I've just had a phone call from Ian at Hallmaster Car Sound who today had a customer come in wanting speakers fitted. Well it turns out the customer thinking he was saving a dollar or ten purchased them off the infamous eBay.

Ian took one look at them and established they weren't genuine Pioneer speakers, evident by the obvious look of them by an experienced eye (not quite right), wrong/different spider / voicecoil assembly, poor print quality packagaing and so so.

They sounded like absolute garbage so Ian purchased them from the customer for $20 and sold him a genuine set of speakers - customer went away very happy with the sound, but unhappy at having to spend more money in the long run (and how many have done that?). Ian purchased them purely to put on display in the showroom to highlight this issue, and inform customers of what is happening out there.

I encourage anyone in the Burwood area to drop in and check them out. I hope to get out there in the coming week to take photos of them.

ill be in the area on the weekend i think, might pop in and have a look!

That's a great idea! It'd be excellent if more stores did this to highlight the difference. For $20, I'm sure they'll pay for themselves time and again with convincing potential customers ebay is not the answer...
I'll only ever buy from registered dealers from now on, I was burned with a fake set of MB Quarts on ebay not long ago. They were cheap, but even to a bargain hunter that should serve as a warning...

maybe that's why my new sub sounds so terrible.... hahahahaha

on a serious note, I think it's terrible that more people don't know about these rip-offs, and every day, heaps of poor quality fakes are sould around australia when the local industry really needs the custom.

afew words - its cheap..

(and yes I agree with your last line.)

Grrrr @ Ebay!!!!

The car audio industry is expanding a whole stack and more, and people are seeking to make a dishonest dollar by ripping off lables such as Focal, a/d/s/, now Pioneer? Whats next!!!

just out of curiosity, what model pioneer speakers were they?

i think that was an excellent idea of ian's - and i'm sure the customer was very happy to hand them over.
obviously a great place to go for advice/sales.

and yes, if ebay was a person, i was stab it.

WAS? or Will? or Would perhaps?
hahaha

sshhhhh, no one else picked up on it...."would"

do you know who he purchased the speakers from?

There's your answer

there are millions of sellers on ebay just looking for specifics

The whole problem is that no one wants to spend any money any more
(well i know there are some, like on this forum that understand quality and will pay $$ for it)

The amount of people that only want the "cheapest thing to get me thru" attitude is the problem this is what is so appealing about ebay to so many people its cheap - even if your not getting quality they dont know the diff or care.

I just saw a fake set of TS-D160R's. The packaging was obviously fake if you'd seen the original packaging before. The colours on the packaging were not the same as proper packaging. The box was a different size. The speakers were much more shallow and without obvious cap and inductor at speaker terminals.

The guy bought them from eBay but i'm not sure on the seller. I will try to find out.

huh? WTF? hahaha

good one stone.

keep up the good work...

cheers
- mad89