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Counterfeit Audioquest Cables

I just wanted to put out a general query in regards to how people feel Audioquest is handling the issue of counterfeit cables. Personally, I am a huge fan of Audioquest and their products but I feel there could be a little more room for transparency on their behalf... No pun intended...

I don't mean to sound like a total heretic or a paranoid conspiracy theorist but I don't feel like my suspicions would be totally misplaced if I were to speculate that Audioquest is not only benefiting from the existence of bogus copycat look alikes but that they are deliberately allowing it to happen if not entirely responsible for it in the first place.

It is undeniably an effective way to dissuade consumers from private sales and coercing them into paying full retail prices for any of their products. It's also hard to ignore the steady decline in classified ads for Audioquest products on the various audiomarts.

Also, to the best of my knowledge, the AudioQuest Authentication Process also does not require them to explain their findings thus granting them authority to summarily judge a cable's authenticity.

In my humble opinion, a company as innovative as Audioquest could certainly divine a method to apply serial numbers to their products. That way, everything could be traceable and consumers could register their products. Not to mention that Audioquest could rebuild some of the lost confidence in their brand name.

Am I totally out of line here or perhaps missing something obvious? I would love to hear more points of view...
pontifex
jmcgrogan2's avatar
jmcgrogan2
6,346 posts
 
03-13-15: Zd542
Having a good used market has a huge effect on the new market.

I agree with that statement. My curiosity is why then Audioquest does not help their second hand market by putting serial numbers on their cables like Tara Labs, XLO, Stealth Audio. Purist Audio, and other cable companies do to help alleviate fraud?

AQ just says to ship the cables to us, and we will tell you if they are real or not. If we say they are not real, you do not get them back, they are "destroyed" and so is the money you spent on them. That's BS!!

They should be helping their consumers by identifying their legitimate product. It's not that hard to do. Hell, I even have cables from Snake River Audio that have serial numbers for authentication purposes. If a small company like SRA can do that, a big company like AQ can do it. They just choose not to, to help bully their consumers to buy from authorized dealers and pay more money.
pontifex OP
31 posts
 
Thank you, Jmcgrogan2! That is very helpful info.

I was unaware that other companies are producing serialized cables. I'm definitely going to follow up on that and look into these companies you've mentioned to better familiarize myself.

I also agree in terms of sending products to Audioquest. They really offer nothing in terms of consolation if they say that your cable isn't genuine. Many people would probably rather keep the cable to at least have something to show for their money instead of risking playing "Audioquest Roulette".
loomisjohnson
1,526 posts
 
query whether at least some of the fakes are as good as or better than the authentic ones. i've heard, reliably, of fake beats headphones which are better made than the originals; likewise gucci bags.
swampwalker's avatar
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swampwalker
5,132 posts
 
I also agree in terms of sending products to Audioquest. They really offer nothing in terms of consolation if they say that your cable isn't genuine. Many people would probably rather keep the cable to at least have something to show for their money instead of risking playing "Audioquest Roulette".

I once had a cable that I thought was genuine, but which a manufacturer (for reasons that I do not remember these many years later) thought had been "cut down" and reterminated in a way that would adversely affect SQ. The manufacturer did not have a formal authentication program (at least at that time) but they offered to look at the cable and return me an authentic one; either the one I sent or a new one if mine had been altered. They turned out to be right; I got a pair brand-new, most recent version cables back. I'm not gonna say the name; the president of the company personally got involved, was very gracious, and I wouldn't want them flooded with similar requests, 5-10 years later. They are smaller than AQ, but a very well known player in the cable game.

I agree that AQs program is really punitive and offers no incentive for anyone to use it. OTOH, they are in a no-win situation on this issue. The idea of S/Ns is appealing, but as I think about it more, it seems to me that if you can counterfeit the cable labeling and packaging effectively enough that a sophisticated consumer is fooled, why couldn't you just counterfeit the S/N?
seikosha
205 posts
 
@Swampwalker,

You are completely correct. People counterfeit S/N's all the time. The bad counterfeiters simply use the same one over and over making them easy to spot over time, but the good ones change them up.

The only way to truly authenticate products using S/N's is to have a corresponding database listing the owners and it's not very easy (almost impossible really) to reliably maintain something like this.

S/N's on products do very little to stop counterfeiting.
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