Aurelien

Sorry to hear that Aurelien. International business is fraught with all kinds of difficulties and obstacles I'm sure. I suspece distributor and retailer agreements get very complicated. In this case Klipsch probably has very complex agreements with the distributor for each company, then the distributor would have agreements with retailers / resellers. And as it's an international transaction I'm sure there are major difficulties in shipping and receiving even warranty merchandise between countries? I don't think I noticed that my Image X10 strain reliefs had split until I've had them and used them well over a year maybe within 6 months of the 2 year warranty expiring? In my case, the spllitting never got worse but seemed like replacement was the way to go. Don't know if I got a newer version with improved strain reliefs or pretty much what I had to begin with though mine were labeled IMAGE before they became the Image X10. The Image X5 are my favorite in ear Klipsch 'phones so I hope yours keep working fine for years. Some have suggested things they've tried in the Headphone's section so searching may find some ideas. To see all posts, click on options and select to display all posts in section as it defaults to most recent 3 months and I swear gets reset occasionally. That said I think the search will find post you won't find by scrolling through the posts. Maybe Professor Thump or others can offer suggestions to keep your X5 from getting any worse. Good luck! Thank you for your advices, the X5 are also my absolute favorite ears :-) . Although I haven't found any miracle solution, if Professor Thump has any idea about it I'll take good advice!

Well I'm very disappointed by the Klipsch customer service in Europe: I've got a X5 with split strain reliefs, and Klipsch is basically telling me to sort it out with the retailer where the X5 were bought, when the retailer is telling me that they won't take them for an exchange because they only offer a 1 year warranty (the phones were bought in July 2009 and the retailer is on Amazon Marketplace). If this is a manufacturing problem, how can't Klipsch offer a worldwide exchange service ? I'm even willing to send them back overseas at my own expense, but this doesn't even seem possible ! The reliefs started to split approximately 10 months after the purchasing date and I've been very cautious with the earphones, systematically keeping them in their case. Now I'm stuck with phones falling apart a little more each day and it seems like there is nothing I can do about it... I feel like European customers are second class customers for Klipsch, and this is rather disappointing. If a European customer happened to face the same problem and somehow managed to get his phones exchanged I would really appreciate his help.