In praise of the Naim Service Department.

Yep...agreed.
I emailed them last night re a 250 re-cap and there was a reply waiting for me when I logged on at 1000 this am; super support.......and people wonder why their supporters suffer such religious dedication to the brand!

Steve

I agree, too.

I had a problem once with my ARO, and they immediately sent me a replacement part to Germany.

This is the reason used Naim stuff doesn't depreciate in value. There are not so many companies with the same attitude. Maybe Quad, but after so many changes of ownership, I am not quite sure whether they offer their legendary service these days like before.

great,
Hartmut

I have a Canon Ixus camera cost £100 and I've taken it in to the camera shop (well you wouldn't take it to a green grocer)who informed me that it had a "software" problem and it would be £68.00 to have it repaired.

Does this make our service dept value for money?

Doug

Doug

3 months ago, my wifes camera conked out. It was a Canon EOS50E and was 2 yrs old. It was a total waste of money because she has only ever put 5 films through it.

Anyway, they wanted £140.00 to put it right....I rang up their HQ and bawled them out. No way was I paying for a repair for a camera that had only run 5 films.

They repaired it free of charge.

A camera is covered by the Product Liability act and should be designed and manuffactured to have a working life of 6 years and if it conks out before 6 years is up, it was either designed badly or manufactured incompetently.

Be tough with them.

I also have to say that your service department is one the the best adverts Naim has.

Regards

Mick

Can't comment on Naim's service, because nothing of mine has broken yet, presumably because they put it together properly in the first place and its still less than 10 years old.
However as an avid Mick Parry reader - pls. allow me to make a few assumptions - most people only use their cameras for family snaps and Mrs. P managed to take 5 whole rolls of Mr. P before the camera broke, this would appear to be a very robust camera..

CNC

I agree, certainly perfect service

For various reasons I've had to deal with many hi-fi manufacturers/distributors over the years. None of the mid sized/large companies comes close in terms of service and VFM. Lots of the smaller companies (and one man outfits) give similar service, but they haven't got the cash flow and often go out of business. The level of service they give costs them dear. When their staff are giving free advice, they're not directly making something or doing a chargeable job. Naim have the balance exactly right. In my experience Naim products are extremely durable and roubust. (Not only that they sound amazing too!)

Naim Service = The Best!

Thanks Mark and Sheila!

Alex

I share your feelings about the abysmal lack of customer care and awareness in Canon UK. I purchased one of the Pro90is digital cameras in February. It failed with a list of 5 faults within 2 weeks, unfortunately whilst I was on an extended trip down-under.

Canon Australia couldn't (or wouldn't) fix it and when I returned it to the UK service depot, it came back to me 2 weeks later as being "fully functional & within spec.". Only in the last week have they finally admitted it's faulty and agreed to replace it. Its taken 7 months and numerous phone calls and letters just to get an obviously faulty product replaced.

Also this week I made a service spares enquiry by e-mail to a certain well known Hi-Fi maker in Glasgow. They couldn't even be bothered to reply except to refer me to my local dealer.

I believe customer service and liaison are one of the most important functions within any business. Its a great pity that apart from Naim and BMW UK, few companies appear to share this view.

Meldrew mode Off!!

David

quote:

---

I share your feelings about the abysmal lack of customer care and awareness in Canon UK

---

Funny, over here in cheese country it's pretty much the same. I used to work in a camera shop 20 years ago and it it was already terrible back then - 4 weeks to get a camera repaired (and in the end you weren't even sure that it worked at all), wrongly priced invoices, incomplete deliveries, etc. Minolta were, by far, the most efficient and reliable.

But Canon had excellent salespeople.

Cheese

The only time the manufacturer and the customer meet is when the customer has a problem with the product, so this is the only time the manufacturer can impress the customer first hand and prepare the customer to buy another product or service from them.

:Platitude mode off.

Derek

A while ago, I decided to upgrade from a 4x writer to a 24x writer as to keep buying more hard disks was getting a tad expensive... The day I bought the new drive, I decided to burn off a "few" CDs and start freeing up some disk space...
Later in the day, the burner stopped working for some reason, and wouldnt read any sort of CD. So off I trotted back down the shop for a refund... They apologised profusely, and gave me the money back...
What I forgot to tell them, was that I had actually managed to burn off around 60 DivX films I had downloaded in the 8 hours I had owned the drive... :-)
Since then I have given up on computers as they consume far too much money... and discovered the wonders of a Naim Hifi... and am now the proud owner of a NAC102 and NAP180. And very impressed with them too... A CDX is in the pipeline in the next couple of months... :-)

Naim Service *****/*****

Best service I know. Won't let Naim down, never ever.




/ J

my active system went through a "few" tantrums last year. throughout that time, naim continued to support me, sometimes well beyond "call of duty". this is VERY rare in ANY industry. i have many many stories of extremely annoying encounters with PC hardware and software companies (especially one particular one...)

we are trully spoiled. but that's why we buy naim.

enjoy

ken
ps: oh, by the way, my active system STILL sounds absolutely fab!

for the ultimate in crap service, try dealing with Techtronics - actually, don't. Never, ever, ever deal with this company. EVER!
I Bought a dvd 5 weeks ago and it arrived 2 weeks later doa. Sent it back. Rather than just send me a new one straight away, for some strange reason they insist on repairing the old one first (no doubt to sell to some other unfortunate)! 3 weeks and several phone calls later and I'm told they MIGHT get around to sending the new one next week. Each phone call comes with the excuse of "it's moved on to stage x but now 'the director' needs to sign the paperwork before it can move to the next stage.".
Sick of the crap I've told them today where they can shove their dvd... naturally that also requires mounds of paperwork to be filled in.

As it is true and I still have the letters, I doubt if they can sue me so here goes;

My v.expensive Mark Levinson pre-amp went dead on one channel, so I phoned the importer (Path Premier) and sent them the amp, power supply and cables. Heard nothing for about a month, so phoned them to be told "Oh yes it's here. We can't fix it, do you want us to send it to ML in US?" Er, yes.
Two months later I phoned importer again. "Oh yes it's been back for a while. Post us a cheque for 100GBP, and we'll send it to you".
Complied, and amp arrived exactly as it left, with one channel not working.
In desperation I took it to bits myself and found the problem to be a broken wire in the feed cable from the separate power supply, took about ten minutes to fix. I imagine that they had only checked the pre-amp in isolation.
I wrote to complain, and they sent my cheque back. No apology.
I wrote to Levinson to complain. No reply.

Guess what, I sold the Levinson gear and have only bought Naim and Sugden since as both these British companies have outstanding service departments.

I've gotten some queries seen to as well very promptly in the past, and much like the rest of us on this thread felt thoroughly impressed, and appreciated it.

Thank you.

However there is a distinct possibility we could get unrealistically carried away with our expectations of Naim having to see to each and every one of our requests on a very pronto basis(and that's ALOT if you take the world market into account!), especially after threads like this one. I hope we will keep these expectations well within reasonable limits, if only to support, and perhaps "ease" a little, this "responsibility" Naim have so doggedly taken upon themselves where customer service and relations are concerned. They are unparalleled in the hi-fidelity industry, and I am certain their success will continue well into the future.

My congratulations to Naim for the launch of their new series (although the look has yet to sink in.... but who knows?) (Hockman, do you still have your 500 hidden behind somewhere???:D)

Good listening all, the music's still groovin'.

Cheers

Philip Pang

naimniac for life

My two-penny-worth.

Yes to all the endorsements above, Naim's service department is superb. Its one of the three main reasons for me buying Naim.

Sound
Quality
Service

Because I only live less than forty miles from the factory, I tend to deliver and collect myself when I need a repair (eg when the overhead electriciy wire in our street exploded!) or an upgrade. The service team are delightful. Smiling, warm, friendly faces, none of your artificial PR smiles, and they manage to make you feel as if YOU are their most important customer.

Magnificant.

Cheers

Don

I have their number programmed into my mobile phone!

Always ready to help. Kudos.

cheers, Martin

Hockman

Yeah, it grows on you somewhat. It's grown on me too, but something's got to be done about that plasticky logo depiction on the faceplate : I was just over to a friend's place for a past midnight listen recently, and you couldn't decipher the Naim logo on a 500 from a distance, as we listened and connected to the music in the dark.

In advertising terms, we call the width spacing between each letter of a word the kerning, and I think the kerning in this particular logo application really needs just a little more room to breathe better... Sorry, Naim, while the sonics are there for the hearing (and taking), the plasticky look to something as important (and beautiful) as the Naim logo doesn't bode well on the products, especially at 10,000 pounds. Surely this can be vastly improved on.

Tactile feel of the input source/power buttons could also be further improved too : hell, is it too much to just want the icing on the already delicious audio cake....!;)Besides the price only warrants it! (I think Paul's reply would be: of course that would be possible, but we'd just have to charge more!:D)

Hockman, the CDS3 does look commanding on the net, and probably better in the flesh. In hindsight though, my work in advertising exposes me to the elements of design everyday, and I'm not entirely convinced on the aesthetics of how they have squeezed 6 key buttons plus the digital display within the space contraints of the right faceplate panel. Could be the constraints of the internal design that decided this. But the CDS1 and 2 both had all their buttons laid out neatly on the right, in a single horizontal plane, which in minimalist terms just worked their ergonomic charms so beautifully to the tee. I would have preferred the CDS3 to have had its buttons (on the right panel)separated from the digital display (on the left panel), for a less congested look. Why change the ergonomics of an already excellent front panel layout from the earlier players?

It is neat now, no doubt, but CDS3 buyers would have to settle for a seemingly smaller digital display, and probably have to think twice whenever they try to locate the correct buttons on the top and bottom.

Well, can't have them all. Forget the logo, just enjoy the music.

Good listening, the music's still groovin'.

Regards

Philip Pang

naimniac for life

Would be if you could tap the new logo with your finger and turn the bloody light off. Complete display defeat.
Sitting in the dark listening does anyone really need little green lights?

Hockman

Yes tip top machining, till you see that cheap plasticky logo... While I am hoping Naim see some sense in addressing this, it's a futile thought I suppose, so we'll just have to live with it since the sonics blow everything else to bits and leave us with very little choice, but to buy and swallow.

We seem to have some shared interests...996s, (I like Boxster S-es, good enough) 500, DBLs, CDSes, Arne Jacobson and Charles Eames... Mies Van Der Rohe, S Sarinen and Le Corborsier are the other favourites, and some stuff from Hues Chevaliar as well, though the latter are not what you'd term classics...

552/SL2 are destined to be classics though, from the ground vibes reaching us... The 500 already is.

Redeye, some green lights in the dark add a sexy romantic mysticism to the listening experience, which only the older range do, and which I love. The old logo looks exceptionally beautiful in the night, quite like a lovely woman with alabaster-like skin in the buff.

Good listening; the music's still groovin'.:D (damn, can never get those bloody graemlins right!)

Regards

Philip
naimniac for life

Hockman, mail me your handphone number again, just in case I'm in town. I lost my mobile recently, and with it my entire telephone directory...thanks. Philip@freeze.com.sg

Another in praise.......

I bought an exdem fraim with no instructions (no criticsm of the dealer) it was largely built. I needed instructions for me to install it 'perfectly'. An email to Naim and the instructions were with me the next day. I have called/used service a few times and Paul and Sheila are wonderful. Yeah, over many years this is quality service par excellance!!

Seagull time to arrange a visit!!

Have any of the dealers been complained before of poor service? and if so, what actions would Naim UK take?

just curious......

I've had terrible service from several London dealers. When I first got to England I wanted to get some mains cables. I called several Naim dealers. The responses ranged from "what's that?" to "they're all the same, just buy one from Dixon's". Also went to visit with Gizmogirl to demo some equipment and most wouldn't even talk to us. Those that gave us a few seconds of their 'precious' time told us we had to make a booking for a demo! "maybe next week some time?". Right.
This has been mentioned to Naim - if I had been a new customer they would have lost a sale. Not sure what they'll actually do about it though. Either way, those dealers have lost my business permanently and I now deal only with the very friendly Raj at Superdeal in Croydon.