Beware - Car Audio Dealers - Amazon Seller

[tat2bass 10+ year member]

you are 100 percent correct all you have to do is look at our craigslist ads and you can see the influence of our **** shops

I went into a shop the other day to audition a set of Alpine SPX17PRO's which they had for $1000 but instead tried talking me into a set of bottom line German maestros that they wanted $650 for. Which I know can be bought from authorized dealers for only about $200. A lot of the brick and mortar stores are only screwing themselves by not listening to what a customer says and trying to peddle a product with the highest profit margin

 

---------- Post added at 12:39 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:39 AM ----------

 

I had no intention of paying 1k for the alpines either. I know they can be had for only about $400

 

[d77543020 10+ year member]

I went into a shop the other day to audition a set of Alpine SPX17PRO's which they had for $1000 but instead tried talking me into a set of bottom line German maestros that they wanted $650 for. Which I know can be bought from authorized dealers for only about $200. A lot of the brick and mortar stores are only screwing themselves by not listening to what a customer says and trying to peddle a product with the highest profit margin 

---------- Post added at 12:39 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:39 AM ----------

 

I had no intention of paying 1k for the alpines either. I know they can be had for only about $400

thats the problem shops have right there most of there equipment can be found for more then half off in some cases and when most of us are watching every dime its real hard for them to compeat

 

[Dextar]

I was thinking about buying some audio stuff from Amazon, thanks for the heads up!

 

[Ahmed Johnson]

What's the name of the dealer?

I bought the speakers from this shady company thinking they were a legit, and authorized dealer. Oh how wrong I was, I was wondering why the performance was ******* so much the first few weeks and finally found the weak link; fake speakers. My doors are sealed and sound deadened with two layers of MurderMat, I'm using eKs RCA's from KnuKonceptz and an Alpine PDX-F4 Amplifier tuned with a SMD DD-1. Everything else works perfectly in my system except for these speakers. I swapped speakers for some random Polks I had laying around and they destroyed these Alpines, it wasn't even a competition. I took out my speakers and started doing some initial checks of the product and found quite a few things. While everything looks as it should when powered off (minus the missing serial numbers, oh did I forget to mention that?). When I power them on I hear sound come out but whats the woofer do? Not even flex a millimeter. I turned my HU up to max unclipped volume and are the woofer moving at all now? Nope. Just the same little tiny vibrating, no excursion at all. I looked at some Youtube videos to see if that is just how these speakers are and they are most certainly supposed to be excurding, even on low volumes. I'm contacting my credit card company soon to file a chargeback, contacting Amazon to inform them of fake merchandise and contacting Alpine to inform them someone is peddling fake Alpine gear. I tried contacting the company to resolve this and the manager, William, pretty much told me "You're wrong, we don't sell fake stuff, only brand new A stock from an Alpine distributer" I proceeded to ask him just to tell me the name of where he gets his speakers and he simply told me "That's a trade secret". Seems legit. He then proceeded to tell me to send back the unit and he'll get everything exchanged. I'm extremely skeptical about sending it back(He's making me pay shipping to send back his defective garbage?) because I feel like it's going to end up "lost" or "You sent back a different unit". Some typical run around crap. I gave him an ultimatum and that was to send me a legit set, and then I'll send back his defective fake pieces of crap or I pursue this legally. I've also seen the horror stories on his reviews of refunds taking 3+ weeks to process.
EDIT: Will upload pictures of speakers in about an hour when I take these out for good.

 

[Wingman0121 10+ year member]

First of all, no, Alpine do not sell counterfeit products and if they are counterfeit then it is really easy to tell the difference. Where are the pictures that you said you're going to post? You never mentioned the model of the Alpine sub, most of them have dual coils and if you wire one of them backwards (or if it's labeled wrong from the factory) then the sub will barely move at all even at full tilt.

I've dealt with idiot buyers online before, ones who want the cheapest price, doesn't know what they're doing, break something, and accuse the seller of selling bunk equipment. OP I hope you're not one of them, because I spite those scumbags.

 

[Knowmadic 10+ year member]

What's the name of the dealer?

Car Audio Dealers

First of all, no, Alpine do not sell counterfeit products and if they are counterfeit then it is really easy to tell the difference. Where are the pictures that you said you're going to post? You never mentioned the model of the Alpine sub, most of them have dual coils and if you wire one of them backwards (or if it's labeled wrong from the factory) then the sub will barely move at all even at full tilt.

I've dealt with idiot buyers online before, ones who want the cheapest price, doesn't know what they're doing, break something, and accuse the seller of selling bunk equipment. OP I hope you're not one of them, because I spite those scumbags.

In all honesty, I forgot about this thread, my bad for not posting pictures. I'll see if I still had them saved and then upload when I get home. I'm 100% sure they were either counterfeits or defective because I dropped in the same exAct speakers that a friend owned (Alpine SPR-60C's) and they worked perfectly, nothing changed except the speakers. So you tell me what's happening there.. Also it wasn't a subwoofer, it was a set of component speakers. Sorry for the mixup

Conclusion - I got refunded and returned them to the seller but the seller still has not responded back to me when I asked what the issue was, be it defective or something else. I have not bought anything car audio related off eBay/Amazon since.

 

[bigaudiofanatic 10+ year member]

Don't feel sorry for you, kinda glad this happens to people that are only looking for the cheapest price.

I always try finding my customer the cheapest price on a product to save them money. Never had a problem with false products on amazon or other sites I use. Sorry to hear this OP.

 

[supereikenator 10+ year member]

I don't understand, everyone on this forum preaches against shops, mainstream brands, and paying more than you have to, and now some guy is getting trashed for trying to get the best deals he can? You guys are d*cks. We don't all have the cash to blow our money on the first option we see, Amazon is typically a legit place too, they sell Sundown for all you nuthuggers, as well as plenty of other good legit products. But I guess we should all buy our stuff solely from the vendors on here strictly because they sh*t talk their competition. If there is one thing I know, it's to never trust a salesman, so the fact sellers are trashing sellers means nothing to me.

 

[Wingman0121 10+ year member]

I don't understand, everyone on this forum preaches against shops, mainstream brands, and paying more than you have to, and now some guy is getting trashed for trying to get the best deals he can?

That's because a lot of people on this forum doesn't know what they're talking about and when things go wrong they just disappear or won't respond. I bet some of you are still swimming in your dad's sack when I bought my first subwoofer.

Also people who talk trash about ALL the local shops are just broke mofos with no money, that or they're too young to understand how a business works. Back then people learned to save money to buy quality equipment, now it's "race to zero" and see who has the cheapest equipment that works.

 

[Dextar]

next time time buy from a legitimate audio dealer. ebay, amazon, and like sites are the main reasons most small car audio shops are gone. and that is your end result.. counterfeit products..

I have a family member that owns an audio shop, eBay/Amazon are putting them out of business because of the outrageous pricing they have on products. Cost is sometimes as low as 1/4th what they charge and sell products at. Alpine SPR-60C is 299.99 at Crutchfield but it's 159.68 on Amazon, that is HALF OFF. Judging someone because they are being frugal, if the shops want the money then lower the prices.

My original build plans were to buy the 60c set from Amazon, I looked around and did some reading and found BETTER components for the same price point from a legitimate seller (ID CTX-6.5cs from Sonic Electronics) but had I not I would have went with the best price available which would have been Amazon (and they are actually 159.95 on SE too but I didn't know about them until recently).

 

[IonRL205 10+ year member]

I don't understand, everyone on this forum preaches against shops, mainstream brands, and paying more than you have to, and now some guy is getting trashed for trying to get the best deals he can? You guys are d*cks. We don't all have the cash to blow our money on the first option we see, Amazon is typically a legit place too, they sell Sundown for all you nuthuggers, as well as plenty of other good legit products. But I guess we should all buy our stuff solely from the vendors on here strictly because they sh*t talk their competition. If there is one thing I know, it's to never trust a salesman, so the fact sellers are trashing sellers means nothing to me.

It's because a lot of shops you see don't really know much of anything, and they just try to push a sale onto by making up complete BS to the unexpected. A local shop here told me four 12s in a probox on 2000 watts would hit 160s. You really think I'm going to buy from a shop that tells me a load of crap like that? And most of the time local shops only sell mainstream stuff at 2-3 times the price.

Car audio in itself is not a cheap hobby; if you go cheap you'll more than likely get cheap results. That doesn't mean you have to pay out the *** from local shops for gear, but trying to go cheap as possible is not a good idea either. You gotta pay to play in this hobby, and if you can't afford something, then start saving; or you could buy cheap but don't be mad if you get screwed over. The amps I run are cheap as hell, and I know that they could quite easily fail on me, but I took that risk when I bought them so there is nobody to blame but myself if they take a dump.

A local shop sells a 12" l7 for $300 to $400, not worth the price. You can buy an SA 12 for $195 online, however say you think that price is too much and try and find cheaper. You come across a dealer selling it for say $120, and you buy it and then you end up getting screwed over. If you posted a thread here saying that you got screwed by a dealer for trying to buy that SA 12 for much cheaper, you're going to get flamed.

You go cheap, you run the risk of getting cheap results.

 

[trumpet 5,000+ posts]

Once you buy from a shop or vendor that gives you a personalized experience, including phone/face-to-face time for as long as you need to feel comfortable, never talking down to you, never trying to pressure you to spend more money just to make more profits, you would change your tune. Not all people selling car audio are doing it to rape your wallets. However, I can promise you the steepest discounters are not doing a thing to make sure your future children will be able to enjoy this hobby and luxury the way you can today. This has to come from changes at the top, the manufacturers, from the middle with the distributors, and from the streets at the shop level.

 

[naughtyca 10+ year member]

I bought the speakers from this shady company thinking they were a legit, and authorized dealer. Oh how wrong I was, I was wondering why the performance was ******* so much the first few weeks and finally found the weak link; fake speakers. My doors are sealed and sound deadened with two layers of MurderMat, I'm using eKs RCA's from KnuKonceptz and an Alpine PDX-F4 Amplifier tuned with a SMD DD-1. Everything else works perfectly in my system except for these speakers. I swapped speakers for some random Polks I had laying around and they destroyed these Alpines, it wasn't even a competition. I took out my speakers and started doing some initial checks of the product and found quite a few things. While everything looks as it should when powered off (minus the missing serial numbers, oh did I forget to mention that?). When I power them on I hear sound come out but whats the woofer do? Not even flex a millimeter. I turned my HU up to max unclipped volume and are the woofer moving at all now? Nope. Just the same little tiny vibrating, no excursion at all. I looked at some Youtube videos to see if that is just how these speakers are and they are most certainly supposed to be excurding, even on low volumes. I'm contacting my credit card company soon to file a chargeback, contacting Amazon to inform them of fake merchandise and contacting Alpine to inform them someone is peddling fake Alpine gear. I tried contacting the company to resolve this and the manager, William, pretty much told me "You're wrong, we don't sell fake stuff, only brand new A stock from an Alpine distributer" I proceeded to ask him just to tell me the name of where he gets his speakers and he simply told me "That's a trade secret". Seems legit. He then proceeded to tell me to send back the unit and he'll get everything exchanged. I'm extremely skeptical about sending it back(He's making me pay shipping to send back his defective garbage?) because I feel like it's going to end up "lost" or "You sent back a different unit". Some typical run around crap. I gave him an ultimatum and that was to send me a legit set, and then I'll send back his defective fake pieces of crap or I pursue this legally. I've also seen the horror stories on his reviews of refunds taking 3+ weeks to process.
EDIT: Will upload pictures of speakers in about an hour when I take these out for good.

if you bought it from amazon, amazon will fix it. did you email amazon?

 

[05fronty 5,000+ posts]

I buy from the Mexican flea market here and have had good results

 

[jockhater2 10+ year member]

I bought the speakers from this shady company thinking they were a legit, and authorized dealer. Oh how wrong I was, I was wondering why the performance was ******* so much the first few weeks and finally found the weak link; fake speakers. My doors are sealed and sound deadened with two layers of MurderMat, I'm using eKs RCA's from KnuKonceptz and an Alpine PDX-F4 Amplifier tuned with a SMD DD-1. Everything else works perfectly in my system except for these speakers. I swapped speakers for some random Polks I had laying around and they destroyed these Alpines, it wasn't even a competition. I took out my speakers and started doing some initial checks of the product and found quite a few things. While everything looks as it should when powered off (minus the missing serial numbers, oh did I forget to mention that?). When I power them on I hear sound come out but whats the woofer do? Not even flex a millimeter. I turned my HU up to max unclipped volume and are the woofer moving at all now? Nope. Just the same little tiny vibrating, no excursion at all. I looked at some Youtube videos to see if that is just how these speakers are and they are most certainly supposed to be excurding, even on low volumes. I'm contacting my credit card company soon to file a chargeback, contacting Amazon to inform them of fake merchandise and contacting Alpine to inform them someone is peddling fake Alpine gear. I tried contacting the company to resolve this and the manager, William, pretty much told me "You're wrong, we don't sell fake stuff, only brand new A stock from an Alpine distributer" I proceeded to ask him just to tell me the name of where he gets his speakers and he simply told me "That's a trade secret". Seems legit. He then proceeded to tell me to send back the unit and he'll get everything exchanged. I'm extremely skeptical about sending it back(He's making me pay shipping to send back his defective garbage?) because I feel like it's going to end up "lost" or "You sent back a different unit". Some typical run around crap. I gave him an ultimatum and that was to send me a legit set, and then I'll send back his defective fake pieces of crap or I pursue this legally. I've also seen the horror stories on his reviews of refunds taking 3+ weeks to process.
EDIT: Will upload pictures of speakers in about an hour when I take these out for good.

I hate when "too good to be true's" are exactly that. Sorry to hear that. Good luck with this!