Altec Lansing VS4121

First of all, a happy, productive and surprising new year to everybody, readers and non readers alike. It’s been quite a long time that I’ve written anything about technology on my blog. Today, the laughable reply from Altec Lansing made me write this post.

I own an Altec Lansing VS4121 2.1 speaker set for quite some time now. A fine performer for the price, it runs surprisingly well with uncompromising performances in every ranges. The set did not fail to respond for a single time in my first year of usage, perfectly conveying the signal from sound card. But last year, all of a sudden in a sunny afternoon of mid October, the right speaker which houses the power button and control knobs stopped responding. While the left channel sound was not obstructed in any way, right channel was just missing. Frankly speaking, no one likes to hear the half of their music blasting from a single direction. Following the standard procedure, I filed a complaint with Altec Lansing on 25th October, 2011. Had to fill out the fancy forms with necessary information and a computer generated confirmation mail assured that my complaint was just on track. Well, I was wrong about the assurance, it was not one.

Altec Lansing didn’t even bother to check my complaint in the meantime while more than two months are passed. Perhaps that’s how their policy works but a semi aural output is certainly not of my taste. I searched a lot about possible resolutions on the issue, tried a number of things that seemed to work at other conditions but no avail. Quite interestingly, the issue automatically got resolved on November end without any of my interventions. I just switched the speaker set on and both of them were responding without a hitch, just like the old times. Undoubtedly I was happy and didn’t bother to ask Altec Lansing back about my query. Happy ending, right? Wrong. Today, Altec Lansing contacted me on the same issue and in their own words,

We are working dilligently to clean-up what appears to be all unresolved inquiries. Yours is very outdated and we are assuming it has been resolved to your satisfaction.

So according to their customer service, a prospective problem with their devices is considered to be capable of being automagically solved if a sufficient amount of time is passed. That is one of the lamest conclusion from one of the most famous audio equipment makers in the world.