Great Support for a Great Product

A couple of years ago, I received a Shox mini-speaker as a thank you gift for a presentation that I had given.  This thing is awesome.

 

 

The dimension are pretty small.  If you check the photo below, I’ve compared it to a two dollar coin.  It’s just that small.

 

 

The Genumark website calls it one of the coolest gadgets you’ll find and I agree totally.  When you extend the unit to get the full bass experience, the audio is rich enough to fill a normal sized room for presentations.  For me, it’s also small enough to tuck away into a computer bag to use while travelling.  It charges itself using your computer’s USB port and plays back using the mini-audio jack that you’ll find on your computer or  any portable device that you might have.  If you can plug in ear buds or headphones, you can plug this in.

It’s become my travelling companion – it’s always nice to listen to music or a podcast from a strange hotel room.  The weight is negligible making it the perfect multi-media device to take with you.

And I did.  This unit has gone all over the place with me.  Of course, when in a bigger hall for presentations, something larger is required but for hotel or regular sized classrooms, it’s perfect.

Then, I decided to clean out my computer bag!

Like many people, I tend to accumulate stuff.  I’m really bad at accumulating cables and so spent some time weeding and trying to get down to one of each.

I’m not sure if it was then or the next time that I was on the road but there came a time when I needed a speaker, I dug into my computer bag, and found the speaker but no cable.  Now, this doesn’t require just any regular cable – my bag had lots of them.  If you look at the image above, the jack somehow merges with the USB cable before going to the speaker for charging and playback purposes.  I didn’t sweat it at the time – I was running late and I knew that the discards from my weeding process were in a conference bag next to my computer desk.

Some time later, I decided to go looking for the cable and, sadly, it wasn’t in the bag.  I did start to panic a little and started moving couches, chairs, and any large object that it might have hidden under.  I found a little change and the typical things that one might find under furniture but no cable.  I was feeling pretty upset, threw the speaker back into my bag, and forgot about it.

Then, I started to do another cleanup and found the speaker again.  I was at a crossroads.  I could take the speaker to a technology recycle place but decided to do an internet search to see what a replacement cable was worth.  It was a gamble because, remember, I got it as a gift.  Well, it turned out that Genumark is the sole distributor for the speaker in Canada.  I put on my humble and stupid personality face and sent an email confessing publically that I’m a moron and asked for the price to relieve it.

Often, emails like that just get banished to someone else’s recycle bin.  But, in this case, a delightful person name Monique replied asking where I bought it.  I was impressed to even get a response so poured out my whole life story (well, at least the part that was relative to this situation).  She got back to this pitiful end user – not even a customer really – asking for a mailing address.  Within a couple of days, a box arrived with a replacement cable.  All at no charge to me.  I was so impressed and grateful!

The point to this long story?

In this sometimes negative world, it’s so refreshing to find a great customer service representative and a great company that stands by their products.  Certainly, I’ve given them plenty of positive press when I do a presentation and people come up afterwards wanting to know more about the speaker. I can’t tell you the number of times that people have handled it and written down the name.  So, with this blog post, I’ll give them one more plug!

If you are looking for a small, portable speaker with a big voice, you’ve got to check this out!  At 30 bucks, it’s also not going to bankrupt anyone!