Toy 2 Story, The Sequel

[The original Toy 2 Story.]

Late last week our new Brennan JB7 had been returned to have some life breathed back into it after a software update, intended to fix an occasional problem with noise on playback, created a second problem by killing it completely. We hadn’t heard anything so I thought it was time to pick up the old technology land line telephone to see what the position was with our returned unit. I called at around 10:00 AM.

Though we may not have had any feedback, they do seem to have an online tracking system. Our JB7 had arrived with them on Friday. The very pleasant and helpful lady at Brennan’s end of the phone checked their tracking system for us. On Monday an engineer had entered into the tracking system:

“tried a firmware update but that didn’t work”. [Ed: I know that feeling.]

Monday’s was the last/only entry in the tracking system. The very pleasant and helpful lady said she’d get in touch with the workshop (it’s at a different address) to try and find out what was happening. She took my number and said she’d call me back. She was true to her word:

“I got in touch with an administrator at the workshop who is going to try to find out the latest.” [Ed: OK, good] “It might take a couple of hours because obviously there are quite a lot of units down there.” [Ed: Really? A little worrying for new kit].

By 4:00 PM I called and spoke to Brennan again – a helpful gentleman, this time. The conversation went something like this:

“We can’t get in touch with our workshop at the moment”. [Ed: Curious] “Did you actually want it repaired as opposed to exchanged?”

“Not necessarily but I wasn’t originally given that option.”

“We could exchange it but there would be another wait ‘cos we don’t have any left in stock.”

“Yes, I know, I had to wait about 6 weeks for that unit to arrive.”

“We usually quote 2 weeks on repairs. The main man …” [Ed: my phrase] “… is off until Monday so I can’t chase it until then.”

“Tell you what, how about you keep it and give me my money back – I can buy a decent CD player for less than £200.”

“OK, yes, I can do that.”

After about two months and now being back at square #1, a few observations, for what they are worth.

1. I must say that the people on the phone at Brennan are very friendly, responsive and helpful.
2. A £400 piece of hardware is delivered well-packaged but with no paperwork whatsoever – absolutely nothing in the way of an invoice or receipt such as might be useful for insurance purposes. This seems a very curious omission. Upon phoning to request a receipt they do email one very quickly but it seems a weird way to go about what I would regard as standard and essential.
3. As advised by Brennan, it doesn’t quite end with the £400 ‘cos, having spent several weeks ripping in one’s CD collection, it really is advisable to purchase an external hard-drive to back it up. If the Brennan workshop really does contain many units for repair, backup is clearly not to be regarded as an optional extra. If the unit fails in certain ways, Brennan will try to salvage the contents of the internal hard-drive but … hard-drives have been known to crash.
4. Whilst (eventually) having one’s entire CD collection searchable in a relatively compact package seems quite neat, I suspect that it is actually considerably quicker to select a physical CD and load it into a traditional CD deck than it is to use the JB7’s control panel menu system entering a character at a time and searching.
5. Given a mixed and varied music collection, “random” play is pretty much useless. Generally one is in the mood for certain types of music; ‘t would be particularly jarring IMHO to jump “randomly” between Led Zeppelin, Ludwig van Beethoven and John Lee Hooker. A Brennan JB7 for each genre may be a solution, albeit a little pricey.

Until recently, my beloved Arcam Delta CD deck performed faultlessly for getting on for 20 years. The CDs themselves are sufficient backup. Does one benefit from anything more complex?