Bowers & Wilkins Anmeldelser 

This company takes the award for worst company service. P15 earphones didn’t work. I requested a refund. I received emails in robotic language (either non human or by someone who has a limited grasp of the English language) asking the same questions, ad nauseum, regardless of what I state. The website is slow and functionally not for for purpose from a customer perspective. Truly shocking. Please everyone be advised that if you have a problem, then that’s it and don’t expect to get your money back - even after only a few days of purchase.

Please bear in mind that the majority of people only leave reviews when something has gone wrong, so despite there being a few negative reviews below, I do not believe that B&W products have inherent issues more so than other brands. Essentially i believe some of the reviews paint an unfair picture of B&W. Certainly of my experience anyway.
I have quite a few B&W products (floor standing speakers, subwoofer, centre speaker, satellite speakers, Zeppelin wireless, PX headphones, and now P14 earphones).
I absolutely love the sound quality and the quality build of the products. I have however had a couple of issues with headphones, firstly my PX headphones went faulty in that they would not reliably connect to bluetooth after around 14months use (within 2year warranty). Absolute perfect customer service though - they sent prepaid postage reviewed the issue and within a week simply replaced with a new pair without quibble.
Similar experience with my P13 earphones. Left ear stopped working unfortunately. Sent back again - unsurprising to me that they decided they were uneconomical to repair and they simply replaced with a new pair of the higher level P14's because no longer had stock of the obsolete P13's.
Now obviously no one wants their products to fail in the first place, but they do deal with issues brilliantly well in the event of a problem.
Big shout to Scarlett and Danielle among the customer service team. Really pleasant to deal with and very efficient.
I for one love the products, and am delighted that I choose to buy B&W products because:
1. I have had barely any issues anyway in the 18ish years since I bought my first B&W product, so I am happy with the quality and lastability of products.
2. The sound quality is AWESOME!
3. My experience of Customer Support and Service is absolute first class.

Great job B&W. And thank you Danielle & Scarlett. Keep up the good work. People do appreciate it :-)

Een mooi product maar ik heb er wel twee moeten vervangen. Het geluid is heel mooi.

Shockingly poor effort for such a "premium" brand.

Bought a pair of PX5s at the end of 2018 for £330. Today they have gone...with the battery unable to hold a charge anymore. Reading online, this appears to be a common problem. B&W response is either £100 repair or replace with a new pair at a slightly discounted price. Suggests that this was the plan all along. Will not be buying B&W ever again!

Im on my 4th pair of px5 and the right ear stopped working again. I love the sound but again and again the right ear stop working. First and last time I buy your products

I went for a job there
I didn't get the hang of it within a minute they marched me straight out
So degrading
Disgusting behaviour
No wonder they keep advertising for staff

I’m leaving a 2 star because of the shoddy product support. I don’t expect 2 speakers that I paid a high amount of money for (almost £2000) to last 5 years of minimum useage to then fail together at the same time. Then to be told we don’t support that or have parts anymore, seems a bit strange that both lasted around 5 years before the power supplies blew up ? Fortunately I found a service centre called electronic partners and they actually provided me with a services and repaired my items.

The speakers were really good quality looking products and sound brilliant for what they are. Just disappointed I didn’t use them more to justify having to spend another £500 on repairing them. Won’t be buying anything else.

I've had a few products from B&W over the years; T7 speaker, P5 / C5 headphones... and most recently a Performance Flex speaker. The P5 blew one side and they couldn't fix it, only replace it with giving me leather, which is not what I bought or wanted. The C5 were just terrible; uncomfortable and zero bass. And on to the Flex, the attitude I got from their support was that they were doing me a favour selling me a £400 speaker, not even basic pleasantries followed by letters 'informing' me of my payment and warranty. B&W have no idea how to treat people who have chosen to buy a premium audio product. There are many, many competitors who have great products and service. They've lost probably £3-4K over the years for their bad service. Though they probably think that is peanuts and someone spending so little is nothing but dirt on their shoe. Terrible, terrible company.

I tried to get in touch with the B&W through their website, the support contact us link is dead. I tried through Facebook too and have been ignored.
I bought a pair of PI5 headphones and there is terrible voice feedback when using them on a call.
I will never buy another B&W product and I hope this generates some response or at least warns off other prospective customers.

I bought a pair of PI 7 earbuds direct from B&W. I will start by saying they sound great! No complaints there. Unfortunately support and service is AWFUL. Really disappointing for a so-called premium brand.

First problem - the sound occasionally drops. I contacted them and got a standard response about bodies blocking signal etc despite fact I pointed out I tested in different settings and it was random, not consistent so not a body in the way issue.

Second problem - a bit buggy to always connect. No help offered here.

Third and biggest issue. Unfortunately I lost one. It plopped out and bounced into the sea off a pier 😔.completely my fault but I have been trying to get a response to order (and pay for!) A replacement bud. 2 weeks and no reply apart from auto replies. Says local distributor will respond. Why? I bought direct. Clearly they don't care. Really frustrating and disappointing. Premium brands should distinguish themselves when it comes to solving outlier problems, not lose simple queries in some process.....

Last time I will buy from B&W.

The one star is simply due to their lack of care in places from this company, especially for the price of what you pay for some of the things they sell.

I had 2 Zeppelins which both broke down and required the power supplies repairing 1-2 years after buying them, why though ? Because B&W decided to use cheap capacitors and then poorly cool the internal components, so if you have it on quiet and no air moves in the case it cooks it’s self. The boards and parts get very very hot, this leads to them wearing out prematurely and the device fails. Now both the motherboards are faulty and can’t be repaired due to flashed software so they both got recycled. I also have a B&W A5 speaker that had airplay…... Had being the key word here! This is because these guys (to make you have to buy a new one IMHO) dropped all support for these and no longer offer firmware for the A5 or A7 and Zeppelin speakers. So if you’ve a newer phone you won’t be able to use AirPlay so what was a £400 wireless speaker is now a aux only paper weight. Yeah I know it costs to get engineers to contact apple and then rebuild the firmware/software to support airplay 2, but come on this was a 2015 speaker and less than 6 years later it’s basically useless. I’d expect at least 10 years minimum for the price.

Lastly my PV1 subwoofer has an issue where it won’t turn on when it’s cold now either, they don’t support it anymore so good luck trying to get anything out of them. My local repairer said he cannot get parts for them either and they are impossible to put back together and get right afterwards.

Just to say I won’t be buying anything from B&W again, the customer service just basically tell you that’s how it is and that they are sorry, but they offer some good exchange deals for newer products (of course) but I don’t want that. I want something that works as long as my Pioneer equipment has with out any issues. Nice products, but over priced and not reliable. I’m not sure how their bigger stuff compares in terms of reliability etc, but I wouldn’t want to find out to put it that way.

Bowers Wilkins PX5 right ear not working AGAIN!
The company obviously are using cheap components. This is the second pair of headphones of this model, I was walking listening, suddenly a distortion and then loss of sound in the right ear.
Little point in going through the returns procedure as they are just over one year old, will never buy from this company again! Take heed if you are considering anything from these I d I o t s

I bought a pair of PI3 bluetooth headphones and after 4 months the left side gone silent. I only used it at home, not for running or mountain biking etc.

The store replaced it with another one, which was working fine for 6 months, then the same thing happened only that this time it was the right side.

The store sent me a third one, which I barely used because it was so expensive and I was afraid that it's going to die too. But it did die after one year.

The store refused to send me a 4th one and I totally understand them.
This is just ridiculous quality for such a high price and I honestly can't understand how they are selling a product that has such a design flaw.

Avoid buying PX5 headphones! I bought a pair in March 2020. In May the right side suddenly stopped working. No more sound. B&W replaced it with a new pair and one year later I have the exact same problem and they want me to send it to a repair service. Headphones were used at my desk only and have been taken care of. This is clearly an expensive faulty product.

I have had 2 pairs of. B and W headphones. They are excellent products from a sound point of view but quality is problematic. Several of my P3 cables needed replacing, and then one earphone stopped working. Instead of fixing , I bought a brand new sealed pair of PX5 headphones which I loved. After5 months, right earphone stopped working. B and W would not honour the warranty as they weren’t bought through an ,approved’ supplier. I sent them to an independent headphone specialist who couldn’t economically repair them as they need a new ,main board,. Unbelievable- brand new then useless 5 months later. Bad service and waste of money as they don’t last. Highly disappointed,

Microphone very poor with iPhone. After paying £270, not impressed at having to hold microphone up to mouth and keep head turned to the right- but let B&W speak for themselves- this exchange is from their customer “support”:



You recently requested personal assistance from our on-line Support Centre. Below is a summary of your request and our response.
Subject
Microphone

Response By E-mail (Neil (Customer Support)) (20/04/2021 14:20)
Hi Jeremy,

Many thanks for getting in touch; we're very sorry to hear of your experience with these.

Once these have been paired with your device, they are able to be used for music and receive the odd phone call.

The limitations of this design are that the only place to install the microphone is on the Control Pad, so, the intention is that you can move that closer to your mouth, when required.

Does the microphone not work at all, or is it quieter than you would like?

Have you tried the headphones on another device?

Many thanks,

Neil


Customer By Service Web (Jeremy Chipperfield) (18/04/2021 20:30)
I have just collected replacement for BW P14 whose micpriphine was not working for callls. The new pair is exactly the same. VVV disappointed.

Last time you called and just told me to reset it and if it didn’t work to return to retailer. Which i did.

Don you have anything else to suggest. Have seen on internet suggestion that microphone is not good- Is this is recognised problem with your product?

Please call me.

As someone who spends about 30% of their waking time listening to music, I finally spent big (by my budget) on the PX7 after doing a fair amount of research. I had the headphones for about 2 months before doing the unimaginable and accidentally breaking them. I was absolutely gutted.

I had made peace with the fact that I'd lost arguably the best item I've ever owned and written off the investment but I thought I'd email B&W regardless to see if there was anything that could be done.

I talked to a woman called Scarlett, who was extremely pleasant and helpful throughout the entire email chain. She managed to hook me up with a deal to send my broken headphones back (along with a financial contribution) in return for a new pair of headphones as my previous pair were structurally damaged. I was over the moon. The financial contribution was more than fair, especially due to the fact that the issue was my own fault rather than the fault of B&W.

The entire process took about a week and it was effortless. Some of the best customer service I've ever had the pleasure of dealing with.

There might always be companies that offer products that might have a slight up on what B&W offer, but to be able to talk to a compassionate human being that understands the situation and helps you to the best of their ability. I think that's what constitutes as the basis for having life-long customers, as I am now.

I have the PX headphones for 2 years now.
but it already did wear out.
The power button almost doesn't work anymore!
And also the pauze/volume buttons are broken.
The pauze button doesn't click or do anything anymore.
And the volume down button randomly gets triggered and lowers/shuts down my volume.

Bowers and Wilkins currently has a pretty incompetent app development strategy and inadequate testing program. The speakers have a fantastic sound quality, but the requirement to control the device volume from the app forces the user to use a highly unreliable set of apps that do fail and is regularly trolled by actual customers for things like “no volume bar”, “volume bar disappears”, “crappy”. Folks we are talking about very expensive best of class sound equipment. The fact that this failed functionality even gets into the hands of customers in the first place is pretty sketchy and the people that run this company need to fix it and stop ripping off people that need to be able to actually use their purchase.

I would suggest if they haven’t already to hire the app developers (preferably ones who can actually make a good app) as full time roles , before they start coding have them read every single bad review on trust pilot and App Store and sit in a room with their first line support, fix the app or roll back the code to old version alongside rigorous testing of whatever they release, and then do a big look back exercise to figure out what went wrong. If you can’t move fast as a team, don’t. Move slow and create a high quality product and slow down on your digital release cadence with more oversight and focus. These mobile experience decisions are not competitive at all and if you guys are trying to benchmark against app based companies or win over users by integrating 3P services, you’re doing so in a way that doesn’t lift the brand.

Secondly, ship every customer who purchased your devices a free physical remote control.

Recently bought a pair of PI4's. Used them nearly day and was really impressed.
After using them last night, i noticed this morning that the indicator light is now a funny white colour, not the normal green or blue colour.

Can't see anything in the manual regarding this.

Has anyone had a similar experience ?