them any more. |
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