A tale of remote...

I bought a Rotel surround processor and multichannel amp two years back from Rotel's 'then' Indian distributor (Supreme, Mumbai) after which the distributionship changed to Audio Vision, Mumbai. The surround processor comes with a Rotel's typical 'Made in China' universal remote and unfortunately without the remote, one can't change any setups in the processor. The remote stopped working in the first year itself and was fixed by Supreme (not sure whether they fixed it or sent back another one) and recently failed again. I wrote to Audio Vision and sent the remote to them and after several phone calls, I was told that the remote could not be repaired and a new one was unavailable. In spite of my reminders and also writing to Rotel Europe, there has been no response about the status or when a new remote will be available or what it will cost.
Meanwhile, I have ordered a new remote directly from Europe as the processor is totally dependent on the remote for adjustments.
Moral of the story: Think twice before buying Rotel, thrice or more before buying from Indian distributors.
With similar experiences here, I had bought all my hifi stuff from abroad directly paying freights and duties but at least they give excellent support.

> murali

sounds like a bad situation to be in.

would be great if you could expand a bit more on how support from a foreign land is better (and possible) than from india.

Hi,

Just a suggestion. Have you tried using some universal remote such as Logitech Harmony 525. Available in India for about 3800/-.

Regards,
Prasad Redkar.

Just to illustrate bhuvanmisra's point:
I bought an Ayre V-5 power amp, used for about 2 years from Europe, and last year had some problem with it (speaker wire shorting). Needless to say about the excellence of Ayre products and support (unfortunately no distribution in India) and they asked me to send it to their works (USA) where they not only fixed the problem but also upgraded it to 'xe' version, all at a very nominal cost, and returned to me at their cost. I ended up paying only the forward freight and duties for repair cost. The whole thing took less than 2 weeks.
In comparison, I have 2 Rel subwoofers bought from Indian distributor, one of which developed problems and it took me so much time, patience and follow-ups to get it fixed, even had to drag in Rel's international sales and support staff. It took more than a month.
Now the Rotel remote issue is in the fourth week!
My experience has been unfortunately like this where I find no stock of spares, no solid technical support and even when pricing adding up all freight, duties etc to customer's bill. So what is the point of getting such things locally? Our import rules are quite liberal now-a-days and as long as you are prepared to pay for freight and duties as per rules, well, the cost benefit is okay and at least you get decent support.
Just sharing my experiences.

> murali

could you let me know how much freight do u end up paying since shipping is charged per kilo .Also do you use DHL or some other shipping method.

Also how do you deal with customs ? how do they distinguish between goods coming back after repairs and fresh stock ?

I am having a similar problem of not finding the indian support of much help.

thnkx

I have used DHL, UPS etc. Freight depends on weight and destination.
You have to send the item for "repair and return". This involves quite some paperwork and the courier agency will help you in this. Most important, you need the bill of entry of the original item as well as papers showing duties already paid when you bought the item from abroad. If you have all this documentation, you can send it for "repair and return" and while returning, you produce the documentation to Customs and they charge only the duties on the shipping (one-way from manufacturer to you)+repair cost as per the manufacturer's invoice.
Trust this helps.

> murali