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Gross Negligence in Materials
Owning both QC2 nd QC15 it is extremely disturbing to find the padding materials turning into a sticky gooey mess. Granted these are older models, but when spending $300 for headphones you expect quailty in durability of the materials as well as the sound quality. I know I have not used my QC15 very often - was a gift from my wife when I was traveling frequently for work, due to medical issues I stopped full time work 10 years ago and only travel once or twice per yr now. My wife got herself the QC2 originally for her travel and really enjoyed the sound isolation and active canceling to make the long flights more tolerable. She has not traveled in recent years and we both had them packed away during some relocations over the past 5-6 years. I just unpacked them to start using them around the house but found the messy goo on all the padding. This is not the first material failure from Bose. I got a set of Companion PC speakers that have a control puck, the top ring had a coating of some sort on the plastic which turned to the same black sticky goo after some time - this item is used nearly daily and it was a royal pain to touch and get the black goo stuck to my fingers. Thankfully it comes off with standard household isopropyl alcohol. After some major complaining on my part, Bose agreed to send me a new puck, so far it is not turning sticky. By offering me the free replacement, I take it as a bit of a silent acknowledgement that they know the material used was doomed to fail. But we also have different failures, my son has had the bluetooth in-ear sport earphones for about a year or so and the body of one earphone is coming apart and the control pod button panel is separating from the body. Reading reviews on other sites, it seems these are not rare events - failures are for more common that one would expect from a company such as Bose that touts their uncompromising quailty. What I am seeing is failure to test materials before deploying them - basically they take some material designed to save costs and make us, their customer base, the beta testers. When the materials fail, we are left holding the bag because they do not offer a lifetime warraty like some high quality brands - even some inexpensive brands have lifetime warraties. I just got a full credit for the original purchase price for a discontinued FosPower mini bluetooth receiver that failed. Customer care for Bose has become more of a cash cow for replacement parts - sure, they will gladly sell you new earpads for 2x the cost of equivalent 3rd party parts. BTW - check amazon, there are some replacement pads at under $20 with thousands of reviews and high ratings. I doubt I'll ever buy another Bose product. I was contemplating a pair of the sport earphones for use at the gym but not now that I've seen my son's falling apart. Anyway, it will interesting to see if if this is even posted or if Bose replies with an offer to replace our failed pads. Sometime I wish I were a lawyer rather than an engineer so I could organize some class action suits against these companies that tout their quality and then push out what are essentially defective goods.
