''Manuf. warranty '' with non-authorized vendor ?

Liars? Are you referring to American Theater by any chance Porziob? I almost made the mistake of purchasing new Polk Audio speakers from them. You know the saying...''if it's too good to be true, it probably is,'' Found out from the manufacturer (Polk) that they are NOT authorized dealers and there would be NO WARRANTY. The dealer would of course probably say i'm wrong about this, but the real truth comes from the manufacturer does it not ? No way I can encourage this dealer now.

well at least American spent the time to sell/speak to you.

I called them a while back to purchase a Sony ES DVD player and was told they don't waste their time on DVD players less than $1000, Hang up.

Yeah, that's the way to do business. It's not unusual for some one to test the waters with a small purchase, before committing big money, especially with an internet vendor. Sheesh!

If the manufacturer says the dealer is not authorized, and if the dealer ssys that they are authorized, then one of them is wrong. Now who is more likely to know whether there is a manufacturer's warranty or not? I would think it would be the person who is actually honouring the warranty, i.e. the manufacturer.

I would buy nothing from a business that lied to me on such a fundamental point. If they lied to you about that, what else have they lied about?

This whole authorized v. unauthorized dealer business is BS, IMO. The manufacturers are just as responsible for this problem as the "unauthorized" dealers. It's not hard for a vendor to find out who's selling their products and how those products got to those dealers.

The truth is that some manufacturers don't want to sacrifice sales by having a strictly policed distribution channel so they basically create two categories of distribution - authorized and unauthorized. They sell unwarrantied product at a discount to distributors who then sell them to unauthorized dealers. I can think of several top tier electronics manufacturers who participate in this sort of practice.

IMO, it's a bit myopic because you are certainly not building brand loyalty by denying a customer (who may have been lied to by the dealer) warranty service. I guess that's what it takes to compete in CE.