My history with Ultimate Ears earbuds

When I replaced a set of UE 200vi which had failed many times, I went with a relatively high end pair of UE 600vi earbuds, in the hope that they'd exhibit a higher build quality than the previous UE 200vi's I'd had.

The Fault: Audio fails because of some cable problems, possibly associated with the junction of the plug end of the cable. This happened at varying intervals, but every single set I have received has failed, in some cases within a month or so! Here's my history with the UE 600vi:

• Purchase Date: 2013 12 09
• Replaced: 2014 04 07: 119 days
• Replaced: 2014 06 19: 73 days
• Replaced: 2014 07 30: 41 days
• Replaced: 2014 09 20: 52 days
• Finally Failed and Refunded: 2015 04 27: 209 days

Thats a total of 494 days, or an average of 98 days per unit!

After the September 2014 replace, my contact details were taken with (I think) the intention of Logitech contacting me. I presume they'd like to know some usage patterns to determine if I am using the product in a way which violates the warranty, as replace units on average every three months indicate a pretty severe problem for a device meant to last two years.

Every single time, it has been a no questions asked replacement. Whether this is due to Logitech policy, or inability to communicate, I don't know. If there was any pushback from the manufacturer, I would have expected more resistance to warranty replacements. Therefore, I think Logitech are aware that there are significant issues with their design, and the margins are such that high levels of warranty replacements are acceptable to them.

I stress that I got a new set each time: this is not a single bad device, this is a sample of 5 randomly chosen devices. There exists the small opportunity that the devices I get at warranty are refurbs, but I see them taken out of a new box, so I don't think that's the case.

2015 04 17 - left ear stopped working again, very quickly - going from intermittent, to no audio. Once again, the cause seems to be the cable at the plug end, as wiggling it can sometimes get audio back to the left ear.

Oh, and no one from Logitech contacted me at all.

2015 04 20: I've contacted the Warranty people (Changed to a different provider), and they are unable to provide a new model as the UE600vi are discontinued. They will instead provide a refund. (Full amount? Unclear.)

2015 04 26: Finally Resolved: the new warranty providers gave me a no questions asked refund of the full amount that I paid. I would have settled for less, honestly, as I got an amount of use value from the product, but I'm very happy with the solution. They kept the product, so I was unable to attempt repairs. Instead I bought a pair of RHA MA750i, for almost the same price, but vastly better build quality, thicker cabling, and most importantly, much better strain relief of the cables at the junctions.