Welcome to the saloon, prince! Glad to hear it's providing you some good info.

Wow and I was considering a purchase of the AV123 LS6 Speakers. Good information to know before making any purchase. Just seems wrong.

Certainly hard to recommend putting that much money (or even a tenth of that much money) into any of their products at this point. There are so many other good speakers on the market that aren't such a risk and that aren't associated with such wanton mistreatment of their customer base. If you really want some line source speakers, you might look at the used market, but even there you have to be exceptionally careful considering the frequency of manufacturing defects that made it out the door on the LS's over the last year or so. Sean Parque was selling a set of LS6's a couple weeks ago that he had built out himself (online classified here - it's a long story involving AV123 yanking him around for several years, including a six-month delay after sending an incomplete shipment last year that was only resolved because Sean took them to small claims court) that would be a safe choice.

I pre-paid for AV123 LS9 speakers 2 years ago and, after 9 months of waiting and no speakers in sight, canceled my order. It's been more than 18 months since that cancellation and I'm still without a refund. When I paid for the speakers, the owner (Mark) instructed payment to an account which turns out was his personal wholesale business and not associated with AV123. It wasn't until I canceled the order and Mark refused to provide a refund that I researched and realized the account was not associated with AV123. Neither Mark nor AV123 would refund my money for AV123 LS9 speakers. All communications (phone and email) with Mark requesting a refund were met with excuses or reasons for delay.

There are a plethora of speakers in the market, including ones from vendors with a history of top notch customer service. There would seem to be better choices, however, than dealing with AV123 given its refusal to refund customer payment (I am one of several with this issue), frequency of manufacturing defects on multiple product lines (detailed on other forums), and the owner's self-admittance to "underfunding" charity raffles.

Anyone interested in line source speakers might try the secondary market as Gonk suggests.

Rob

Sorry that you are still without a refund. Mark's assortment of criminal and unethical business practices have hurt a lot of people, which is another reason I'm not comfortable with the idea of doing business with the company. (For point of comparison, candyman's post would be deleted from the AV123 forum - and if he received any message about the deletion, it would be an instruction to communicate directly with Mark on these matters. It's a policy that they refuse to publicly admit but that they've been employing consistently for almost a year now.)

How does someone accept payment for a set of speakers, not deliver them, and then refuse a refund NOT wind up in the pokey? Seems like a pretty cut and dried case of fraud.

I'm just sayin...

In addition to the various unrefunded LS-9's, there are some unrefunded RSL-II betas (at $6,000 a pop) as well. In each case, it is clearly not legal for him to keep those funds. Unfortunately, those are probably civil cases rather than criminal - and they are so spread out (individuals all over the country, each out just enough to be on the margins of it being a small claims matter or a more significant case) that most folks haven't pursued a civil case against him. Any way you slice it, though, it stinks.

I am not sure how credit cards work in the U.S. I made an inquiry once to Visa in regards to the possibility of non delivery of goods after using a credit card. They explained that they (Visa) goes after the vendor rather than the customer.

In most cases, though, the charges were processed in 2009 or 2008 - once you get past around 60 days, most credit cards aren't able to help so much. For the folks (and there were many of them) who paid Mark directly through PayPal, it gets even harder. If they used a credit card, the card can only go after PayPal. PayPal is less likely to help, especially since Mark seems to have abandoned that account entirely. Basically, he stalled folks long enough that they have little recourse for recovering their money. One former employee (Sean Parque, the one selling some LS's that he built out himself) went to small claims court and won, but if you aren't local it's hard to justify travel expenses for what could be several court dates - it took Sean three hearings and one postponed hearing to get his parts.

It is these kind of scams that make people leery of dealing with I.D. companies. While I have dealt with them before and the transaction has been positive (so far) it is highly unlikely that I would deal with them again. Living in Canada, would make any recovery even more difficult if something were to go wrong.

My only question would be "why?" People can build legitimate I.D. companies, sell a good product(s) and make a decent living. Everyone wins.