PSA: Be Careful Dealing With Uptone Audio

[mikey8811]

Just a cautionary note for anyone wishing to purchase anything from Uptone Audio.

Over the past 3 or so years I have owned an ISO Regen, two LPS 1's and two LPS 1.2's. When they work they are OK. However, when they do not, you cannot really count on any meaningful support from Uptone Audio - under warranty or not - and even more so if you are not in the US. One of my LPS 1's failed during the warranty period after less than a year of use. It would not output anything. I contacted Alex Crespi of Uptone who arranged for a replacement. I shipped the faulty LPS 1 back (costly). I received a replacement in about a month. The replacement I received had dings on the case that were not there in the first place. I just chalked it up to shipping issues. Two months later, the replaced unit failed again. It would not light up. It had more than a year left under warranty. I contacted Uptone again who requested I ship it back again for replacement. However, they discouraged it and proposed a credit of US$185 towards the purchase of a new LPS 1.2 in lieu of the warranty on the unit which faltered so quickly after it was replaced. Upon further questioning and correspondence with Uptone, it came to light that they had not repaired the unit I had sent in for warranty replacement with new parts. Instead they had replaced the board with parts culled from used and returned units previously sent in for trade in or repair purposes. In short, the warranty is tantamount to having your unit replaced with a used one which may or may not have been faulty in the first place, which they claim to have "tested". It is no surprise that the unit faltered so quickly after their supposed warranty replacement then. As such, their so-called warranty replacement is pretty much flawed. Alex got defensive and quoted some self-derived metric about the failure rates of their products being extremely low and put the cause of successive failure in my units down to my bad luck. He also said that I had electrically damaged the unit which is baffling since I had used it only with their supplied OEM Meanwell switching power supply which still works fine up till today. To date, in the last 20 or so years of being in the hi fi hobby, these Uptone products are the only ones to have malfunctioned so badly.

Wishing to cut my losses and to avoid having to ship the faulty unit back to the US at costly charges when the "warranty" replacement would most likely fail again shortly, I paid the remainder towards a brand new LPS 1.2. Alex made it clear that he would not assist with repair of the faulty LPS 1 and I disposed of it.

I received a shipment of the LPS 1.2. However, when I unpacked it, the unit had a clear rattling noise when removed from the box. Upon closer inspection, there was a slight scratch on the front chassis plate and the screws were badly stripped. It was pretty clear that Alex had shipped me a used unit or one that had escaped their seemingly lax quality control. I contacted Uptone immediately and requested that they make arrangements for their carrier to collect the unit from me for return to them and replacement of a brand new unit to me. Alex admitted to their negligence citing size slippages and disparities in their OEM case specifications which caused the misfit and rattling noise and worn out Torx screwdrivers stripping the screws. He was certainly aware of the issues affecting the unit I was shipped. However, he refused to do anything about it. He suggested that he would send me some screws and that I open up the unit myself and mount some electrical tape inside the case to stop the rattling noise. Again, he seemed to be fully aware of the issue and how to fix it. Unfortunately, I am not technically inclined nor do I own a Torx screwdriver. To render those fixes I would have to pay a technician to do so. This is rich considering that I had paid for a new and finished product and was shipped a used and/or damaged one. I wrote back to insist on a replacement unit being sent to me and that Uptone arrange to cover the return shipping costs to themselves. Again, Alex refused steadfastly and got hostile, saying that I was taking advantage of them. How exactly am I taking advantage? I paid full price for a new and finished product - that is all I expect, no more and no less. Alex also stated that he did not wish to lose any money on this sale even though Uptone offers the best customer service possible. His final offer was that I return the LPS 1.2 to them at my own cost and that he would refund me the US$250 I had paid meaning I would have to write off the US$185 credit value on the disposed LPS 1 which he is contractually obliged to repair but had refused to assist me with.

In this whole experience with Uptone, Alex strikes me as someone who is simply full of excuses. He pays lip service to providing good customer service but it is really just marketing talk. When it comes to the crunch, he fails to deliver but instead makes excuses and puts the blame on anyone but Uptone and himself. Outrageously, he even believes in his own self manufactured press. I recall earlier correspondence with him on why the Uptone ISO Regen would disconnect from my DAC for no reason, requiring that I unplug and replug the DC cable from the Uptone LPS 1.2 for it to work again. Not knowing that I was powering it with a LPS 1.2, he began by questioning the power supply I used. When told it was a LPS 1.2, he blamed the issue on the Silanna chip Uptone used in the ISO Regen - after all, it was an Uptone supply and he could not blame that anymore. I mean you manufactured this product, sourced and supposedly tested the parts and then sold it to the customer as a finished product for good money. The sheer lack of responsibility, ethics and professionalism!

As an example of Alex being purely a marketing act, you can see on the Computer Audiophile forum how he derides Sonore's optical module and Optical Rendu, since Uptone now makes a competing product. Recall, Uptone came into existence making derivative products such as USB fixers and power supplies to be used with Sonore's series of streamers - the hypocrisy of it all.

I appreciate that others may have had a good experience dealing with Uptone Audio but unfortunately, that hasn't been the case with me. Uptone strikes me as a bucket shop. There are lots of cottage industries and artisanal products in hi fi and that is fine and good, so long as they are run with honesty, integrity and professionalism and not at the expense of unsuspecting customers. Pete of Triode Wire Labs is a great example of a fine one man show company who provides great customer service. Uptone is definitely NOT - YMMV!

[mikey8811]

As usual - all marketing hyperbole and talk.

 

While the Uptone items I have were not directly purchased from Uptone, Uptone offers a transferable warranty which you are contractually obliged to honour. So what you are touting as exemplary customer service by attending to a failed unit is simply fulfilling a contractual obligation and no more.

 

While I am unaware of the provenance of the original LPS 1 I sent for repair, it was sold to me with the OEM Meanwell power supply that Uptone provides and has always been used as such. Any overdriving would have arisen from a power supply specified by yourselves.

 

Warranty replacement or repair entail using new parts and NOT used parts culled from trade ins or repairs. Used parts are exactly that - used and as such have limited life span. It is no surprise that your so called warranty replacements fail so quickly. This is not only my experience but those of many others:

 

I've owned both the lps1 and lps1.2 and though neither have failed on me, your story is not uncommon. Have many friends whose units failed. They sent it back for a new one, and the new one failed as well few months later."

"Same problem with the silanna chip for Regen.
Lps1 send back - new one failed within 2mths
Lps1-2 back in the US still waiting for parts.

Failure rate is quite high.
Have a few frd who encountered problems with mostly lps1 already"

http://www.xtremeplace.com/yabbse/index.php?topic=292759.0

 

With regards to the latest LPS 1.2 purchased directly from Uptone, I paid for a new and finished product. What I received was clearly not that. By your own admission, its faults escaped Uptone's own lax quality controls and yet for all your exemplary customer service, you were not responsible enough to make it right and ship a replacement, at no additional cost to me.

 

Thanks for including a transcript of the email correspondence.

 

Is there a reason you did not also post the photos and videos documenting the faults in the LPS 1.2 you shipped?

 

 

Users can now see for themselves and render their own judgements.

 

May we all get what we truly deserve...

 

 

[mikey8811]

4 hours ago, Beefalo said:

This is easy. Mikey8811 is a friend of Larry Ho and took offense to Alex engaging and upsetting Jarek (Stuck_Limo) on LH Labs fraud. Nothing to see here.

 

I do not know nor have I ever heard of Larry Ho

[mikey8811]

6 hours ago, Superdad said:

 

Of course: https://consumer.findlaw.com/consumer-transactions/what-is-the-warranty-of-merchantability.html

 

We shipped him a brand new, perfectly functioning product. I found one of the photos he sent me of the screws he was not happy with:

 

Now talk to me about "merchantability." 

 

 

 

Here are the photos you did not include which clearly show the damage.

 

 

That is more than a "little bit of silver" showing - they are pretty stripped.

I do not own a hex/Allen key nor a Torx bit - wrong sized or otherwise and have not attempted to open the unit. I am guessing the previous owner of the used unit you sent me must have. Alternatively, Uptone must have used these implements when assembling the unit thereby causing and knowing what caused the damage.

This is a link to the video documenting the rattling noise:

 

There is no need to shake the unit to hear the noise. It was immediately apparent as I lifted the unit out of the box when I unpacked it.

You yourself admit to being aware of such damage to units which escape your poor quality control process.
Specifically:

" Perhaps the Torx T10 screwdriver tip my assistant was using to assemble was a bit worn. After many uses we throw away the bits if they start to mare the black of the Torx-star screw."

and

" Any rattle you hear is only from the entire circuit board not being held firm in the slots by pressure from the front/back plates. The PCB has close +/- tolerance for length, and sometimes a few are just 0.1mm short—enough to keep the end plates from holding it steady. We have a trick to fix that (a bit of electrical tape along the inside of the front plate is enough thickness), but perhaps we missed your unit or the temperature is different in your environment"

There is a recurring thread where you tellingly seem to know exactly what has caused the damage. Yet are not decent enough to take responsibility for your own negligence but rather ask me to open up the unit myself and mount electrical tape. As mentioned, I am not technically inclined nor do I own the implements necessary to fix issues with the used and/ or damaged unit you sent. I would have to pay a technician to so so which is ludicrous as I paid for a new and finished product which was clearly not shipped as such.

There is only your word that there are no loose parts and your words have been proven to lack credibility.

Good customer service only happens when you perform it. Not when you just talk endlessly about how good it is.

[mikey8811]

Here is more of Alex's "transparency" posted on another board. At least the poster had the consideration to redact and block out personal details from the emails unlike others.

 

"Sooo, not to get into he said she said here but I had a very similar experience with uptone audio. I on the other hand purchased all new direct from Alex products. This is my experience without bogging down into great detail. 
1- several times my purchase was delayed even though product was paid. This happened on more than one occasion and occurred for two products I purchased. 2- I two had an iso regen fail and it was replaced after much bantering back and forth. So great but here’s an excerpt of correspondence;

Hi ——-
So let’s exchange the circuit board in your ISO REGEN for a new one (SQ is better, but we are not publicly discussing that since it is an in-line change; and one can tell version only by looking at the board).
Please mail just the IS REGEN (no PS or cables; and no special box—packing material/retail box is not returned) back to us at:
UpTone Audio LLC4647 Indian Peak RoadMariposa, California 95338USA
We will install a brand new board (so it will need some “break-in”) and ship back to you right away. Please include a note in the box.
Thanks and have a great weekend,—-——

I took issue with this statement “the sound quality is better but we are not publicly discussing it” this is where I started to get turned off from uptone products as it was disclosed to me that the early chips had issues and the third version was finally up to snuff. I’m not a fan of being a test bed for equipment from a company and it seams this is what was happening. 
2: I also had an lps1.2 fail and again it was replaced and much like the op the replacement came back dinged up and looking used (in Alex’s defence he sent new end plates) again some correspondence;

Hi ——-
Thanks for your thoughtful feedback. Yes, we can certainly improve in some areas.  
The LPS-1.2 issue was tough because:a) It took us a while to figure out why it was happening;b) It only occurred on about 5% of the units in the field, so we did not feel the need to alarm people (audiophiles are a skidish bunch and the LPS-1.2 is really our “cash cow”).
Even a failing LPS-1.2 could never harm an external device. Simply not possible with the safety design measures that are part of the product. So the possibility you raise was never a possibility—another reason we did not feel compelled to issue a formal alert. Such was considered carefully.
I’ll pick out and mail a nice pair of end panels for you. I assume that you have a Torx T10 size driver bit handy to remove the screws?
All the best,
———

again there was a issue with the product and failure rate. At the end of the day I sold all my uptone gear including a js2 and moved on. Alex seams like a really nice guy but parts of his business model seam a bit off. Just putting it out there that the op may seam vengeful but there is some merit in his dealings.

 

[mikey8811]