R.I.P. Bose Ear-buds

My Bose in-ear headphones failed yesterday. They had given me three years of faithful service, but at $100 price point, I was SO disappointed that they didn’t last longer. My retired Mom bought them for me as a birthday gift and I don’t even want to let her know that they are already dead. I have replaced cheaper headphones in the past, but I really thought that the Bose name meant a higher quality product, not just great sound.

The ear buds did have a good quality sound, but I freely admit that perhaps I am not enough of a connoisseur to notice a huge difference between Bose and the aforementioned cheaper headphones. I found the ear buds to be comfortable, and I used them at work at a desk all day. I gently wound them and placed them into their little soft sided case at night so I believe I took good care of them.  I guess sometimes things just fail, as I did not have an “event” like dropping, crushing, slamming in a drawer, etc, that would explain the sudden loss of sound in one ear-bud.  One day it worked, the next day it did not.

I was planning to send them to Bose to have them fixed. On their website, I got the mistaken impression that they performed repairs on failed equipment.  Apparently this plan does not extend to headphones. Of course, if they fail during the one year warranty period Bose will  replace them, but everyone knows that products always fail AFTER the warranty period runs out. I was prepared to pay for them to be repaired - I just had a Levelor blind fixed and UPS’d back to me for $25 -so I was unprepared to hear that their solution to my problem was to sell me another pair of the ear buds that just failed (albeit at a discount).  For some reason, it felt like a slap in the face. After all, I am already feeling like my product was of poor quality and here they are trying to sell me the same thing.

I am sure many people have had experiences with headphones that fail - as I began to browse around on-line, I noted many people saying their Bose headphones didn’t even last a year ( let alone three) so perhaps I should be grateful for the time I did get.  I do think that  the $30+ dollars a year the Bose headphones cost to use is not an acceptable level of expense for me. Perhaps it is for others and it may be that I am not discerning enough to be able to detect the huge quality difference in the Bose sound that might warrant the cost. I am going back to the  “cheap seats” - I will not be purchasing anything from Bose again, because in my opinion they did not live up to their excellent reputation. In fact, when I mentioned to a friend that the left ear-bud had stopped working suddenly, she said “Oh doesn’t Bose fix or replace those?” ... I am going to have to tell her she was misinformed and spread the word.