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WARNING: Many people selling their faulty Topping L30 amplifiers in eBay

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tomelex

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Thank you for bringing this matter up Blank Verse, you are appreciated and also got some positive results, and for no gain on your part, but the community gained
 
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Blank Verse

Blank Verse

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Thank you for bringing this matter up Blank Verse, you are appreciated and also got some positive results, and for no gain on your part, but the community gained
Thank you for the kind words. The main idea is to make people (and Topping) aware of it.

When I was very young I got scammed in one of my first jobs by an unscrupulous employer who I basically trusted to pay me without a proper contract and it really makes me angry when I see people taking advantage of others for their own benefit.

I would encourage everybody in the forum to spread the word and to report these auctions in your free time.
 

Tks

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Actually @Blank Verse use of Johnny Depp avatar as a foil to @Tks Amber Heard avatar is pretty ingenius.

That's actually kinda funny now that you mention it lol.

When I saw all those auctions in eBay I thought something had to be done. The only people who are benefitting from that are the scammers. It hurts customers and it hurts Topping just as much to have this going on, for multiple reasons I might outline later.

Yeah I just assumed because John said nothing could be done (and knowing he's not an executive of the company), that was that. But then John said something is now being done (still not sure what that is, but it's irrelevant, as I never seen a company undertake actions for sales of products between other members of the public), obviously at that point my comments lost all relevant merit.

I mean it when I say I've never seen something like this - like if I told any other company "hey this guy sold me a product you guys said was defective", I would never imagine any sort of warranty service or something of the sort would be offered. Heck most companies are sometimes pressed for illegal activity - and public pressure does literally nothing to deter them. So you can imagine why my commentary got dropped quick.

I'm sorry if I came off as brash or anything of the sort. I have no problem acknowledging error in things I say when they are in error. (reported folks seeing as how Topping seemingly wants to do something about it according to John).
 
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Rottmannash

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That's actually kinda funny now that you mention it lol.



Yeah I just assumed because John said nothing could be done (and knowing he's not an executive of the company), that was that. But then John said something is now being done (still not sure what that is, but it's irrelevant, as I never seen a company undertake actions for sales of products between other members of the public), obviously at that point my comments lost all relevant merit.

I mean it when I say I've never seen something like this - like if I told any other company "hey this guy sold me a product you guys said was defective", I would never imagine any sort of warranty service or something of the sort would be offered. Heck most companies are sometimes pressed for illegal activity - and public pressure does literally nothing to deter them. So you can imagine why my commentary got dropped quick.

I'm sorry if I came off as brash or anything of the sort. I have no problem acknowledging error in things I say when they are in error. (reported folks seeing as how Topping seemingly wants to do something about it according to John).
What exactly is John's position/job with Topping?
 

Tks

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What exactly is John's position/job with Topping?

TL;DR officially, last I know, he is still responsible for analogue product design.


Historically, none, and after that, he then got involved in the analogue design of products (the newer generation of amps were thanks due to him, he made such claims he would deliver after roasting the near-mystical veneration of THX's AAA designs). He dismissed their implementation as anything special (which seemed to coincide with Amir's thoughts after the first teardown, not really spotting anything particularlly in the way of discrete or proprietary implementation). And the rest is history (he delivered as one can see now, burying THX in the dirt in terms of audio performance metrics).

I've not heard him claim to be anything but a designer who I suppose has decent communication skills with Western audiences (speaks English) and perhaps because he was here before he worked for Topping, helps them and us, but being a go-between the two parties (we get sometimes information about upcoming products, which most companies cower from, while they perhaps also get feedback about Topping's general sentiments of their products to customers in Western countries).

As it stands, he still seems to be the analogue audio designer on products for Topping (I've not seen a DAC+AMP all-in-one device release, ever since his products started hitting the market). I don't know if that has changed in any way (seeing as how he's probably still spearheading the ever-delayed power amp that supposedly going to de-throne Benchmark's ABH2's half-decade long performance crown). Though he has been showing hints of learning lots about DAC chips and such, so we may yet see him take up that mantle in the future (not sure if his technical expertise is sufficient to actually design things around DAC's, but I assume it wouldn't be much work for him, seeing as he's pretty smart technically speaking, and it's not like using off-the-shelf DAC chips should be too difficult to learn from the DAC designer Topping has used in the past).

Sorry for the TL;DR
 

Rottmannash

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Thanks. How do you know all this about him? Did he give background here at some point? He seems terribly intelligent for sure. Not sure if his designs have left THX in the dirt but that's another debate for another time...
 

Rusty Shackleford

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Second part is false completely. Shipping cost is more than the cost of the unit. Also you can't import used good into China. Not possible. Don't act like you know all this. Just stop.

Can you do the math on this, please? How much is the cost of the unit? How much is shipping? It would help us understand the situation.
 

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Thanks. How do you know all this about him? Did he give background here at some point? He seems terribly intelligent for sure. Not sure if his designs have left THX in the dirt but that's another debate for another time...

Just been around since those times. I think he did give background a while ago, but I can't recall precisely. Oh and in terms of leaving THX in the dirt, performance wise (where any dB of SINAD improvement at this stage is pushing the limits of the parts used in the eventual amp), it is only in virtue of that. Audibly, there of course doesn't seem to be audible improvements, but the THX designs have been conquered in many respects. It would be like if someone surpassed Usain Bolt by a couple hundredths or tenths of a second. John did so, and delivered it in unbalanced configurations as well as balanced.

As well as the newly looked upon metric by some like me with greater attention (the 50mW output) delivering if I'm not mistaken 95dB of DR (1dB off of CD quality dynamic range) which was unheard of. Though I theorize RME delivers or beats this, and the only thing holding them back is the DAC implementation they chose, as it seemingly is bottlenecking whatever crazy performance their analogue stage is capable of, which we don't have access to without first engaging the DAC obviously.

I'm sure he'd give you more of a complete picture if you were to PM him, as he seems like a nice and passionate guy over audio performance and such. (I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the next Topping DACAMP all-in-one, knowing what he does with amps.. and now taking a keen interest in DAC designs and chips, I'm hoping for the day he and a partner push each other's input to deliver on some of the splash delivered by earlier Topping offerings like the DX3 Pro, and DX7 Pro). Though as he told me once - DACAMPs don't make financial sense. Tougher to design (since you need a digital and analogue specialist - so obviously more things that can go wrong), and are offering the package in 1 device, usually leading to less profit than selling separates.
 

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Something like making a public statement of "we'll replace any headphone, and fix all defective units anyone has" is idiotic. I could be upset with my headphones currently as they may have channel imbalance, and go and damage them, claiming the Topping device did it. If such a public aforementioned statement was made, Topping would serve as an insurance company, more than an audio company with how many people would potentially be making claims about damaged headphones (if only to get a new one in case theirs isn't to their liking anymore).

Presumably Topping would want to see that the unit did, in fact, fail. What are the odds that someone could buy a unit and make it fail? If they’re that likely to fail, it’s a much bigger issue than what’s been discussed.
 

Jose Hidalgo

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I've stumbled into this topic, and here's what I see :
  • A new member that seems to have registered to ASR in order to talk publicly about an eBay issue and about Topping's L30 replacement program, continuously lecturing Topping about how things should have been handled / could be handled according to him, and making inaccurate assumptions (e.g. production costs vs. shipping costs). Like @Tks wisely said, the OP is out of his depth here, because he's missing critical information that no manufacturer would ever disclose (know of any manufacturer publicly revealing its production costs ? :facepalm:)

  • A Topping representative reacting to the OP's posts even though he didn't need to, and being extremely patient IMHO.
I won't discuss about eBay or Topping's replacement program (I personally think that Topping has handled the L30 thing just fine). I'm just surprised here : if the OP wanted to report something, he should have contacted Topping directly ( https://www.tpdz.net/contact ), or even reported it to eBay himself. But instead he chose to register specifically to ASR forums (last time I checked, ASR was not affiliated with Topping :rolleyes:) and start a soon-10-page flame war about an issue (reckless eBay sellers) that may be very real but that has nothing to do with ASR.

Makes me wonder why the OP did this. Call me paranoid, but when I'm facing such behaviour, I always think of hidden agendas. I'm not saying that it's the case here, but that's always my first thought. If only the OP would have been an active ASR member prior to this, I wouldn't have said anything... But why did the OP register to ASR just for this ? And did he report the same issue elsewhere ?

So with the same logic used by the OP, I will just say that by choosing that course of action, the OP was clearly irrational. Such course of action was clumsy to say the least. What could other ASR members possibly bring to such issues ? Nothing of course. So why are people even discussing this ? :facepalm: (I'm not BTW - like I said, I won't discuss about eBay or Topping's replacement program).

Hopefully this will be my only post in this topic. Good day all ! :)
 

Rottmannash

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I've stumbled into this topic, and here's what I see :
  • A new member that seems to have registered to ASR in order to talk publicly about an eBay issue and about Topping's L30 replacement program, continuously lecturing Topping about how things should have been handled / could be handled according to him, and making inaccurate assumptions (e.g. production costs vs. shipping costs). Like @Tks wisely said, the OP is out of his depth here, because he's missing critical information that no manufacturer would ever disclose (know of any manufacturer publicly revealing its production costs ? :facepalm:)

  • A Topping representative reacting to the OP's posts even though he didn't need to, and being extremely patient IMHO.
I won't discuss about eBay or Topping's replacement program (I personally think that Topping has handled the L30 thing just fine). I'm just surprised here : if the OP wanted to report something, he should have contacted Topping directly ( https://www.tpdz.net/contact ), or even reported it to eBay himself. But instead he chose to register specifically to ASR forums (last time I checked, ASR was not affiliated with Topping :rolleyes:) and start a soon-10-page flame war about an issue (reckless eBay sellers) that may be very real but that has nothing to do with ASR.

Makes me wonder why the OP did this. Call me paranoid, but when I'm facing such behaviour, I always think of hidden agendas. I'm not saying that it's the case here, but that's always my first thought. If only the OP would have been an active ASR member prior to this, I wouldn't have said anything... But why did the OP register to ASR just for this ? And did he report the same issue elsewhere ?

So with the same logic used by the OP, I will just say that by choosing that course of action, the OP was clearly irrational. Such course of action was clumsy to say the least. What could other ASR members possibly bring to such issues ? Nothing of course. So why are people even discussing this ? :facepalm: (I'm not BTW - like I said, I won't discuss about eBay or Topping's replacement program).

Hopefully this will be my only post in this topic. Good day all ! :)
Why would you take the time to post on this topic, seeing how you feel it's a waste of time and effort? I don't know the OP but it appears he had a genuine and legitimate concern over the selling of faulty units on eBay. You are the 2nd person to characterize the OP as " irrational" but the first to call his efforts "clumsy". Do YOU know him? Do you have a hidden agenda? And as for what other ASR members could bring to this issue-well, it appears after 9 pages of discourse there was quite a bit members had to say and most of them have knowledge of Topping and are aware of the history of this HP amp and its failures.
 
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Blank Verse

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I've stumbled into this topic, and here's what I see :
  • A new member that seems to have registered to ASR in order to talk publicly about an eBay issue and about Topping's L30 replacement program, continuously lecturing Topping about how things should have been handled / could be handled according to him, and making inaccurate assumptions (e.g. production costs vs. shipping costs). Like @Tks wisely said, the OP is out of his depth here, because he's missing critical information that no manufacturer would ever disclose (know of any manufacturer publicly revealing its production costs ? :facepalm:)

  • A Topping representative reacting to the OP's posts even though he didn't need to, and being extremely patient IMHO.
I won't discuss about eBay or Topping's replacement program (I personally think that Topping has handled the L30 thing just fine). I'm just surprised here : if the OP wanted to report something, he should have contacted Topping directly ( https://www.tpdz.net/contact ), or even reported it to eBay himself. But instead he chose to register specifically to ASR forums (last time I checked, ASR was not affiliated with Topping :rolleyes:) and start a soon-10-page flame war about an issue (reckless eBay sellers) that may be very real but that has nothing to do with ASR.

Makes me wonder why the OP did this. Call me paranoid, but when I'm facing such behaviour, I always think of hidden agendas. I'm not saying that it's the case here, but that's always my first thought. If only the OP would have been an active ASR member prior to this, I wouldn't have said anything... But why did the OP register to ASR just for this ? And did he report the same issue elsewhere ?

So with the same logic used by the OP, I will just say that by choosing that course of action, the OP was clearly irrational. Such course of action was clumsy to say the least. What could other ASR members possibly bring to such issues ? Nothing of course. So why are people even discussing this ? :facepalm: (I'm not BTW - like I said, I won't discuss about eBay or Topping's replacement program).

Hopefully this will be my only post in this topic. Good day all ! :)
I am warning the public of people selling defective L30 units in eBay. That was the only purpose of this thread. What hidden agenda do you think I have?

As I explained earlier, I have been looking at reviews for headphone amps for a few months. I read many forums, not only this one. So I was aware of the L30, and was planning on getting one before this issue came up.

I posted in this forum exclusively because I know that John Yang posts here, so I was hoping to catch his eye. As I have explained ad nauseam, having people sell defective L30 units in eBay is really bad for Topping in many ways. My feeling is that Topping is a small company and they just worry mostly about producing and seling equipment, but as is the case with small companies, they probably haven't given too much thought to some other aspects of the business.

Every defective L30 unit that gets sold on eBay is a lost sale for Topping, plus a potential problem and bad publicity down the line. You would have to be someone of limited intellectual resources not to understand something this simple.

I am done with this thread. It brings me no profit to continue spending time on something somebody else should be occupied in. I did my part to alert the community. Remember this thread when random people who bought defective units start writing posts months and years from now about their equipment being destroyed (hopefully just their equipment).

BTW, I already got one seller to withdraw an auction for a defective L30. The guy had sold 8 through Facebook already. Think about that for a second. It is not my job to waste my valuable time on this matter, it reports me no benefit. Basically it is somebody else's job. But, as I said earlier, I invite other people who read this to report all defective L30 units they find to eBay. As of yesterday there were between 15 and 20. An absolute testament to the effectiveness of the honor system.
 
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Blank Verse

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Why would you take the time to post on this topic, seeing how you feel it's a waste of time and effort? I don't know the OP but it appears he had a genuine and legitimate concern over the selling of faulty units on eBay. You are the 2nd person to characterize the OP as " irrational" but the first to call his efforts "clumsy". Do YOU know him? Do you have a hidden agenda? And as for what other ASR members could bring to this issue-well, it appears after 9 pages of discourse there was quite a bit members had to say and most of them have knowledge of Topping and are aware of the history of this HP amp and its failures.
Yeah, I'm OK with somebody adorning their text at a rate of 3 emoticons per paragraph calling me irrational. Usually when I use the word "irrational" I use it to characterize specific arguments (and not people), and I always explain my reasons for doing so. I have made my argument rather cogently as far as I am concerned, but if people want to stick their head under the sand it's not my problem.
 

_thelaughingman

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My feeling is that Topping is a small company and they just worry mostly about producing and seling equipment, but as is the case with small companies, they probably haven't given too much thought to some other aspects of the business.

I feel like that’s a pretty substantial assumption to make that Topping does not have some sort of contingency or business process to deal with these kinds of situations because they’re a small business. Based on the evidence and response of how it’s been dealt with by Topping, they’ve done a far better job than many companies with bigger pockets.
 

Rottmannash

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Perhaps it's time to close this thread, as it appears to have served its purpose.
 

Jose Hidalgo

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I don't know the OP but it appears he had a genuine and legitimate concern over the selling of faulty units on eBay
Which is why he should have contacted Topping directly, or eBay. That would have been rational, exactly like I said.
There is no point in "hoping to catch John Yang's eye" when the OP could have sent a message directly to Topping and be sure to "catch their eye" without needing to "hope" anything. That argument just doesn't hold.

Do you have a hidden agenda?
Yes, in my secret room next to my invisibility cloak. You are welcome to check my 587 previous posts and find all about my plans for world domination.

it appears after 9 pages of discourse [...]
It appears nothing at all. Nothing has changed after 9 time-wasting pages, because no ASR member can do anything to help solve either of the discussed issues.

Only John Yang can do something, but not because he's an ASR member : because he's a Topping employee. Hence the fact that the OP should have contacted Topping directly, or eBay... or even John privately, since it appears that he knew about him (which would have been a worse solution than contacting Topping directly, since John is a product designer and is not supposed to handle the discussed stuff - he only gets involved out of kindness).

I am done wasting my time too. But hey, what a way to enter ASR for the OP ! I'm sure he will have made lots of friends in the previous 9 pages (good job !). At least he has succeeded with me, since I'll be putting him in my ignore list from now on. I just can't stand that kind of people : they talk a lot, they believe they are superior and that they can lecture everybody about everything, when they basically know nothing.

Bye now. And yes, I hope this useless thread gets closed soon.
 

Rottmannash

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Jstutman

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Ouch. Even ASR isn't immune to the new cancel culture. Is this our first? A random member joining ASR and attempting to cancel Topping because of they addressed an issue with one of their items perfectly? I am sorry @JohnYang1997 but as they saying goes "Don't feed the trolls"

I am just ashamed this post has not been moderated at all. It almost like all the shills from that other forum, are making their way here.
 
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