Dear Skullcandy:
For the second time, I’m sending back your Ink’d in-ear headphones.
For the second time, they have #failed in the same manner – one of the earbuds stopped working.
On your site and in your customer service correspondence, you imply that your products can withstand “extreme listening”. My listening demands call for me to pull them out of my pocket, plug them into my Droid, put them in my ears, and listen when I commute to my job in NYC. I’ll concede that NYC can be a zoo sometimes, but it’s not like my usage patterns of your product is anything close to extreme. With both Ink’d products that I have returned, one of the earbuds on the headphones has failed and I can only hear audio out of the other earbud. In the first instance, my assessment was that the root cause was a frayed connection of the cable to the jack. For my most recent instance, I’m really not sure what is happening that is causing the earbud to fail.
I’ll be honest here, I’m a little frustrated with your products, especially being that I’m not doing anything “extreme” when using your headphones. One time I can understand, but two times is troubling.
But wait, there’s more! I was in Best Buy the other day, looking at replacement headphones to purchase. I happened to overhear two women who were also looking at headphones, where one of them was saying that her current headphones (which were in her hand) had failed. When I looked down at them, they were distinctively Skullcandy. I struck up a conversation with them and we compared notes. The issue she had experienced was exactly what I have experienced, in that the cable connection to the jack had frayed and caused the audio and headphone to fail.
I don’t know if it’s a problem with the Ink’d line or a broader issue with your in-ear headphones, but I would look long and hard at how these are produced and figure out where the defect is. I wanted to like your products, really I did. But I’ve lost my patience. And it appears the woman I spoke with in Best Buy did too.