Shure’s Response to Broken Headphone

About a week ago I blogged about how my Shure SE210 headphones broke during use, causing the foam tip to become lodged in my ear. I wrote that piece while sending in a complaint to Shure's customer service department. The initial response from them was a quite generic message about how to send in headphones for warranty repair and how to perform basic maintenance on the headphones. In a bit of disbelief, I responded asking if that was the only official response. The customer service representative then assured me that I should send in the headphones for a warranty replacement as he had previously directed me to do. It was at that point that I became a bit annoyed. I requested that my issue be forwarded to management and I called the service up to that point "impertinent, unprofessional and disrespectful." I also asked how many reports about this type of incident have been reported to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

It was at that point that Shure recognized the importance of this issue. A manager replied that he had forwarded the issue to their Director of Global Compliance and Safety, and whom he said I would be hearing from shortly. I received a phone call and an email from this executive asking for further information. On the phone, he said that they routinely test their ear tips to ensure that this type of breakage does not occur. In addition, he said that what was especially alarming about my headphone tip was that very little foam was left on the inner cylinder, meaning that the adhesive had failed (click here to see a picture of the break). Their tests showed that the headphone tips typically fail via a rip in the foam, not at the adhesive. Because of this, he stated that he had consulted with their Vice President of Production and are initiating additional tests at their plants to ensure that the foam tips meet quality standards. In addition, they stated that they will be trying to replicate my breakage. Due to my issues with the customer service and due to my catastrophic product failure, Shure has offered to replace my headphones with the SE310 headphones, which are one level up in Shure's line of products. In return, they asked me to send in my broken headphones. The Director of Global Compliance and Safety was quite accommodating, and he even provided me with Shure's UPS account number so that I could charge the shipment to them.

After my initial frustration with Shure's customer service department, I was satisfied to see that the company has been taking my issue seriously. As I previously stated, my brother had the same type of breakage in his Shure SE210 headphones, and the executive from Shure asked me to pass on his contact information to my brother so that he could investigate his issue too. In terms of overall satisfaction with the resolution to this issue, I still have reservations about these headphones. I will resume use of Shure products when my SE310s arrive, but I do believe that the foam tips are capable of breaking in a similar manner again. Because of this, I may still be filing a report with the Consumer Product Safety Commission to document this problem. While having a piece of foam stuck in your ear may not seem to be very dangerous, it can result in infection and attempting to remove it oneself instead of going to a hospital could result in a rupture of the tympanic membrane. Because of this, I request that anybody else who has experienced a similar mechanical failure of Shure's headphones please contact their customer service department here.