I realize that others have had good experiences with this merchant, but I am in the middle of a very poor buying experience. Here is the message I just sent to PayPal to dispute a transaction because I have not been able to get the merchant to respond to my e-mails for five weeks:
"The disputed transaction is for the purchase of four KR KT150 audio tubes. The attached e-mails will confirm that (i) I paid for the tubes on April 1, 2022, (ii) I e-mailed the merchant the next day to say I thought I had made a mistake as to the model and had a question about its compatibility with my equipment, and asked that the merchant contact me about it, (iii) having received no response from the merchant, I e-mailed again to cancel my order on April 5, (iv) on April 7 the merchant did respond and promised to check on my compatibility question and get back to me promptly, (v) despite my sending follow up e-mails on April 19, May 1, May 6 and May 11, I have not heard back from the merchant and (vi) in my last e-mail of May 11, I warned the merchant that I would contact PayPal and dispute the transaction, which I am now doing."
I've dealt with Best 300b. While I found communication could be slow sometimes, they always came through.That is correct. No tubes, no refund, no response, crickets . . . Very disappointing to say the least.
Do their prices include VAT and then its deducted for non EU customers at checkout?I'm trying very very hard to buy some tubes from him. He's a nice guy but incredibly slow to respond.
They are having some private issues, that business should soon be consolidated with Lampizator and hopefully be up again soon. Lampizator has been difficult to communicate with as well, both are family owned, so it may take awhile yet.I have an update on my experience. I just received a refund notice from both the merchant and PayPal. I assume it will settle in my account in the next few days. So, frustrating that I had to go to the trouble of filing a complaint with PayPal in order to get this resolved, but it is now resolved.
I will ignore the fact that the refund is denominated in Euro and in the intervening six weeks the Euro has weakened vs the dollar .
I'd ask if they are still selling the BEST300B. I was told that they may not be making them anymore. Mine may be amoung the last made, I hope not, but at this point I'd check before ordering. I don't know why the US distributor didn't pick it up, I think that they could have. This has a recently improved engine, and direct heated triodes. It should be a great DAC.Was just looking at this site as well….
What's happening Lukasz told me about, and it's not for me to tell others, and it is impacting both businesses. If he only has BEST300B money AFAIK, he has to deal with Lampizator directly as Fred didn't care to pick up the BEST300B, unless he wants to go used. Unfortunately all Fred can do is sell him a Baltic 3 or up, and thus be the intermediary between them, as he would have more heft with Lampizator. Fred and I communicated and he offered to sell me a Baltic 3. Now, FWIW Don Sachs builds tube equipment and has modified largely Macintosh and Citation gear for decades. He told me to get direct heated tubes, and that means the BEST300B or the Big 7 at the low dollar spectrum. I would have loved to by a Big 7, but I thought that I had more humanitarian issues to attend to, and bought the BEST300B. I rather hate to talk about my charity, but don't think me selfless. I probably should have also sent the BEST300B money, but selfishness won that battle.If you are in the US, you might want to email Fred Ainsley, who is the North American distributor for Lampizator. He has always been responsive and usually knows what is going on with Lampi. fred.ainsley@gmail.com.
Larry
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