In our almost 60 year history, Audio T has prided itself on exceptional customer service, both during and after the sale. This is often made easier by the quality of the products we sell and the manufacturers we choose to operate with. Here is a tale of one such example of how a premium manufacturer deals with aftercare, alongside an authorised dealer such as ourselves…

Here at Audio T Oxford, we recently had an enquiry from a gentleman whose father had bought a system from us back in 2003 compromising of a pair of Dynaudio Special 25 Speakers, Cyrus 8/ PSXR amplification, an Arcam CD93 Player, an Arcam tuner and a Denon cassette deck - Remember those?

Now, whilst Dynaudio products have a well founded reputation for being bulletproof, after 20 years of faithful service one of the mid/bass drive units had failed. Our customer, Jimmy, is now 99 years young and still loves his music and in particular, loves these speakers.

Jimmy had asked his son Steve to see if he could help get the speaker looked at. Given that the speaker was purchased twenty years ago, Steve thought it best to contact Dynaudio directly. As the original purchase location and authorised dealer, Dynaudio put Steve in touch with ourselves.

So, Steve got in touch to see if we could, if at all possible, get the speaker fixed in time for his father’s 100th birthday! As luck would have it, the Special 25 speakers came with a 25 year warranty, personally signed by the long serving then President of Dynaudio, Wilfried Ehrenholz.

The original certificate of warranty from dynaudio

Steve duly dropped the speaker off for us to test and we confirmed that it was indeed the driver that was fault.

We contacted Bill Livingston, the head of Dynaudio UK about obtaining spares, only to be told that none were left at the factory, but as a manufacturer that are serious about honouring their warranties and given the fact that they build all their own drive units in-house; the conversation went along the lines of “No problem, we can build you new drive units, we keep all the original design drawings and specifications, just give us a couple of weeks and we will make a new pair!”

We felt that this was outstanding customer service and a testament to Dynaudio.

Sure enough, two weeks later the brand new mid/bass drivers arrived…

After some careful servicing from yours truly, the driver has now been replaced and the loudspeaker thoroughly soak tested. And it is sounding fantastic, if we do say so ourselves!

Because Steve isn’t local, and only one speaker was brought in to us, we have given him the option of keeping hold of the other drive unit as a spare or we’ll happily fit it in the other speaker, whichever he, or his father prefers.

The story continues…

This is Jimmy (and his son Steve), collecting his Special Forty’s from audio t oxford

Following on from our initial blog, we have since replaced the other drive unit so that both match. While they were here, we took the opportunity to sit and have a play with the speakers and got to chat to Jimmy…

It turns out that Jimmy was an RAF pilot that fought in the Second World War! He flew Spitfires and even survived a crash landing. In 1944, he had to bale out of a burning P40 Kittyhawk. He reagailed that the metal was so hot that he couldn’t move the canopy (the transparent enclosure over the cockpit). He thought he was a goner and prayed for help only to suddenly find himself out of the aeroplane (landing covered in molten metal) and became a POW for the remainder of the war.

He had amazing anecdotes, like a German soldier repairing his clothes for him; which he described as “…a real Christian act when you consider that 45 minutes beforehand he had been strafing them”. Being a prisoner he suffered some real hardships of cold and hunger but some of the guards showed real kindness.

He ended his career flying the interceptor aircraft, English Electric Lightning. Being somewhat of an military aviation geek myself, I could literally have talked to him for hours. Jimmy has a short book written about his exploits. I might just have to track it down for myself.

We would like to take this opportunity to wish Jimmy a very happy 100th birthday!

Thanks for reading.

Jon & Rob - Audio T Oxford.

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