I finally got my M300's back from being serviced at the Microtech Gefell factory in Germany today. I really never anticipated what a lengthy, nerve wracking and expensive process it would be. I wonder if this is par for the course for most European manufactured mics?
I shipped them off June 21. I decided to send both rather than just the broken one so they could do a cleaning, tuneup on the pair. At MG's request I put "low value for customs" on the package. (I still don't understand why something shipped to a country for repair that will shortly be shipped back is subject to import duties but that's another story). On July 7 I get an email saying that they are held up in German customs and I need to send them my original sales receipt and "proforma invoice", whatever that is. I wrote back saying I bought them used from an individual in 1999 and don't have a receipt. Katrin Schnabel, my contact at MG said no problem, they would deal with the customs situation. Then, for three weeks I hear nothing despite what I'm sure were increasingly anxious emails. I was beginning to think I'd just spent $85 to lose them in some sort of customs limboland.
July 29th I got an email with the estimate from Katrin. She'd been on vacation. Guess the lesson there is don't send stuff for repair to Europe in the summer. They had to replace the "mounting for the membrane" on the malfunctioning mic and both mics got "testing, repairing, capsule cleaning and measuring". The 300 total didn't sound too bad til I realized it was in Euros. The breakdown was 135 - broken mic, 85 good mic and 80 return shipping. For payment they DO NOT accept credit cards or Paypal. They require either that you wire the money or send a cashiers check in Euros. On Aug 4 this was $473.55 plus a $50 fee for doing the wire transfer. All told it cost $608.
Anyhow, I'm happy to have my babies back good as new. At least I only paid $700 for them and I did get confirmation from Gefell that they were originally sold as a stereo pair which was cool. They also told me they would include a frequency plot of each mic but seem to have forgotten that. Hopefully I can get them to mail it to me.
I don't know whether this typical of say Schoeps or Neumann but the whole process was somewhat of a hassle and it seems as if they could do more to make it easier for the non European consumer. More and cheaper payment options for one. And maybe some way to streamline or at least keep you better informed of the customs process. Recommending a specific carrier they often do business with? I don't know, but telling you to put a low ball value on your mics and hoping they get through is scary.
Topic: weird problem with Gefell M300 (repair update) (Read 2905 times)