In praise of Richer Sounds

In praise of Richer Sounds

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Discussion

LordGrover

33,531 posts

211 months

Thursday 13th April 2017
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I too bought a half decent hi-fi setup from them in the 80's, NAD 3240PE amp, JPW P1 speakers and some other bits including a NAD CD player. No hard sell, more than knowledgeable - interested and geeky plus excellent pricing.
I ought to use them now. Must admit I've fallen for online laziness and convenience but this topic shows what I (we) may miss out on.

Next purchase I'll give them a try.

cbmotorsport

3,065 posts

117 months

Thursday 13th April 2017
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Bought quite a bit of kit over the years from RS. I used to get What Hi-Fi and immediately flick through to their advert to see what offers they had. Used to love going to the shops and ogling at stuff I couldn't afford. Next purchase is a new TV, will be buying through them.

brianashley

500 posts

84 months

Thursday 13th April 2017
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"Manager special" are what you want access to :-) Also they lend out stuff to try which really makes "building a system " great

Maxus

951 posts

180 months

Friday 14th April 2017
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Bought a new AV receiver from the Oxford store last weekend. Great deal and service. Set it up and was concerned that the display volume bar had to be towards 50% before any decent sound came out.
Took it back to the Reading store who set it up in their demo room and agreed it didn't seem quite right. We tried 2 more of the same amp and 2 other brands. Turns out this 50% setting is quite normal although the first amp was slightly weaker. I was given the choice of taking any of the amps tested home to try and if not happy bring it back or money back. Perfect. All set up now and working great.
I will always choose RS because of the deals and the service.

Klippie

3,096 posts

144 months

Sunday 16th April 2017
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A couple of weeks back I bought a new projector from the Edinburgh store, the guy I dealt with was knowledgeable and helpful he provided a demo for me too...best price anywhere as well.

A few days later a brand new machine arrived...very pleased.

When I upgraded my home cinema sound system a few years back my nice new Denon Blu-ray and Denon Amp were also bought from Richer Sounds Edinburgh.

To quote Arnie...I'll be back.

hairyben

8,516 posts

182 months

Sunday 16th April 2017
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Are they good these days? Thought they'd gone south and turned into a version of dixons when I bought the plasma about 9 years ago, tried them first going in with a fat pocket and serious intentions and asked if they'd price match another london store only to get a facefull of patronising amateurish horsesiht waffle about extended warranties. Thanks but no thanks, 40 mins later said other store was helping me load the tv into the van, was as much about the manner as the price really.

RedTrident

8,290 posts

234 months

Sunday 16th April 2017
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I've never had a negative experience with them. Their after care in particular when things go wrong.

The Manchester store I use has a decent test room at the back and the staff team are pretty consistent.

Not always the cheapest, nor are they high end in their presentation like some of the more expensive shops. But what they do, they do very well.

Eddie Strohacker

3,879 posts

85 months

Sunday 16th April 2017
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hairyben said:
Are they good these days? Thought they'd gone south and turned into a version of dixons when I bought the plasma about 9 years ago, tried them first going in with a fat pocket and serious intentions and asked if they'd price match another london store only to get a facefull of patronising amateurish horsesiht waffle about extended warranties. Thanks but no thanks, 40 mins later said other store was helping me load the tv into the van, was as much about the manner as the price really.
Stone the heretic!

There's a fair bit of upselling on the warranty side, they were emailing me for the best part of a year after I bought a load of gear off them last. I guess it's largely free money for them, so why wouldn't they be at it?

tombar

475 posts

208 months

Monday 17th April 2017
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Riley Blue said:
I bought my latest Denon/Dali set up from their Sheffield branch. Excellent service but for one thing, you can't listen before purchasing.
Me too with Demon/Dali. Love the way it sounds! RS pretty good to buy from too!

renmure

4,212 posts

223 months

Monday 17th April 2017
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Klippie said:
A couple of weeks back I bought a new projector from the Edinburgh store, the guy I dealt with was knowledgeable and helpful he provided a demo for me too...best price anywhere as well.
.
I am not really very techy when it comes to tv / hi-fi /sound stuff and live about 90mins away from the Edinburgh store but I knew I wanted a projector for my cinema room.

I phoned them hoping to get some general advice and got about 20 mins of helpful info and told to give them a days notice before I went through to the store and they would set up the demo room for me with the projector they recommended and have a couple of options on either side of the budget available to swap over.

As arranged, everything was perfect and after a demo and more helpful info I went away a happy customer. Not long after that a mate also wanted a similar quality projector and phoned the same salesman to order the same one as I bought.

Brilad

594 posts

188 months

Wednesday 19th April 2017
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Always had good experiences when buying from the Prestwich store.

I bought a Marantz streamer/cd player for my daughter about a year ago and whilst the system sounds good and I had excellent advice on what speakers to pair it with...

I did NOT get a mug/lollipops ... what is happening to the customer care at this once-great company!!?

...will always go back there. My vague plan is to get a yamaha A-V amp towards the end of this year and almost certainly will not need to look anywhere else.




Klippie

3,096 posts

144 months

Thursday 20th April 2017
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renmure said:
I am not really very techy when it comes to tv / hi-fi /sound stuff and live about 90mins away from the Edinburgh store but I knew I wanted a projector for my cinema room.

I phoned them hoping to get some general advice and got about 20 mins of helpful info and told to give them a days notice before I went through to the store and they would set up the demo room for me with the projector they recommended and have a couple of options on either side of the budget available to swap over.

As arranged, everything was perfect and after a demo and more helpful info I went away a happy customer. Not long after that a mate also wanted a similar quality projector and phoned the same salesman to order the same one as I bought.
Great...what did you go for.

Glasgowrob

3,232 posts

120 months

Thursday 20th April 2017
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guys in our local store (Glasgow ) are fantastic, been going in there for nigh on ten years for various bits of audio and tvs. cant say a bad word against them competitive on price 6 year warrantys on tvs which is a godsend and a level of knowledge that is fantastic.

wonder if Julian Richer could loan my local Ford dealer a few guys?

toastyhamster

1,660 posts

95 months

Thursday 20th April 2017
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+1 here, Nottingham branch are great, will always pay the parking, loads of friendly advice. Will be returning shortly to purchase a yet unspecified TV for eldest sons room. Don't even bother with JL these days, means city centre when RS always have parking outside the door.

renmure

4,212 posts

223 months

Thursday 20th April 2017
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Klippie said:
Great...what did you go for.
A Sony VLP 3d 4k thing ("thing" being my best word for something that has a lot of letters and numbers after it and looks like all the others with different numbers and letters.. I did say I wasn't techy minded lol)

I actually bought the cheaper item than the one I had originally asked about, on their recommendation, since they said it would be equally as suitable for my needs. Doubly happy customer biggrin

blearyeyedboy

6,252 posts

178 months

Thursday 20th April 2017
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Yet another fan here. Always knowledgeable, always happy to help, always happy to be of service.

When I bought a wall mount for my telly and had it delivered to the store, they let me arrange a time to collect it when they weren't usually open. And that was a £100 item rather than the pricier stuff they sell.

I've tried Richer Sounds in 5 different cities I've live in and all of them have been first rate.

hairyben

8,516 posts

182 months

Friday 21st April 2017
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Eddie Strohacker said:
Stone the heretic!

There's a fair bit of upselling on the warranty side, they were emailing me for the best part of a year after I bought a load of gear off them last. I guess it's largely free money for them, so why wouldn't they be at it?
Please dont, I was no stranger to them before!

I dont mind the warranty upsell attempt, it was more the silly cow was wasting my time boring me to tears with some stupid equation relating to warranty costs that seemed to be holy gospel to her and not at all interested in the £1200 bulge in my skyrocket and the simple sale it wanted - I was impatient as I'd parked on a loading bay, dodgy for any length of time in swiss cottage with all the seig heil wardens as was expecting to be promptly loading a FO telly! Instead left empty handed and kind of assumed they'd turned into dixons!

Condi

17,085 posts

170 months

Saturday 29th April 2017
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Aside from the TV all my gear is from Richer Sounds. Big thumbs up.

Ballistic

940 posts

259 months

Saturday 29th April 2017
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Great service from the Nottingham team!

I went in to audition the Cambridge Audio Azur 851A (their flagship standalone integrated amplifier) along with the Dali Sensor 7 floorstander speakers and was very disappointed.
Tried the Roksan Caspian M2 amplifier and this thing rocks! - much more detail and meat to the sound.
The Sensor 7 were lacking in the bass so after trying a few alternatives I ended up with the Dali Opticon 6 which pairs well with the Roksan and resulted in an overall sound quality that I was happy with.

Ted2

567 posts

77 months

Tuesday 26th December 2017
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Just been up to Leeds and had to queue outside for 30 mins to get in! yikes But, we all got to meet the main man himself, Mr Julian Richer who was there on the gate meeting and greeting everyone and had his minions handing out free tea, coffee, mince pies, hand warmers and catalogues, and was generally being a nice bloke. However I do think that rather than only letting a maximum of 4 customers in the shop at once it would have been better to redeploy the refreshment minions to serving customers..

I'd already reserved my item (£1300) when I joined the end of the queue as I rang the store to do so (and told them I was outside, in the queue), but I was still made to wait outside behind everyone else, most of whom were only there to browse and left the shop empty handed. Whilst I certainly don't expect preferential treatment I thought this was a bit of a poor show when the exact same item is for sale for the same price on ao.com. I only realised this once I was in town so they could easily have lost themselves a £1300 sale had I chosen not to wait in the queue and bought it online from a different company. It also irked me a little that despite the website and brochures saying the sale was for Boxing Day only, the staff said that they would still honour the price if you came later in the week. Had I known this then I could have rescheduled my visit to a less busy day.

I like Richer Sounds and everything they stand for; their pre-sales and after-sales customer services is something most other companies could learn lessons from so I'll chalk this one up to experience but personally if I was Mr Richer and knew I had "confirmed buyers" with items reserved that were stood in a queue outside, I'd be ushering them into the shop as quickly as possible to extract their monies from them and the window shoppers/browsers would have to wait.