How to get screwed out of an amplifier
Alternate title #1 How not to buy an amplifier - part 3, Alternate title #2 Games audio fools play.
So, I find out I got screwed out of the Shindo F2A amplifier — the dead-on-arrival amp that triggered my audio fool journey chronicled in part 1 and part 2. I find out, it wasn’t really DOA but sold at a higher price to some big-shot collector. And now this big-shot wants to sell the amplifier — that he stole from me — back to me.
And I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or curse or sue.
So, I did all of the above. Not the suing though — My lawyer laughed me out of his office; so I had to stick to the laughing, the crying, and the cussing — which I did at some length. Some really coarse cuss-words, WMDs unleashed in my college days somehow resurfaced from the underground sewers of my consciousness and were put to good use.
It all started when the part-2 of my amplifier hunt blog came out. From one of the Shindo forums, a gentleman from Chennai contacted me. He had a Shindo Cortese F2A for sale. My antennas immediately went up — Chennai, Shindo, F2a. I had scoured the entire teeny-weeny audiophile landscape of India for months, and outside my living room, there was one Shindo preamp out there in the wild. And no amps. Mine would have been the first. So, I called him, and his story came tumbling out.
Turns out he knew the Chennai Dealer, Kumar1, and the Singapore Dealer, Harold2. This gentleman — who identified himself as a media mogul of Chennai, and a scion of a wealthy family with fingers in many businesses — was a big-shot audiophile collector.
“Harold is a like my brother, we are very close,” the Big-shot said, “I fell in love with this Shindo amp when I visited him a year ago, and reserved it for purchase. But then I had to go to the USA, so told him to hold it for me.”
“I was shocked when it was sold it my absence, and I promptly called Harold.
I was really mad, I asked Harold how he could do this to me. How he could sell the amp behind my back?”
When Harold sold this amp thru Kumar, he thought it was coming to me, when he realised it was not the case, he called Kumar and told him to sell the amp to me. And if he didn’t do so, he would kill him.”
“That’s exactly the words he used, he would kill him, and he would never do business with Kumar again,” said the Big-shot to me proudly — showing off his power, his influence, his pull. He has essentially forced my dealer to lie, made him tell me that my amp arrived DOA — and then it became his amp.
When I told Mr Big-shot that the amplifier was intended to reach me, and how Kumar had lied to me, he got oddly emotional.
“I believe in fate, sir,” he said to me, “Fate and destiny, sir, this amp was destined for you.”
Fate and destiny aside, Mr Big-shot was not above making a quick buck. His asking price was ridiculously high. Also, the irony of the whole situation — him selling the amp to the guy he screwed out of said amp — was lost on him. Anyways we ended the call on a friendly note.
But I was hopping mad with my Chennai Dealer and the Singapore Dealer for screwing me over, that too, after taking a 50% advance on the amplifier. So when I confronted them, expecting them to fess up, they stuck their guns with their original story. I asked proof of the amp being shipped back to Singapore and of being repaired, they had none. When I asked how did the amp end up with Mr Big-shot, I got some very vague answers. Not convinced, I was inclined to believe Mr Big-shot.
Later, I got a message from the dealers, Harold and Kumar, they wanted to sell me another Shindo f2a Cortese that had popped out of some Thai collector’s closet. I almost lost it at their barefaced shamelessness.
But I would be lying, if I wasn’t tempted with the Shindo f2a in my backyard, that I could put my hands on tomorrow as opposed the Cortese 300b stuck in the USA, waiting for me. But I am Charlie Munger fan, and one of Charlie’s rules for business was never to do deals with people with questionable ethics.
Great rule for business, great rule for life — a great rule for an audio-fool.
I will patiently await my Shindo Cortese 300b.
Names changed :)
Names changed :)