All right, the UFC fighting gloves are on...
Watch this thread for a link to the e-mails that were sent between myself and Andy. I will post them for all to see and make their own conclusions. Let me just break down the story.
I e-mailed Andy way back when with questions about the subwoofer box he was selling. Simple questions such as box volume and price. A previous post of his indicated that the box was "just under" .7 cubic feet.
See proof here. At that time, he told me the box was .6 cubic feet. Later on, I was told .5 cubic feet and it was .6 cubic feet with polyfill correction. My EXTENDED Buzz box measures in at a whopping .4 cubic feet, I measured this with water. If I had purchased the unmodified box, it would have only measured .3 cubic feet! So that in itself is a lie by .2 cubic feet which is huge when you're trying to build the proper box. It's about .4 cubic feet off of his original claim, enough volume for me to put another sub in my car. Also, nobody I know measures their boxes with polyfill correction. Polyfill has certain attributes that will make boxes seem larger but there is no replacement for displacement.
Ok, now for the shipping. The shipper damaged the trim ring, that part is true. But the box when I received it was shipped face up with the sub mounted. In addition, no packing material was at the bottom of the box. Is this a common problem? Well, it happened to SOMEONE ELSE too, see
this thread here. What's funny is it happened to someone else a few weeks after it happened to me. I would have thought Buzz Off would have learned their lesson after the first time. The shipper didn't cause the leaks in the fiberglass. The shipper did not put gobs of silicone in the box to cover up some of those leaks. I think it was 4 or 5 of the screws were stripped from being Makita'd into the trim ring. Has the same thing happened to others? YES!
I e-mailed and asked what I should do and he told me to go see a "boat guy" to have them fix it. Let's make another thing clear, I am not going to bother with shipping claims to get my money back on a $500 subwoofer box, I've been there done that before and it ain't worth my time. When I paid for the box, the ship date kept getting pushed back further and further. It was always "almost done."
Ok so I fix the box myself. The $75 grill uses box carpet to hide the sub. Box carpet is restrictive, the difference with the grill off and on can easily be heard. Especially when the carpet is covered with glue. I peeled all mine off.
Box was working ok for a few weeks. Audibly, the sub was not performing properly. I strongly suspected improper box volume. My sub is NOT an oversized sub, it was a JL10W3V2 which is a normal to low profile sub. Look at the specs on it and compare it to other subs, you'll have trouble finding subs that have lower mounting depth and smaller diameter magnets. It's no wonder why he kept trying to pawn off some 8" subs because 10" subs have a hell of a time just fitting in the box let alone dealing with the volume. Later on, I started hearing this clicking sound from the box and I could feel air escaping when the sub was pushed. The face separated, this WAS NOT a result of the shipping. This was a result of the way the box is built. You resin the face to the box body with a thin layer of resin... I'll call you out Andy, do you know if this has ever happened to anyone else??? Now be honest...
The JL is a dual voice coil sub which I told Andy I was going to wire in parallel for a 2 ohm final load. I had no idea he was going to mount it when he shipped it. No problem with that, but why the heck would he run 2 sets of speaker cables into the box? Tacky, tacky Mr. Professional... His response to that? "What's wrong with that?"
The whole time, in just about every e-mail when I was asking him about the status on the sub box, he would throw in a sales line. Racing pedals, amps, you name it, he tried to pawn it off. I got sick of it and told him. His reply was that he was doing a favor by offering me racing pedals that he enjoys. Do a search on his posts and if 95% of them aren't trying to sell something, then he must have edited it or forgot to throw in the sales pitch.
I saw that the box would not fit unless the EPS computer and all the mounting brackets were removed. No mention of this was made when I bought the box. When I brought this up, he told me just to relocate the computer behind the passenger seat. Yeah, easy task that is extending a bunch of wires...
Tons of e-mails were exchanged before he even offered to fix the box. By that time it was too late. I became the boat guy and fixed everything myself. I ended up having to buy another subwoofer because I was lied to about the box volume and the JL just doesn't like my shoddy little .4 cubes. That 4 days of fabrication was to make a 3" strip of fiberglass around the edges of the box to give the box more depth. If it took 4 days to do that work, you must have forgot to put the hardner in the resin and waited for it to dry for 4 days.
I, too, have a car audio history. I've built cars that went on to compete in IASCA, I owned my own shop. I was one of Diamond Audio's first dealers back when Matt Overpeck and I used to do lunch on the West Side. I know how things are done and what to look for. So when you spit in my coffee and try to tell me it's cream, I ain't gonna buy it...
I'm not posting to flame, I just want my mistake to educate others. I'm sure there are a few ppl that may have had a good experience buying from him if all they were doing was buying equipment or if they are not as picky as I am. But a lie is a lie is a lie. I did not get what I paid for which was a .6 cubic foot box. Not even close. I heard every excuse in the book, and to Andy's credit, he responded to most of the e-mails but all the responses were excuses. He blames this whole fiasco on UPS but all they did was break a trim ring. They didn't microwave the box and shrink it. They didn't run 2 speaker wires into the box. They didn't poke holes in the box and covered them up sloppily with silicone. They didn't strip the screwholes. They didn't cover the grill with glue covered box carpet. Own up now and take some responsibility. Confess that your box is only .3 cubic feet and nowhere near the .7 cubic feet that you claim.
Bring the new sub box on!