Bel Canto REF600 m amp reapir costs- exorbitant ?
I have a pair of REF600m, I took them out of my system for a month and when I hooked them back up one is dead. No green light, no music. Oddly there are no fuses or breakers in the amp ! Google shows that there are known problems with the power supplies going bad on these. I sent them both in to get looked at- they emailed me today that yup, one needs a new power supply- for $695- and they suggest doing the other one too as it'll probably go next. $1500 to repair two amps with known issues - and the amps are only worth $2800 if I were to sell them. Looking inside the amp there aint much hardware, $700 a power supply sure seems steep- and I'm really stuck. Don't fix them and they're useless, fix them and have a fortune sunk into a pair that aren't worth much. It's like I'd have to spend $1500 to make them saleable for $2500 just to dump them. I would have expected either a free replacement for a known problem or a low cost flat rate repair. I was expecting perhaps $350 each amp. Am I unreasonable? Ignoring the fact that I don't think they should have failed at all, ever. Signed: Unhappy and not buying anymore Bel Canto.
Sometimes it works out this way. I had a pair of Canary monoblock tube amps many years ago. An output transformer died on one of them. The cost to repair that amp was more than the value of the pair. I sold Canary both amps at a huge loss and moved on. Didn't make sense to drop that kind of $$ into them. I agree with @rsf507 . Repair the one and sell them both. Disclose the issue and offer a steep enough discount to make the sale attractive. |
Thank you for all the helpful comments and suggestions. I guess I'll begrudgingly have the one repaired and then sell them and scratch Bel Canto off of my list of products I'd buy or recommend. I think as the OEM they certainly have the ability to either do it for free or for a modest amount especially as its a known problem. Choosing to charge top dollar is shortsighted and greedy imo. You'd think that they'd be thoughtful about how word of mouth / hobbyist referrals works but apparently they're not concerned. I do think that class d amps should last longer than 8 years and I also think these should have been fused (which they are not). The other option is I throw them out and buy a used Rogue Sphinx V3 for $900 and move on- I owned one before and it was great. There's a part of me that on principle doesn't want to send Bel Canto a dime. I've emailed them back nicely asking to reconsider the pricing and cited a recent example of Audio Research doing the right thing with my LS28Se that they couldn't figure out what the issue was and eventually offered a brand new mother board and power supply for just a few hundred dollars - which I thought was very fair and I did it. They were wanting to do the right thing for me and the brand, which is why I continue to own their gear and love it and recommend it. BTW- so far no one at Bel Canto has responded to my email back about considering trimming their price down. |
