McIntosh Flunking the Course in Washington State...What Do You Think?

I live in Seattle, and had a similar experience trying to find someone here to service my MAC.

Hawthorne Stereo will look at it only if it is vintage / all analog.

Condor Electronics was willing to take a look at it.

I wound up lugging it to Portland to Inner Sound (who is the factory service center for McIntosh in the PNW) and could not be happier.

Forget what A.I. says, Mike is FANTASTIC, this place is old-school personal service. totally reasonable prices, and the added bonus of checking for any outstanding service bulletins on your model. They even did firmware updates on my unit for free. My wait time was about 3 weeks, but yes I did pay for the expedited service.

Frankly I have had things done at Hawthorne, and Definitive and I like both of those shops, but if I have anything approaching serious I'm definitely taking it to Inner Sound. (I would actually recommend talking to Ted at Definitive if you want a totally local contact, he's great and will steer you right)

But if you take it to Portland then you get to spend the day doing some tax-free shopping at crossroads records!

shayatin,

Now that's a great response.  Thank you.  Good information that answered the question directly.  I think my conclusion is that repair is a tough road for many of us, which definitely won't help in keeping the overall business appealing to the masses (or even the semi-masses).  

 I will say this, Aurender is very personal and actually contacts you, .was you are working through any issues.  Unlike in the past, McIntosh seems to be going down the path of ghosting you.  

Folks will say "this repair shop did a fantastic job", but... how would they know?

They take an item to a shop to be fixed because they lack the skills, equipment, or inclination to fix it themselves. 

How are they suddenly qualified to judge the quality of the repair? Did they take the cover off, check the quality of the brands and series of capacitors that were used by the techs, flip the PCBs to assess the quality of the solder joints, double-check bias and DC offset, etc, etc? 

Just curious. It’s easy to see they fixed it, it’s harder to see whether they fixed it right.

"the best stereo manufacturer in America"

That's hilarious 

Starting in January, I have emailed them 3 times to answer a simple question. What is the tube complement for the phono section of the C1100? 3 times in 3 months and no reply for a simple question regarding their flagship preamp for almost ten years.