INTERNET SALES

What do the following list of manufacturers have in common?

Bang & Olufsen

Linn

NAD

Rega

Vandersteen Audio

Well, yes, they’re all stellar brands that we carry here at Overture Audio. They’re also brands that will not allow their equipment to be sold via the Internet. There will occasionally be a website that claims to have some of this gear, but beware. At best, they might have a used piece, or a refurbished piece transshipped from another dealer, which will not carry any kind of warranty. They may not even be in the US. In lieu of an actual manufacturers’ warranty, these websites will often offer their own guarantee – which is rarely worth more than the paper it’s printed on.

More commonly, they’ll take your credit card number, and the game begins. After a few weeks, they may tell you that the product is “backordered”. After that, they will often suggest that they have a better deal on a different piece of gear that they’d like to unload. They may just not answer their phones or your emails. If you’re lucky, you might get your money back after they’ve used it for a few months. If you’re not lucky, well, we hope it wasn’t a lot of money…

The best way to be sure whether or not someone is an authorized dealer for a product is to simply ask the manufacturer. Before you spend hundreds or thousands of dollars, it’s certainly worth a phone call or an email to check. Overture Audio will be happy to provide phone numbers or email addresses of our manufacturers so you can get your information straight from the source.

Overture Audio is a Michigan retailer. We do not engage in mail order sales outside of our product line territories. We strongly recommend that you develop a relationship with a reputable retail store within a few hours driving distance – the Internet is handy for information gathering, but it’s not a substitute for the critically important experience of auditioning and comparing equipment in person.

The companies we represent are very selective about who sells their gear. If you find a store that sells several of the same brands as Overture Audio, the odds are very good that you’ve found an excellent retailer. You are welcome to call or email us and we’ll put you in touch with a dealer that we know, or with the distributor of the product you’re interested in.