Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I ordered these earphones to help minimize office noise, and used them to tie into my desktop computer system. The first week the noise cancellation worked fairly well, and the office chatter going on around me was cut by about 50 percent. The second week of use I could hear the click when engaging the noise cancellation, but it seemed like the noises were not cancelled, but rather they seemed like they were somewhat amplified. The design of the earbuds and cords themselves could use a little improvement. I noticed a couple of other reviews that indicated they didn't fit inside the ear canals of some of the users very well. I had the same problem. My $10.00 Panasonic ear buds fit nicely, but the Quietcomfort 20 earbuds didn't fit well with any of the 3 sizes of included attachments. Another issue that I noticed is that the plastic volume button where the two cords connect to a single cord didn't have any strain reliefs. The cords coming out of the buds have strain reliefs, and the cord going into and out of the noise cancelling on/off switch box have strain reliefs, but not the areas going into and out of the volume control area. I probably wouldn't have thought twice about this, but the reason my older Bose non-noise cancelling earbuds needed to be replaced was due to no strain reliefs coming out of the buds. Why not include them on all areas where the cords enter a piece of plastic on a $249.99 product? After a bit of use, I also didn't like the fact that the USB charge cord was only about 12.5 inches long. I have a USB plug in on the side of my computer monitor. The cord was barely long enough to reach the charge port on the On/Off box. This cable is way too short for anyone wanting to plug into an outlet adapter or a CPU, and then route the cable to a nearby table without the On/Off box dangling. Even adding 6-8 inches of cable would help. Speaking of cable length, another annoyance is that the plug-in end of On/Off box only has about 3 to 4 inches of wire coming out of it. Unless you have the perfect scenario, the weight of the On/Off box is likely going to hang from the plug in, rather than resting on the desk surface. This could have been easily fixed by adding another 4-6 inches of wire, or moving the box up the wire another 4-6 inches. The 3-4 inches of wire and plug-in aren't very robust, so I doubt the wire and plug would last long after hanging in various positions. Because of this issue with the noise cancellation not working properly, and the small design issues, I ended up returning my earbuds. I understand that defects can happen with any and all brands, but the design issues should have been easily identified by anyone testing the product for a period of time in different scenarios. At $249.99 I'd like to not only get good noise cancelling technology, but I want the materials to last, and the design to be well thought out.