Outside of going to an audiophile store (which there are none nearby me), it seems many on this sub are often purchasing headphones with the intent to just try them. They’ll give em a good critical listen, and if they dont like em, ship em back. Amazon seems to be popular for this.
But I dont get how this works. I dont trust Amazon’s “free returns” policy as they’ve screwed me numerous times in the past (non headphone related). Furthermore, free returns are often not free at all, and I see tons of fine print about restocking fees, return fees, etc etc. So how are you guys managing to test so many headphones before buying them?
I know headphones.com has a 365d return policy, but at least they’re transparent and tell you upfront that there are restocking fees (as opposed to Amazon which is the exact opposite). So at least you can budget and act accordingly. But again, I ask - how are you guys doing this? Is Amazon really being that good to you guys and I just have the worst luck in the world? Help!
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You could always… you know… see if there’s a group of hifi afficionados in your state… meet and talk, discuss music, exchange headphones, chill, drink beer…
I prefer going to a store (even if it means I have to turn it into a day-trip) because I don’t like strangers too much.
Social media allows you to find like-minded people more easily than ever before. Go and find them. Discord, instagram, tik tok… whatever!
Return policies are fun, so long as you refuse to see the truth behind returned goods! Gen Z pretends to be all about “responsibility, sustainability, equality”, etc. But the wasteful consumerism has reached a level like never before in the past century! (Shein, Wish, Amazon, etc.)
Most people refuse to accept that big retailers such as Amazon will quickly scan your returned goods and VERY likely BIN them if they are not 100% mint anymore. Some might end up as “open box”, but the majority, unfortunately, ends up on landfills. If you want to blame Amazon for that, fine by me. But don’t pretend you’re free of guilt. You enable that behaviour with your own consumer decisions!
I buy from Amazon Warehouse where they sell returned or Open Box goods for a discount. That way if I send them back at least I dont destroy any extra value. If I keep them I save money and they dont get thrown in the trash. Not sure if that is available anywhere though.
I’m not sure what the full list is, but off hand I know Amazon’s USA, UK, Canada, and Germany sites all have a Warehouse Deals section with returned / open-box items.
Dedicated headphone retail store near me that allow demos.
Amazon stuff is only always free returns if it is shipped and sold by Amazon. Otherwise sellers have their own policies.
We have a small, but trusting community, and people just send gear each other to try. Also, we have a few splendid shops with showrooms in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnepr and Odesa, that give an opportunity for a comfortable testing
Credit card.
The only way I can try out headphones is at Microcenter where they have gaming snd consumer headphones for you to demo.
If I want headphones I will watch as many reviews as possible, get everyone’s opinion and see if there are any correlations or contradictions between them. Negative reviews are the best because they really tell you what you need to know about them. Resolve is my go to person as he is very knowledgeable and very critical about sound quality.
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Shows. In the US you guys have Canjam fairly often, but tons of other shows are available.
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At least for us in France, Amazon is a no brainer cuz you really don’t have to spend a dime when returning products. They aren’t picky at all, you don’t even need the original cardboard box.
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Used market is great. If you’re with it, you’re not losing much money in the process.
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FB groups are kinda seen as “for dads and old farts” but they are the ones with money, some people have access to a ton of gear. You can trade, get loaners, etc to see more stuff in your hands.
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For studio headphones, being a bass player in a city without that many bass players allowed me to try a lot of studio headphones just by going to jams and small sessions at small studios. Although I will say that 50% of what I found was either Beyerdynamic or the same model of Sennheiser and Sony !
Other than that, audiophile store.
where can i buy returned headphones? i assume they will be much cheaper than brand new units
They’re usually sold as “open-box” or “B-stock” at about 5-10% discount. Or worse, some unscrupulous retailers attempt to pass them off as brand new units at full retail price.
10% that’s kinda low… not enough discount for the risk of receiving a damaged unit
r/AVexchange
Been going there 6 or so years and have had very minimal issues. Just follow the best practices and you should be safe.
I found most people there are just as obsessed as myself and take really good care of their stuff. There’s occasional hiccups, but the system is based on trust/rep so users generally try to make things right to make everything work. Of course, there’s the occasional bad egg that tries to ruin it for everyone, but they’re quick to get called out.
In vietnam, we have to settle for
A. Special occasions when big stores are generous enough to let the customer demo without any commitments.
B. Join a “listening group” on facebook or whatever then trade / resell with other groups.
Frequently stores have many demo sets for headphones and iems to try out. They also provide players and I stream from Tidal or bring my own source.
get ready to receive a dozen comments about people who have no stores within at least 1’000 miles.
Buy and sell used
This.
This. All of my headphones are used. We are in a hobby where people generally take care of their stuff and phones cameras mean everyone can take high quality pictures. Always make sure to ask about the condition and then always pay with paypal goods and services. Typically headphones take a massive hit once they are no longer new in the ball park of 50-80% but after that as long as they are well maintained the value stays pretty flat for quite some time. So as long as you are patient and don’t over pay you pretty typically are only out the cost of shipping and the goods and services fee. Then I don’t just get a month but as long as you want to really get to know them.
Never understood that culture, for me it is dishonest to buy something just to use it for a very few and then returning it, it devaluates the value of the item and the reasons for doing it are dishonest in which the only reasons for returning a product are product mismatch (which applies mostly for clothes) or malfunction.
I totally share that mindset!
I guess, this is a generational and cultural thing, though.
Wasteful consumerism is something that was born in the United States (watch my comment disappear in downvotes) and chinese manufacturers quickly latched on to that to maximise profits. (Wish, Shein, etc.)
In Europe, free returns haven’t been a thing for most of my life. You ordered clothes, you better hope they’d fit, because sending them back was 10-20 bucks. That was fine, because driving to a store and standing in line in front of the changing rooms took time, too. (and time and gas is money!)
Then, certain brands came on to the market and offered free returns. People started to go crazy, because receiving parcels somehow releases endorphins (they reported about a woman ordering a 500kg europalette full of Zalando boxes!). These stores only wrote red numbers at first, because the cost of taking back opened boxes, folding clothes and wrapping them up again, was so high. But in the end, they all but completely eradicated all the “traditional” online stores that refused to implement the same “free returns” strategy. And they started making money. A saddening number of those clothes end up being incinerated, because it’s just too expensive to pack them up again for re-sale…
consumers? ignorant… don’t care… don’t know?
This sickening behaviour has spread across Europe like a plague in the last 10 years. Of all the things, I’ve ever ordered, I maybe returned 0.01% (unless it was a warranty case, of course), but that’s my upbringing, my culture… and my awareness for the ecological impact of returning goods that don’t stand a chance of being re-sold.
When I buy electronics, I want to test them, hands-on… I travel to a city where I can do so… I meet with people that own them, so I can try it for myself, etc.
Maybe this is the time where Millennials are “the boomers”… but the hypocrisy of Gen Z people pointing fingers at big companies for damaging the environment, polluting the oceans, etc. all the while enabling them through their consumerism… it annoys me like hell!
I was talking to a dealer about this… I wanted to try the Empire Ears Odin, but it was very likely that it either doesn’t fit me or I just don’t think it’s worth the money.
The first dealer said please, don’t buy it from me because an open box IEM loses a ton of value.
The second dealer said here, go ahead because it’s always nice to have one in stock if you return it, here is a huge discount on top as well.
So, I guess I lucked out!