Review on Andrea Communications NC 181VM USB Noise Canceling by Karla Schwinden

I bought this headset with a built in sound card to use with my Dragon Naturally Speaking speech recognition software. I find the long cable and the fact that the headset can be rotated so that one earphone can be worn on both ears positive. On the other hand, the plastic piece on the other side of the head is uncomfortable and painfully rubs against the ears (at least on my head). Oh yes, and the fact that I received the item on September 12th and it completely died on November 12th without warning. It didn't take 60 days. I have taken care of these headphones, treated them so carefully, it was amazing. They were not subjected to violence. I have never grabbed the headset by the cord, I have always unplugged it by grasping both sides of the headset and gently removing it. I never put anything on a headset or cable. When not in use, the headset was placed on my computer screen so it wasn't lying on the table. I never wet him, never pulled him, the closest thing to insult was sneezing into the mic if I couldn't remove the headset before it happened. (The mic wasn't the problem.) The headset was in use, worked well when I had to get up to get something done. I came back and the block was dead. There was no sound through the headset, the speech recognition program no longer recognized the hardware connected to the computer. Nobody, not even a pet, entered the room while I was gone. It just died and nothing I tried could get it working again. I took my ipod headphones and plugged them into my computer and the sound worked fine. Obviously something is wrong with the headphones, either something loosened and came out, or the sound card failed and died. I don't blame Revain or the third party for this. I blame Andrea Electronics as they went to great lengths to avoid having to replace a defective unit. I contacted them immediately on November 12th to request a replacement under warranty, I explained to them in great detail what had or had not happened and then they started emailing me with questions for the next few days . Did I check the sound? I already told them about it, but yes. Then I have to wait for the next question to come in the next email. It was clear they were trying to drag this out and force me to give up as there was no reason why they couldn't ask all the questions at once or in multiple emails instead of one per email. This interrogation lasted several days. They then demanded a Revain bill. I sent them a PDF, got an email reply, no this is the wrong invoice, we need another invoice, we need the one they emailed you. So I emailed them one of the invoices from Revain. No that's wrong, there is another one that has the information we need but this one doesn't. So I forwarded them every email I received from Revain regarding this order and asked if any of them had all the information you needed. Because I have nothing more to send you. This letter was ignored for several days. So I emailed them again this morning to ask if they needed anything else and if they would accept the return and send me a replacement. I then received an email asking me to send the headphones in at my own expense and I had to insure them at my own expense. I was also told that I would have to wait for them to receive it, then I would have to wait up to ten days for them to test the hardware and see if they really believe it's a manufacturing defect, and then only if they do it thought so send me a replacement. Basically between delays and holidays it can be a month before I see a replacement. Obviously they tried to put as many obstacles in their way as possible to hold me back. So I was forced to contact Revane and ask what they could do about it. Although I didn't have the usual return period, they kindly agreed to accept the return and refund my money so I could purchase a replacement item from another manufacturer. I'm not entirely impressed with the quality of the item considering how absurdly careful I was with it and it still broke without warning. THIS is how you treat customers whose product died under warranty and not the ridiculous amount of work Andrea Electronics put me through to return a $30 item. If you purchase this item be aware that they have shown anything but customer friendliness and cooperation and if you have a problem they will genuinely pull it out to try and get you to give up and give up. Having read the rest of the negative reviews I now intend to give before purchasing this item, it seems clear that a number of people have had issues with the block dying after 2-3 months of use, sometimes less and at least another person had difficulties with Andrea's customer service. So, keep that in mind before purchasing this headset. You do so at your own risk.