I ordered some speakers from Tekton back on June 28th. At the time (and to this day!) their site states that "current time to ship is between 4 and 6 weeks". I wrote after 8 weeks asking what's the deal, they told me that their current lead time is about 12 weeks so "about a month left". The 12 weeks passed so I asked again at the 13 week mark, no response. I wrote again at the 14 week mark, no response. I filed a claim with PayPal and immediately got a call from Eric Alexander (owner of that company) and said they're "on the home stretch" and that they should be able to get my speakers to me before a vacation I have planned.
More than a week passes, fast forward to today. They tell me that the speakers are ready to ship, but they need me to cancel my case with paypal first. That's the only chance I have to make sure I don't get screwed on delivery! I let him know that all they have to do us upload their shipping information into paypal, but I don't feel comfortable closing the case since they can't ever be reopened. Instead of him doing the normal thing and just upload the shipping information to paypal he issued a refund!
What's going on at that company and why do they still exist????
Absolutely, do not close your PayPal case. Report what they're asking you to do to PayPal. If they do what they should do and ship, then you can make a choice on keeping them or not. But do not give up your leverage. This is ridiculous. Good luck.
I had a less than great experience with Ascend Acoustics recently as well.
I’ve heard nothing but good things about them online and to be fair the speakers sounded great but when I ordered a pair of Sierra LXes they arrived with some very minor cosmetic issues.
When I shared the photos with the owner he sent me back some very sarcastic emails about how you can’t expect perfection and if I don’t like it I can return them so I did at my own expense. $300 + the original $50 shipping down the drain.
It wasn’t really even the cosmetic issues that made me send them back but more the dismissal of my concerns.
Yeah I was very surprised as well based on their reputation. Basically they considered the cosmetic issues to be acceptable and as such I had to pay for my own shipping and they didn't provide a label.
UPS charged me $297 and that was the cheapest option with full insurance due to the weight and distance. I don't think I can dispute the UPS charge since that price had nothing to do with Ascend.
I guess I could have argued with them more and try to get them to pay some of the return shipping but I was stressed out by the whole situation and didn't feel like fighting with them.
It's funny how that now people are seeing these clearly obvious and verifiable problems smaller companies are facing and in turn lowering service quality.
I'm glad I'm not getting massively downvoted and dogpiled by their boosters now. I think they've finally gone into hiding. After all this time I've been pointing out the bad behaviors of a lot of these guys.
Got massively downvoted for saying the Vera-Fi guy scammed charity money from cancer kids. Nothing but downvotes and me saying I'm an evil person for wishing ill on the owner. The guy who steals cancer kids money.
And now look. When a company like Tekton who sells $10,000 speakers won't even eat a few hundred to return and replace clearly damaged goods.
This is how reputations that took years to build are ruined in seconds. And any company that does this to their customers deserves to fall.
So if I start investigating Tekton and post how shady the owner is am I going to get massively downvoted and dogpiled again. Or are we going to start actually caring about how businesses should be run. You know ethically.
I mention ethical business practices and examples and get downvoted.
I kinda doubt that, as far as Tekton. There was a very public pay for play YT drama a couple-few years back where Eric Alexander literally had some sort of complete meltdown over a paid for review that ended up being actually honest. It was a huge back and forth where Alexander forced, by legal threats, New Record Day into pulling the videos, and the drama videos, and the canned and scripted apology video, etc.
Eric Alexander is a piece of shit psycho who can't take any criticism, and threatens lawsuits at anyone who publicly says his designs are cheap boxes filled with off the shelf pro audio drivers. He also pays for good reviews.
Exactly. Why I build my own. Using actually respectable HiFi components and traditional methods. Not flashy looking arrays that have no real idea what multiple drivers does to 3D polar response. Comb filtering all over the place. It's just literal chaos.
Smacks of Kabuki Speakers like Sansui of the 1970's with just as much woo woo.
Surprisingly, his arrays actually work, and the principal isn't that bad either. The problem is; he uses very middle of the road pro drivers. If he was using higher end stuff, and properly bracing the cabinets, it might at least alleviate some of the flaws. That, and not acting like a total nutcase ready to sue anyone at the drop of a hat.
Arrays will always have comb filtering same as typical MTM designs, MTM's narrow response in the vertical direction. This causes the main lobes to narrow significantly. And create a lot of finer comb filtering off axis. Tekton's design narrows both in the vertical and horizontal directions.
Tekton's design is a cheaper to implement coaxial design using an array instead of a solid single cone. This is not a good design physics wise. Traditional PA coaxials will simply sound better and have better dispersion without the comb filtering effect of multiple drivers.
This is unavoidable, it's physics. Sure it sounds great on axis. But the design simply beams too much and I've seen the response charts off axis the comb filtering is noticeable, making room treatment more necessary than a true point source sound design. Literally like line array speakers when using multiples in an array and is exacerbated by lower order crossovers.
This has been covered in both youtube videos and in a few independent reviews of the speaker.
Yeah that's why I was so surprised by the responses I got.
I think I'm done ordering heavy stuff like that online. If I can't see it in person before I buy it I don't think I want to risk it. I just never thought that I would have to pay to return something if it was defective the issue was that it seems what they consider defective and what I consider defective are not the same.
I didn't expect it to cost that much to ship back but it was 50 pounds all the way across the country so I guess it's not surprising especially at full UPS store retail prices. If I had realized it would cost that much I probably would have tried FedEx or USPS but the box was so awkward and heavy and I was already standing in the UPS store I just wanted it gone and I didn't feel like loading them back up and driving somewhere else just to unload them again. In retrospect I wish I had but at the time I was just so stressed out I just wanted them gone.
The whole experience really soured me on the whole prospect of buying new speakers so as of right now I'm still using my old ones. Getting new speakers is supposed to be fun but it just turned into almost a month of back and forth emails and stress before I finally just sent them back.
It sucks you had to go through all of that. I have been lucky for the most part being able to find good equipment that hasn't been abused second hand in the Orlando area. If I were buying new, I definitely see where you're coming from.
I have purchased marine speakers from creativeaudio.net and since it's a larger company you may have better luck if you want to give it another shot and not deal with boutique dealers.
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u/ShikeCyberpunk, Audiophile Heathen, and Supporter of Ambiophonics13h agoedited 13h ago
I had issues with Ascend prior to the economy going to shit. They're fantastic when you're giving them money and terrible with service after.
I had a tweeter that was damaged at one point on a CBM-170SE which was on me - fully owned it (friend that helped move likely pressed it in). One of the wraps on a different cabinet that had good components wasn't great. It got scuffed in an area during a move. The finish also started lifting well after the move due to crap adhesion at the seam. What I was going to do was take the two to make one good one, and order an additional one. I'd keep the damaged one as parts for the woofer or a spare surround if needed. First one I got the damaged tweeter out of no problems. The second, I lifted the tweeter up and one of the friction fit terminals apparently wasn't seated and came out attached to the crossover wire, causing the wire to break between the VC and where it was soldered to the terminal.
Now, given - Dave could have said since it's physical and he wasn't the one that serviced it so it wouldn't be covered. Totally fair to remain neutral and factual. Instead when I called and explained it to Dana (one of the employees there) she was rude saying she'd get Dave and put him on the phone. She started shouting to him after handing off the phone that I must have dropped the speaker or damaged it in some other way in the background.
He claimed the reason it broke is because I have no idea of what I'm doing and must not have ever worked on or repaired speakers before. I mentioned that I've worked on speakers from NHT, Focal, Advent, Polk, and others over the years without issue. He proceeded to say they were ALL made in China garbage and not comparable. I said Focal is made in France, and he doubled down and says he knows Focal and they're all made in China. I asked about the Be tweeter, and he said not to make him repeat himself. Flat out lying about competition really turned me off.
I said the tweeter had a QC issue with the terminal not being fully seated. He said SEAS has perfect QC - there's no such thing as a defective or improper assembled tweeter from them ever. He said after they crimp the quick disconnect on the terminal (with pliers) they pull on them to test (which sounds like a not great idea). He then said he'd replace the tweeter, but I ruined his upcoming weekend, and to never contact him about warranty service again - that warranty would be voided on all of my speakers including the new one being purchased.
At that point I told him to forget the new speaker order and refund it immediately, and that he could keep his tweeter too. He went ballistic about how I was wasting his time. I ended up reseating the terminal, it created enough overlap for the wire split to be resoldered. I then sold all of them off to someone with the issues noted including that one tweeter terminal wire was resoldered/repaired.
Uh, excuse me? You absolutely can. It's a brand new product. By fucking definition it should be PERFECT. Anything less is a defect and should be repaired or replaced at the company's expense, period. You're not buying factory-seconds. You're not buying used. What an absolutely shitty stance for a business to take. Torch that bridge and never look back.
That's unfortunate and strange. I would not close the case.
I was very tempted to buy a set of their speakers in 2019 and only narrowly did not because I read some very strange comments about them from people had bought their stuff.
Sounds shady. I don’t understand why people would want to pay for something and then have to wait months to get it. There are so many readily available options that are just as good if not better. Personally I find Tektonics speakers to be ugly enough that I would never even consider them.
Personally I find it odd that he designs his speakers with so many small drivers. Why are there no copycats? If it were that beneficial why is not the design trend now?
Also, out of curiosity what is the appeal of high efficiency? I’ve had a pair of Klipsch heresy and their sensitivity was cool in some ways.
Supposedly he patented the design, which isn't bad. It uses a series of caps that restrict the mid frequencies to the outer array and shift, based on higher frequency, to the center. That said, there are multiple reasons to go elsewhere based entirely on his business practices.
The dude asked me to cancel my PayPal case so that they could ship it. I said no, so he cancelled my order and said if I want it still I can call them (buy outside of PayPal platform).
if I want it still I can call them (buy outside of PayPal platform).
Don't do it. Obviously they want you to not use the Paypal platform because then they can simply steal your money and actually get away with it. It's a scam that's older than Paypal itself.
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u/AwwYeahVTECKickedIn 21h ago
Absolutely, do not close your PayPal case. Report what they're asking you to do to PayPal. If they do what they should do and ship, then you can make a choice on keeping them or not. But do not give up your leverage. This is ridiculous. Good luck.