Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion HiFi & HT Chat AudioQuest issues

My AudioQuest journey has been pretty good with their digital cables, however less good with their cheaper mains cable, mostly because they won't reliably provide power to anything I own (which one could consider is an even greater priority than sound quality!). I then had an unfortunate issue where their power distributor went up in smoke a months after I bought it, however they replaced this after some to- and fro-ing. My feeling up until now had been to continue using their digital cables as the 72V biased cables do seem to work.

My latest issue takes the biscuit, though. Due to a few changes in my system, I decided to list a cable on eBay I've owned for around six months. Nothing new in that, or so you would think... However, I got an email from eBay this morning saying my listing had been deleted because AudioQuest has asserted that they own the copyright to the picture being used in the advert (that is a picture I took of my cable and its box sitting on my desk).

Another search on Google showed someone else saying AudioQuest tried to prevent them selling second hand AudioQuest cables by sending them emails to the effect 'You have AudioQuest products listed on the Internet but are not recognized as an Authorized AudioQuest Internet Dealer...We must insist that you remove all AudioQuest products you have listed on the Internet within five (5) calendar days from the date of this email, and confirm this removal by replying to this email'.

I'm going to contact eBay and AudioQuest in the hope this has a happy ending.

I recently sold and purchased preowned AudioQuest power cables on US Audiomart with no issue. There are quite a number of AudioQuest items listed on Audiogon for sale by individuals. When you go to HifiShark and search for AudioQuest cables on eBay a number of countries come up but not the UK? Interesting.

I struggled to find similar sales in the UK too.

Since originally posting, I looked up the muscle power being used for this 'enforcement' notice and the company can be found here. They say they:
The first is to be applauded, if this is what they actually do, as opposed to blocking anyone other than an official list of dealers from selling. The second starts treading a line where they say they prevent entirely legal, but not officially sanctioned channels from trading. The third makes me wonder how they define brand abuse, is this anyone selling a product, even second hand, in any way they don't explicitly approve of?

Call me singularly unimpressed at this point - it doesn't exactly encourage me to touch AudioQuest ever again.

How utterly bizarre. When you buy Audioquest gear they are effectively saying that you cannot then sell it on as 2nd hand? If there is a lawyer here on HH I would love to know if they can even claim copyright on photos of their product used in your house.
Imagine trying to sell a car on AutoTrader if car manufacturers applied the same crazy logic.

How stupid especially when product lines are built on the assumption that upgraditis will make you want to buy the premium models.....and need to offload the original purchase.

AVForums members don’t appear to have the same issue in selling their AudioQuest kit.

It is bizarre. One wonders whether their enforcement company is being over zealous, I plan to write to the CEO of AudioQuest to see if the situation can be clarified. If deliberate, then I suspect it is breaking a law.

Thanks, I may try that approach.

I suspect the issue is that the enforcement company is either using or abusing a known eBay process (depending on whether this is incompetence or done by design) to stop a listing. Given a credible reason to remove a listing, I doubt eBay have the inclination to investigate, so simply delete it, inform the seller and move on (with no easy way for the seller to appeal or re-list the item).

As was pointed out above, there are next to no listings in the UK for their cables.

I've just conducted a 'used' AudioQuest eBay (UK) search, which returned 82 items for sale.

Interesting, I'm seeing many more listings now too. I'm not sure why I wasn't seeing them before nor mine was picked on, but it seems I can't re-list my item until AudioQuest gives written permission for me to do so.

The email from eBay suggests I contact AudioQuest's chosen partner and, if I try to create a new listing for this item, eBay gives me an error with the message 'It's not you, it's us'

It's almost certainly just eBay & its bots being arseholes.
I had a problem selling my 2nd hand Les Paul style Guitar, even using the same wording as the advert I used when I bought it off eBay about a year earlier, and it wasn't a licensed dealer. But once the bot has flagged you anything using similar keywords will equally re-flag to them.
I read they even had a very rare vintage Stradivarius destroyed, by court order, because of an imagined "copywrite infringement". The seller rightly sued and won millions in compensation.
They will eventually kill their Golden Goose if they carry on like this, and just become an extension of Alibaba.

I think it's a combination of eBay becoming almost anti-seller and AudioQuest's enforcers taking advantage of this situation. In the meantime, I'm not allowed to list any USB cable!

Destroying a Stradivarius should earn them a special place in hell where bagpipes are only ever played