Quote:
Originally Posted by
bakerwi 
The whole unauthorized dealer scenario has never made sense to me. Are the units from an unauthorized dealer built in a different factory!
Somebody in the Onkyo distribution channel is selling to these distributors and/or merchants. Why should the consumer be penalized. The problems (acknowledged by Onkyo) owners are experiencing affects an entire line of AVRs regardless of where purchased.
Whether or not you agree with the companies' policies regarding unauthorized dealers and warranty coverage is beside the point. The fact remains that those policies are pretty widely known. If you buy a product from an unauthorized dealer, you go into that purchase knowing full-well that you're on your own if the product fails.
I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but manufacturers have these authorized dealer policies to protect themselves from counterfeit and grey-market items that may have been modified somewhere in the supply chain such that they no longer meet factory specifications. If I got my TX-NR5008 from "Frank's House of Beef and Stereos" how's Onkyo to know whether that receiver is in the same configuration as it was when it left the factory? The authorized dealer network provides manufacturers reasonable assurances that equipment has been untampered and/or unmodified and meets factory specs up to and after the point of sale.
Now, in this particular instance, I'd expect most reputable companies to make an exception because the particular failure mode is widely known and manufacturer-acknowledged. But they're under no obligation to do so since the product was bought from an unauthorized dealer and the purchaser assumed the risk of premature failure when making said purchase.
Again, if your receiver craps out and Onkyo refuses to help you, you can be pissed off all you want but you really have no one to blame but yourself.
Heck, I bought my TX-NR5008 from Newegg (an authorized dealer) and paid $1600 shipped for it. I doubt that even unauthorized dealers had prices that low!
