I had a flying instructor that had an early serial Bose X-20 headset, the predecessor to the Bose A-20 which has sort-of become the dominant high end aviation costing $1000+. He sent the X-20 in for repairs one day, and a brand new A-20 came back with a thank you note for being an early customer.
Just wow.
Actually I always have a good impression about the companies care about user voices. Such a good thing when these companies appreciate their user/customer.
It's good when companies actually stand behind their products. To be fair, I've actually found that quite a few Chinese companies do go that extra mile as regards replacing items which break in use, or in sending out replacement parts. Perhaps they're trying extra hard to counter the widely held opinion in the West that Chinese products are throwaway?
As regards long-term customer service in general and more akin to your headphones anecdote:
I've found Leatherman to be great for this. I've had 3 Leatherman multitools replaced under their lifetime warranty over the years, when I've broken tools on them. Many of them long after initial purchase and often through what could be termed 'mis-use', such as snapping a screwdriver blade while trying to prise the seized-up lid off a paint can. etc.
The most impressive occasion was when I found an old Leatherman SuperTool, I'd forgotten I even had, in the bottom of a drawer. It had several off the tools broken and had been lying in water and was basically a lump of rust. I sent it in [more for a laugh than anything else] and was surprised and chuffed to get a brand new latest model one in return.
Shout out also to LED Lenser for similarly good customer service. I had one of their police issue mini LED torches, which I bought off eBay second hand ages ago. I recently found that in an old jacket I hadn't worn for a while. It had been left with batteries in it, which had leaked, and the switch and battery holder were just disintegrating with corrosion.
I emailed them with pics of the damage and asked was it possible to buy the necessary replacement parts. I got a nice response, saying how great it was to see one of their earliest [and no longer in production] models still being used. And they sent me, free of charge, two complete sets of replacement parts from a later but compatible model.
The thing is, I'm sure the bean counters at these companies have done their sums and worked out that a high initial purchase price, combined with lifetime warranty will be profitable in the long run. I'd imagine that a relatively small number actually ever get returned to avail of these warranties. But, when they do, they pretty much guarantee a customer for life and a lot of word of mouth recommendation.
Contrast the above with my experience of Apple:
A couple of years ago, my girlfriend bought a new MacBook Pro. I think it cost about £1500. A couple of weeks after she got it, the backlight failed in the screen. We took it to our 'friendly' neighbourhood Apple Store to be warranty repaired and, a couple of days later got an email saying that they wouldn't repair it under warranty as one of the moisture detector spots on the motherboard was showing evidence of liquid damage. They wanted £600+ just to replace the motherboard and see if that fixed it.
Now, this laptop had only been in our house those couple of weeks and I can vouch for the fact that it had never had any liquid spilled on it. The only thing we can think of that might have caused that liquid detector to change colour is that she used to take it into the kitchen to refer to recipes while cooking, where there would have been steam in the air.
Up to that point, I must have spent thousands of £££s over the years on Apple gear; several desktop machines, laptops, iPhones, iPads etc. as well as recommending them to friends and family. From that point on, I vowed never to purchase an Apple product again, as they will clearly try and wheedle their way out of honouring their warranties. The guy in the Apple Store pretty much said that, if the moisture detector has changed colour, the warranty is voided, even if there's no other evidence of liquid inside the computer.
[Not that I think for a moment losing my custom will mean anything to Apple. But principles is principles!]
To go back to Apple, in second year university (back when Apple made the best laptops for running Linux) I bought a high end MBP that fried its main board literally 2 days out of warrantee. Luckily it has been serviced by them the week earlier, and I took it back in to plead my case. I think the tech took pitty on me and accepted that the issue could have been related to the previous work, and I got an almost new MBP. At that time, there was no way i could afford another decent laptop.
