My Desktop Stereo isn’t quite performing as I want it to. The JBL Control One are awesome but have no bass. Bi Amping with a leftover subwoofer from my station wagon didn’t really do the trick, a 25cm speaker is ok for a confined space like a car but sucks in bigger rooms as for example my office. Ebay provided some auctions with interesting items and I got lucky: A Hifonics OLM 1615 38cm Monster with a vamped up enclosure of a much cheaper omnitronics speaker.
0,33L beer bottle for size comparison..
DIY at it’s best, so it went cheap. 76€ for something that’s worth a couple of hundreds is more than alright. Then something weird happened:
Seller: I would like to cancel the deal because I dropped the speaker and there’s some rattling noise inside / something broke even though there’s no visual damage. I’m willing to pay some compensation for your troubles.
Me: Well, I can totally understand if you’re not satisfied with the price but it’s not my problem if you don’t keep track of your auctions. These speakers are designed to take quite a beating so it seems highly unlikely you broke it by dropping it. Are you really sure it’s broken?
Seller: Yeah, it’s broken. I’d send you 50€ if you cancel the transaction.
Me: Maybe I can repair the speaker. How about we take the 50€ off the price, so I pay you 26€. If I can’t fix it I still got the enclosure and you got rid of the broken speaker…
Seller: No thanks, I’d rather bring it to my dealership to get it fixed and then sell it on ebay again.
Me (to myself): Gotcha!
Me (to seller): Sorry to say but you raised my suspicions. By german law we have got a contract so you dropped my speaker and not yours. You owe me compensation for the difference between the 70€ and the normal street value of the item. In addition I’ll contact ebay’s customer support and they’ll probably ban you.
Seller: Alright, I’ll get the speaker fixed and then send it to you but it will take some time.
Seller (next day): It’s fixed, a large paperclip somehow got stuck inside. It’s on it’s way.
So yeah, there are quite some dickheads on ebay. The speaker arrived in the meantime, it’s got some minor scratches and the crossover is fried. The capacitor blew and the circuit board got cracks. Luckily I’m using active crossovers anyway, so I realized that while removing it. So I already fixed one problem. The sound is still not where I want it but the vents of the enclosure are loose and possibly to close to the back of the enclosure. I guess I’ll do the math on it as well, just in case the previous owner fucked it up.