Who's The Bose?

Spot the difference.

I love my Bose headphones. They make walking the 15-minute walk to lectures more than just bearable, and 3-hour train rides feel blissful. When I fold them they smile back at me.
One day on the way back from lectures, I took them out, put them on my neck and pulled one side to extend them. That's when they broke.

For about a couple of weeks I had to bear walking to lectures with no music. The iPod earphones are horribly inadequate replacements. It's like trying to replace a Ferrari with a Daihatsu. And I wasn't fine with a Daihatsu Charade. I wanted my Ferrari Enzo.

So last Sunday we went to the Designer Outlet in York, just to shop. I wasn't planning to spend much. I really only wanted to buy shoes, really comfy shoes, because my K-Swiss is as worn out as a duck after a marathon.

I brought my broken Bose because Bose has a factory outlet there, and I thought they'd fix it for a small price ( by small price, I mean £30-40). There we were in Bose asking this guy "is there anything you can do to this?" and he goes " I'll ask the manager and we'll see what we can do."

Usually that means "I have no fucking idea. Buy a new one, you cheap bastard." But no, he came back with an offer. Here's the rest of the conversation, to the best of my memory.

Bose guy: "Obviously we can't repair this in respect to the warranty because it's out of the usual 'wear and tear,' but we can give you a replacement at half price."

Now this comes from a company which is notorious for never discounting anything for more than 10%. So getting a new one at 50% was a total surprise.

"Oh wow! That's better than I expected."

So I paid £50 (which is actually less than half the price. The original is £119.99), which is a lot less than the ones I was looking on eBay.

So brand new Bose for £50. Fucking great deal. I can't recommend these headphones enough, even at their admittedly-expensive £119.99 original price tag. They are great to travel with (light and you can't hear anything from the outside world) and stylish. Some will find the bass a bit too loud. I actually love it. And the mid-range sounds are excellently done.

Pill has got a noise-cancelling Bose, which sounds a bit better (bigger bass!), but I couldn't afford the £270 price tag.

I can't even look at Sennheiser headphones because they look ugly and unnecessarily big. I don't want to look like a metallic insect when I'm listening to M.I.A. or Trivium. Skullcandy looks great, but sounds like your three-year-old nephew having a mini concert with thrash cans.

Signing out

Over and out