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- About TWM53
About TWM53
since
2 weeks ago
Thursday
TWM53
Audible Advocate
10
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Thursday
I saw the instructions and had a feeling that bit with the end clip might be a challenge. But it looks great. I’m an engineer and the same way - if there’s any possible way to fix something, I go for it, especially expensive items that are basically in good working condition.
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Thursday
@toddkr wrote: Thank you for taking the time to write such an in-depth and very informative answer! I went ahead and did my earpads like you did, and ended up putting a zip-over headband which actually doesn't look too shabby and is quite comfortable. I feel you re: peripheral issues. -Take care Thanks for posting - That does look good - looks like the version where you cut off the old pad then zip on the new pad with the new clips. If our fabric starts to wear through, I'll get those for a better fix. This is my pad after cleaning with alcohol - took a pretty good wetting with the alcohol and then several wipes to where a cotton pad looked clean - so it is far more tedious than the replacement. The bottom is the old earpad - head pad looked just as bad - it looks flakey but is really gooey - the black sort of rubs off on your fingers or anything it touches. I figured out the alcohol when I was trying to clean my fingers and soap and water did no good. Anyway, at least we managed to resurrect our expensive headsets for reasonable cost and reasonable effort. But in the overall scheme of things - these are repairs none of us should have to deal with in the first place if Bose had done a better job of selecting materials. And as for these mod's constantly telling us to contact customer support, well that is just a waste of time and effort. Hopefully our posts will help others like us. Fabric pad after cleaning black goo clean head pad, new earpads original earpad - sticky black mess
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Wednesday
Forget customer service - try tech support. They told me headband pads require a repalcement in house - $135 or $250 depending on model. Sounds like you send them yours and they either do the replacement or send you a replacement headset - not exactly sure because I told them I cant afford that much more for something that already cost me $300. Actually $600 since my wife's QC2 are the same - our headband pads turned a gooey, sticky black tar that rubs off and makes a huge mess. Earpads the same. I do see 3rd party zip over covers for the head pad. but before I bought one, I recall alcohol worked on cleaning the same goo from a volume knob on another Bose product. So I tried soaking a cotton pad, wiped it over the black padding and sure enough it started to dissolve off - its a messy process but I got both head pads cleaned off and no more goo. The underlying fabric still feels soft and the inside foam seems to be unaffected. I just let them dry out over night and they seems fine. If you don't want to bother, then the zip over pads seem to be the most cost effective alternative. For the earpads, I just bought some on ebay for $6 a set delivered - obviously a chinese supplier but at least they got a US shipping location in CA. Frankly they are working just as well as the orignials. I'm hard pressed to find any significant difference. I'd not be surprised of there is a giant earpad mfg plant in china making orginals for Bose, Beats, Sony, Shure, etc, etc and if any don't look exactly right, they go into the sell on ebay bin. I'm pretty disappointed in the Bose quality - sound is great, sound canceling works great, but is seems peripheral aspects just do not stand up to the test of time. They call the padding "protein leather" that is a marketing term for plastic coated fabric that has a sort of leather look and feel. Real leather would actually hold up. I made leather treatment chemicals, they work and they last a long time and its rare to find premature failures - like car seats, steering wheel covers, etc - these can last for 20 yrs or more with only moderate care. I still have a pair of leather driving gloves that are about 40 yrs old. Anyway, if you see protein leather, know it is rerally just a plastic coating on a fabric base material, often a polyurethane foam coating - its used to make some of the soft touch coatings on plastic knobs and handles as well.
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Wednesday
My son's have same problems as I mention in other replies - the standard Bose position is too bad if out of warranty! They only give a 1 yr warranty on these. My son's are closer to 2 yrs old, even so to fail this much in such a short period for a company that touts their quality is unacceptable. Frankly, I found customer support to be a total waste of time and just made me more upset. I found an email address for US tech support that I used a while back for another failure issue: technical_Support_us at bose.com (replace at with @). I explained the issue with the earphones, the age and sent them the serial number and a couple of photos of the parts coming apart. They agreed to replace them at no cost - they issed a reference number and just ask for the originals to be sent back and then they will send out a new pair. So my suggestion is to bypass customer service and go to tech support - at least in the US.
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a week ago
@Tony_G wrote: Hi TWM53, Thanks for posting. I am sorry to hear about the experience you have had. We stand behind our products and want you to know that we are here to help. For the issues that you are describing, I would recommend contacting your local support team for help. Here is a link you can use. Click on your region, scroll down until you see "Contact Us." Regards, Tony G - Community Support Total waste of my time on chat with a support rep. All they do is tow the company matra - 1 year warranty - sorry - buy new pads. for the headband pad there was nothing to offer - he suggested amazon. Seems to me that Bose is no longer a company I want to do business with - buy our replacement pads at extra high prices. Considering they use the same materials, I'd rather just get a cheap pair of pads on ebay since they all use the very same materials. Maybe the faom is a bit softer or a bit thinner but for the average user I am sure will be more than sufficient and if the y fail after a long period of non-use, then no big deal. The bigger issue is that the head band pad is not so easiliy replaced - they make zipper over things I might try. But overall, being reduced to half assed self repairs on a '4300 very lightly used pair of headphones is a poor commentary on the Bose quality. Certainly lost my family as a customer.
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2 weeks ago
Thx - better link! Will pass on to my son - he is traveling right now but when he gets back, maybe he can get in touch and work out a repair or replacement. Meanwhile, I am completely and utterly disappointed in Bose - in general over the past 10 years or so, I have mostly been disappointed in Bose's selection of materials - the sound quaility is never an issue but materials of contruction seems to be selected poorly or, worse, intentionally, to create a future income stream for repairs or replacement parts. Our failures have all been in the peripheral parts - the coating on my companion PC speakers volume control puck got sticky with black goo that would come off on your fingers. My wife's QC2 earpads and headband pad turned a similar gooey mess rendering them unuseable - new ear pads are easy to find and 3rd party pads are a reasonable cost, but its an aggravation that no one should have to put up with from a company such as Bose that touts superior quality and charges superior prices. My QC15 pads are starting to turn sticky now too. I managed to clean the gooey coating off the QC2 headband with alcohol but it is a royal mess to deal with. I expect my Bose gear to last a lifetime with normal wear and tear - I would be less aggravated if they actually showed signs of wear, but if not for the goo, they look brand new - in both cases, the wear and tear has been on the order of 1-6 uses per year during flights for roughly the past 5-6 years, before that maybe a somewhat higher usage, but not more than 1 trip per month - far from routine or heavy usage and when not used, they are stored in their cases with batteries removed. To experience failures of materials like this is unacceptible. Now to see my sons earphones fail and then read numerous similar incidents, it has become clear that Bose is not the quality company that everyone has come to expect. A company that values their reputation and their customers would do a better job to investiage and test materials before deploying them and when failures are obviously widespread, they should do a better job to rectify the situation via recall or by reaching out to customers who write or call to notify Bose of their troubles with their products. Anyway, rant over... suffice to say Bose has a long way to restore this family's faith in the brand.
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2 weeks ago
Frankly, the link above only shows me a page to select the product, then takes me to place to download manuals or firmware updates or to buy accessories - there are links to faqs and a link back to this community. I’m not seeing any contact info. He lives in a rural area of Northern California.
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2 weeks ago
my son's have same problem - it's over a year, will Bose still honor a warranty repair considering this seems like a wide-spread issue in general not just a handful of oddball failures?
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2 weeks ago
Not sure of you are still looking, but there are quite a selection of bluetooth mini receivers you connect to the 3.5mm headphone jack, turn it on to it's pairing mode - often you'll hear a tone at this time, then pair with your iphone or any other bluetooth player. I had one that worked perfectly fine - under $20 on amazon. Mine is discontuned now but I see some by Taotronics and Mpow get excellent reviews - I used mine with some old Bose in ear earphones, some etymotics and even the basic apple earbuds and it worked fine - play time was about 10 hrs. The newer models are better - have better range and better specs. I plan to get an updated one once I get new earpads for my QC15 and plan to just wrap the cord around the headband then tie wrap the bluetooth receiver to the outside facing surface of the headband. I've seen some third party types for the QC35 that plug into the cord socket but they seem pricey and not sure they are backward compatible for my headset. Plus I like the portability of these mini receivers so I can use them with a variety of earphones. Most do not have a clip but I took a clip off an old ID badge and glued it onto the backside, worked out fine.
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2 weeks ago
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.
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