Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

On 8 Oct 2011, I received a Jawbone Jambox Bluetooth speaker as a gift, which my husband purchased for me on 6 Oct 2011 from Amazon. It was a great product, with good sound clarity. I was very impressed with the speaker's range and capabilities, although I did feel the usability left a few things to be desired. However, I had a problem in that it didn't seem to hold a charge. I contacted Jawbone's support via e-mail (form on their website) on 29 Nov 2011 for assistance. Unlike many other support services, their agent seemed to be truly reading my e-mails and not just scanning for keywords and sending form responses. However, once we got to the point that we determined an RMA was in order, support informed me that they were "out of stock" and couldn't promise when they'd have a replacement unit in stock. They said I could send my unit in but they couldn't tell me when I'd get a replacement. They could not even give me a range, e.g., 4-6 weeks, 2-3 months. However, at the same time as they were telling me they were out of stock and could make no promises, they were selling my exact model on their website with indication that they are "in stock", so the claims of being out of stock ring false. When I pointed this out to the support representative, he provided no explanation for the discrepancy but instead continued to say they were out of stock. He recommended I continue to "check in with them" periodically to see if a replacement was available. I asked if, per their stated Warranty, if they could offer a refund since a replacement or repair seemed to be unavailable. Unsurprisingly, they declined that option. This feels to me very much like an attempt to get out of honoring the warranty by putting the consumer off and/or making it so unappealing as to discourage pursuit of the warranty. At best, I suspect that they're simply "out of stock" of replacement units, i.e., re-furbished units, even though the warranty says replacement will be either new or re-furb and not limited to re-furbished units. I don't think that it's honoring the spirit of the warranty to delay replacement on that basis. I further think it's against the spirit if not the actual wording of the warranty to refuse to replace a faulty unit in any way when the unit failed in less than 60 days from the point of purchase. Finally, I think it's beyond the sense of reason to tell a customer with a ~$200 product that is now a paperweight that it's up to them to keep contacting you periodically to find out when the warranty will be honored. Admittedly, I've been lucky enough to not have very many issues requiring warranty service with my other electronics, but when I have, I have never run into this sort of shenanigan. After this, there is no way I will spend money with them again, and I advise others to do the same. It may be within Jawbone's legal right to handle warranty requests in this way, but I think it shows an unwillingness to stand behind the quality of the product as well as a lack of caring about their customers once the sale is complete. As for my specific situation, I'm basically out of luck. I'm past the return window (30 days) to return it to Amazon. I'm not the only person who has run into this battery issue, and I wouldn't be surprised if that was part of the cause of their "out of stock" issue on replacement units. Buy at your own risk, because you may or may not ever be able to get Jawbone to actually honor their warranty. Edited 12/3/2012: Jawbone sent a replacement (which seems to be a new unit) on 11/20/2012 (more than a year after this review), which I received on 11/23/2012. So far, it is working fine, and I will update again after a few more weeks with status as to whether it outlasts the previous unit. I posted more details about my email exchange with Jawbone in the comments on this review, but the most notable aspect is that Jawbone claims to have improved their warranty handling but did not make any specific commitments to a) honor warranty requests or b) ensure in-stock units in reasonable timeframes in the future. While my specific issue has been resolved by this replacement, I don't know that I feel right saying that others should feel fine ordering this product given how long it took to get a response and that the response (both below and in the exchanges in the comment thread on this post) was non-committal as far as how other people's issues might be handled.