Could the poor customer service be a Sonova effect? Some users think so.
When a longtime Sennheiser fan sent his ie900 earbuds in for repair, he expected to get both earbuds back. Instead, he received only one earbud and a damaged package with a return note written on a greasy, reused paper.
The Tale of the Missing Earbud
Expat123456 had been happy with Sennheiser for years, enjoying high-end models like the HD800S. So, when the MMCX port on his left ie900 earbud broke, he thought getting it fixed would be easy.
But finding a way to talk to Sennheiser about the repair proved difficult. The company’s website and chat window only gave him looped responses and directed him to a repair page that didn’t let him explain his problem.
After using the new RMA system and sending his IEMs via UPS, Sennheiser’s response disappointed the OP even more. They confirmed his order and said that since it was past the warranty period, they could only offer a 10% discount for his next purchase.
The customer insisted on a repair via email, instead. But, Sennheiser maintained that the IE900 could not be repaired. It can only be replaced under warranty.
In the end, he agreed to take back the earbuds.
But when the package arrived, only the broken left earbud was inside, wrapped in a dirty ziplock bag. The right one was gone, the package was damaged, and the return note was written on a piece of reused paper with grease stains.
“Oh, to make this journey even more epic! Look at the picture with the return note report given to me. It is some reused paper, with grease stains to the top left.” he said.
“The more you look at it… the more eccentricities you discover… of how much they just don’t give a F-…erm, how much they care.”
Similar Incidents and Speculations
Other Reddit users quickly shared their own bad experiences with Sennheiser’s customer service.
One user even said he asked about buying Sennheiser’s $60,000 HE-1 headphones but never heard back. He was happy about that later, though, after learning from owners about frequent breakdowns and no support.
Above all these complaints, some users have attributed the decline in service quality to Sonova. This is the company that acquired Sennheiser’s consumer division.
“Ever since Sonova took over, Sennheiser customer service has gone to complete shit.” says nick769.
“If you spoke to a real human at any point, you wouldn’t have been responsible for paying shipment to them only for them to return them saying, “Sorry, you’re shit out of luck, they’re 3 years old and out of warranty.”, along with losing the WORKING earpiece in the progress.”
Sennheiser Responds
A Sennheiser representative replied to the Reddit post, asking Expat123456 to send a direct message so they could look into the problem and find a solution.
He also said Sonova was just Sennheiser’s new parent company and that nothing else had changed.
Sonova may be the Consumer division’s new holding company but that is all. Same product teams, same engineers, same experts.” says the representative.
“We are positioning for greater strength and capabilities. Customer Service has been migrating to a newer more robust software program. We are also posturing for a greater future, for us and for you. So naysayers needn’t cause for worry.”
However, some users questioned the sincerity of Sennheiser’s response.
