London Sound Reviews 22

Mr Solomons, if you see this please get in touch with me. I returned my Armstrong amplifier to you for repair in February 2025. You acknowledged receipt by email on the 17th. Since then I have made several attempts by email and phone to contact you to check on progress of the repair. For whatever reason, I have not had a reply to any of my emails or voicemail messages. In desperation, I sent you a recorded delivery letter which apparently you signed for on the 27th May. However, I still have heard nothing from you. Please simply let me know that you are OK and inform me of the status of the repair.

I'm yet another customer who has been illegally treated by this dreadful establishment. When so many of your customers are leaving negative reviews, eventually you'd think Mr Solomon would get the message? In my case - as in others - my amplifier repair took the best part of a year, yes a year!!! I was abroad when the repair was completed. I paid for the repair on return but Mr Solomon then advised the price had gone up due to storage costs. So he now has my money and my equipment. Immoral and illegal behaviour. Pernicious.

Mr Solomons response to my negative review is predictable and stereotypical. Taking each of his points in turn:

"Most of the above is untrue" - Every word I wrote is completely true and accurate based on my records of correspondence with him over nearly 4 years and the detailed notes I kept on our affairs.

"attempt to evade paying money" - Mr Solomons still appears to think that "money" is the essential characteristic of my claims and that of several other customers, three of whom I am in frequent contact with. My review emphasised in the first paragraph that in making my contract with Mr Solomons I "would have been quite happy to pay any amount under his estimate." That is no longer the case because he broke our contract. He took 452 days to delay repairing the equipment at the heart of the contract, and in addition refused to reply to emails or telephone calls. I wrote to him on two occasions, by email and letter on each occasion, to declare that he was now in breach of contract and he must return my property immediately.

It has been explained to him, by a judge at Watford County Court, that any reasonable person would expect such a repair to take weeks, not months (or in one similar case 6 years.) The judge further explained to Mr Solomons that he had no right to hold a lien on property after the contract was terminated and to do so was unlawful. Demanding money under such circumstances was also unlawful.

I would have been happy to pay Mr Solomons the amount he claimed after 6 months, or even after a year, but he completely breached my trust and my faith in him as an honest broker, and I gave him notice of termination after 452 days. He promptly ignored my notification and started work (he says) on the equipment. Too late, Mr Solomons.

For some reason he completely fails to understand the law even when it has been explained to him that what he did was unlawful. He continues to act unlawfully, and in doing so he is ignoring the direction of the judge who ruled against him. He is now in full knowledge of the law and appears to be holding the judge's decisions and the court itself in contempt. This is not about the money, nor a refusal to pay "what is owed". Mr Solomons breached our contract, and I gave him clear notice that he had. Perhaps Mr Solomons thinks contracts to deliver a service such as a repair are unimportant? Or that contracts are only for him to determine?

"he has not paid for the work carried out" - quite clearly I gave Mr Solomons an instruction both by email and letter, on two occasions, that he was in breach of contract. (This means cease any work if started, and return the property to the owner.) He immediately and perversely ignored my notice, and without further communication started work on the repair. By this time I would not have wanted him or trustred him to repair a broken toy, never mind a classic and valued hi-fi receiver I had owned for 45 years. That is why I have not paid Mr Solomons for work carried out - because by that time I did not want him to carry out the work as the relationship between us had completely broken down, and he was clearly in breach of contract.

"he is trying by what feels like extortion or blackmail to obtain his equipment" - Imagine if Mr Solomons owned, say, a classic white Rolls Royce in pristine condition, and I represented myself to him as a classic car repairer, and took his car in for repair, but did nothing for it for a year and a half. If I also then failed to communicate with the him for months or even years at a time, until finally the game was up and Mr Solomons demanded his car back and terminated the contract, only to find that the fake auto-repairer was holding the Rolls Royce hostage until Mr Solomons paid a bill for work he no longer wanted to be done.

In fact it is Mr Solomons who has been attempting to use blackmail or extortion to demand money from customers who no longer trusted him and no longer wanted him anywhere near their property. In continuing to do so he lays himself open to charges of blackmail under the Theft Act 1968 referred to previously. It is Mr Solomons, not I, who seems to be attempting blackmail or extortion, and he has been told by a judge that this is unlawful - yet he persists.

"no moral or legal excuse" (for not paying what I owe you) - I am reminded of President Trump or Boris Johnson, lecturing others on morality and legality, when it is Mr Solomons who is, quite clearly, acting unlawfully (and I am compelled to repeat this) as explained to him by a judge in the County Court on 31st May 2024.

Perhaps Mr Solomons, if he responds to this, could explain the legality of his actions in the light of the judgement of the Watford County Court , a judgement he never refers to in any of his responses here on Trustpilot.

Mr Solomons continued unlawful actions leave him open to further legal charges under the Theft Act 1968.

The response of Michael Solomons to a decisive judgment against him following trial by a County Court indicates that this is a trader who should not be permitted to carry on business. In the course of his evidence Mr Solomons asserted that he was entitled to retain possession of his customer's equipment for periods of time amounting to years; also entitled to reject lawful requests for return of goods and termination of contract of retainer; to be entitled not to give an evaluation of condition on receipt; or to provide charging rates; time sheets or proper accounts of work carried out. He described reasonable requests for information from customer's whose equipment was held for over two years as "nagging". His evidence was entirely rejected by the trial judge. The account below was merely the latest of county court actions against him, but not the first in which he refused to be bound by the judgment or to acknowledge his liability arising from it. His response to the trading test case against him is seen below, alleging irresponsibly that it would have been cheaper to pay him the unlawfully demanded charges than bring the case in the County Court. This was not a financially driven claim, it was a consumer malfeasance claim against a rogue trader with a long history of misconduct to customers. Mr Solomons declines to provide particulars of purported supporting customers whilst concurrently claiming that aggrieved customers do not exist or are trade competitors attempting to discredit him.
Aggrieved customers should contact Harrow police in respect of any equipment he continues to retain following a demand for return; or if payment has been made under duress to obtain return of their equipment.
Action is in train to prevent further false on line trade representations by Michael Solomons.

I delivered my Quad 2 Power Amps and Pre Amp to Mr Solomons at London Sound in March 2018 !! He fobbed me off for a couple of years always claiming he was about to start the work. When I demanded the return of my equipment he refused saying he had started work on them. I told him I no longer wanted him to touch my equipment and to return it immediately, he refused again.
When threatened with Court he demanded payment with no specified work carried out.
Mr Solomons was taken to Court by another customer that was suffering the same treatment and I joined the case. There are many other customers with an interest in this case who have also suffered similar treatment from Mr Solomons.
On 31/5/24 at Watford County Court Mr Solomons was found guilty of acting unlawfully and was ordered to return all equipment and pay costs.
The man is a fantasist and a crook! Avoid at all costs!!

About ten years back Mr Solomons repaired my 1980 Onkyo amplifier, removing persistent noise from the signal. As best I recall, the fault turned out to be no more than dirt in the contacts; I was happy to pay his charge of £200. The amplifier has been in frequent use ever since.

This updates my review of 22 September. Mr Solomons contacted me following that and has now returned the receiver. The repair cost was within the estimate range and he rechecked its operation before returning it.
I believe the main issue was a failure of Mr Solomons to respond to my emails in late 2019 asking whether the work was complete. It was not a failure in the quality of workmanship. He suggests that I was making weekly requests for updates: this was not correct and the first was three months after I left it, with subsequent monthly requests until I gave up when COVID started. I hope this would not occur again.
Overall, good workmanship but poor communications. I am very pleased it is now resolved.

I left an Armstrong receiver with Mr Solomons on 21 February 2019 and still have the receipt for the deposit of £100 that I paid. Regardless of numerous emails and attempted phone calls I never received a response regarding progress of the repair. I gave up, thinking Covid must have taken him, but I see not! He has both my receiver and the £100. I have just found the receipt and I thought I would look to see if he is still with us. Apparently yes, or at least was last year. Not very good service!
Edit: Mr Solomons has now responded, the first I have ever received. I correct the suggestion of weekly chasing, my first email was six months after leaving the receiver, the second seven months - October 2019. Thereafter, I made unanswered phone calls. Mr Solomons could have contacted me at any point in the last 4 years. I await an invoice, still not received, and will amend my review when I have received a working receiver repaired within estimated cost. I hope this will now be resolved.

best to be avoided. Armstrong receiver was sent to me with a report stating: "The general working condition of your receiver is now excellent; it should last for a long time if it is used carefully. All functions appear to be now almost 'as new'."
from the day I received it, bulbs were not working and very quickly i noticed an issue on one channel which eventually ended with the channel blowing up. I returned the received under "so said" guarantee and problem occurred again after few days. Sent to another engineer who solved the issue (damaged soldering on output transformer) for a small fraction of the price charged by LondonSound. Operating perfectly now for 3 months. Mike loves to chat and is maybe a nice person to speak with but he does not endorse its responsibility so stay away from him and don't waste your money and time like I did.
EDIT in response to Solomons response: I did indeed ask for a compensation (I did not ask for money specifically) to Mr Solomon which is my right since he never met his obligation of result (he completed the work on 31/12/2020 to be precise he delivered end of january 2021 and i informed him about first issue on 6 February 2021). I returned the receiver under his 12 month guarantee (beginning december 2021) and received it back in March 2022 due notably to courier issues with undue customs claims, beyond Mr Solomons responsibility... but he did not solve the problem as I informed him in March 2022... so I had to go to another serious and skilled professional to avoid further hassle with customs. It was simply left at the engineer a couple of months because i had no time to travel to pick it up back. Repairs have never been properly done .MR Solomons prefers spending time arguing and being overpedantic rather than repairing hi fi properly. I am not the only one to report this so think twice before sending him any gear

I bought an Armstrong 625 receiver on ebay about 15 months ago. It wasn't working properly so I contacted Mr. Mike Solomons at London Sound with a view to having it repaired. Mr. Solomons had been recommended to me so I had no hesitation in contacting him. He undertook to repair the Armstrong for me so I paid the deposit and sent it off to him. Due to Covid I mistakenly sent it to his business address but he was working from home. Eventually I traced the amplifier to the parcel company warehouse and they were able to deliver it to Mr. Solomons. I understood and appreciated that it would take some time and cost a fair amount for the repairs to be carried out. I was happy to wait and pay that little bit extra for excellence. And excellence in abundance is what I got! The repairs to the receiver made a huge difference to the sound quality and I have had twelve months of the most sublime enjoyment listening to this wonderful amplifier - transformed as it has been by Mr. Solomons' comprehensive efforts.

I've been meaning to email Mike to thank him but so far haven't got round to it. I really must get in touch.

If you are serious about your Hi Fi equipment and need repairs I can wholeheartedly recommend Mike Solomons at London Sound. He is an expert with many years of experience and that is something sadly missing these days.

I just plugged in my Rogers cadet 3 valve amplifier, repaired and serviced by Mike Solomons in September 2015, after 2 years in safe storage and 4 years of fairly consistent listening prior to this !. Still works perfectly !

Anyway, I got reminiscing about travelling up to Harrow from where I was living at the time in South London and chatting with Mike about the amplifier and other equipment he had in for repair at the time of my visit.

I decided to see if London Sound was still up and running in post covid times. One quick google search later and I’m happy to see that you’re still open, but a few negative reviews that seem to report the complete opposite of what I experienced when getting the amplifier repaired.

So, in short , here is my review - albeit 7 years late !

Thank you Mike and hope you’re well

The County Court Judge agreed with me and he ordered you to pay me a sum which included my claim of £400 replacement value of the equipment, Therefore you now own it. If you truly believe that I owe you money after you mucked me about for 5 years and I won the case against you what you should do is test your claim in Court just like I had to do. Otherwise shut up.

Earlier this month Londonsound returned an Armstrong 625 unit after thorough overhaul. A tired unit has been restored to excellent working condition with a number of improvements/modifications. Very happy with the quality of the overhaul and it sounds great. A potential 5* rating was compromised by the 10 months taken for the work (though I understand that Covid has impacted on the business). Scheduling and progress information could be improved.

Hi, Have to say that I had an old Rogers HG88 Mk2 repaired by Mike about 7 years ago. Its still working great.

I would never use London Sound again. I put in a Quad 33-303 suffering from random low frequency noise for repair, and my Son’s Quad II valve amplifiers, a gift from his grandfather for a safety check and service. Told it would be ready in 2-3 months, we eventually collected them after 18 months of increasingly desperate, efforts to extract updates from Mike Solomon, as his sporadic replies assuring us the work would be completed soon, rapidly dwindled to nothing after the first few weeks.
The 33-303 was working well, which given the very high >£400 cost is the least you would expect. There was no written report on the work, or sticker / mark to certify it had been serviced which is very unusual. I would avoid London Sound on this equipment repair on the basis of dreadful customer service.
The repair on the Quad valve amps was another, far more worrying story. It took us months after the repair to source the leads required to run them, so we only tried to switch them on recently. One switched on OK, the moment the other was switched on it tripped the earth leakage on our house power supply. On checking with a multi-meter, it turned out the chassis was connected to the “live” positive power terminal somewhere. We sent the units to another professional repairer who confirmed there was a live short circuit to the chassis, and one transformer was malfunctioning. The short circuit was potentially lethally dangerous, and even more incredible considering that safety checks were our core request and Mike Solomon confirmed by email he had PAT safety Tested both units. We wrote off the >£400 repair costs for the unit as he is impossible to deal with, and paid the other repairer another £350 to repair the faulty unit, and give both amps a decent service. Having given Mike the mono Quad control unit and AM and FM tuners for spares, I can’t tell you how disappointed we are. I’ll leave you to work out why we didn’t use the much vaunted 12 month warranty, and if Mike claims we are not customers, or the valve amps worked fine forget it, we have an audit trail a mile long on this, and a written independent report. Run away, and don’t look back

I was put off for life using Mr Solomons and unfortunately have a very low opinion of him. As others have said, he is very chatty. He talks a lot.

Initially I was quoted a sensible low-ish figure for the work by London Sounds but eventually billed £540, more than twice what was originally agreed. I was furious. I had a competent engineer recommended to me after that and had him assess Mr Solomon's handywork. He was appalled to find second hand and in one case entirely inappropriate components substituted as "service parts" and that the real problem and reason for the repair originally was a simple broken wire (for which I was effectively charged £540).

I have not trusted any of my kit to him since then and most straightforward servicing or repair I now do myself with more complex work going to an electronics engineer whom I know to be competent. Others can and have spoken as they have found. In my case, I consider that I was ripped off by someone who's standards of work and working ethics were far from ideal. Would I recommend him? No.

Mike Solomons at London Sounds seemed perfect to fix the crackling noise from amplifier. "Yes, bring it in - I'll do you an estimate". Without taking the amp out of its box Mr Solomons said "It'll be around £800, maybe more maybe less". I gulped. I heard many anecdotes of his repairs and I imagined the repair would cost less not more. He said it would be ready before Christmas. In March I emailed for news: it took another two weeks. I asked if he had replaced any parts and received an evasive answer (it was difficult to get a word in between retelling of anecdotes) saying that he had replaced one valve (working) with another used one, which he explained would probably last longer. The fault was fixed but the final bill was £900. I still feel that I was royally ripped off. Mr.Solomons gives you a year's guarantee against any fault and clearly considers that this is justification for his high prices. He also does the usual 'soak test' but it seems that he charges by the hour for this.

1st reply: Mr.Solomons has posted a reply saying I was given “not less than" and "not more than" estimates. This was not the case. There was never any mention of these. The £800 estimate was given verbally before he had even examined the amplifier.

2nd reply: A written estimate was not supplied and I most certainly did not sign one. Mr.Solomons, if you have proof of what you say, I challenge you to produce it.

3rd reply: Enough of this. I was never given an estimate. The 1000 on the invoice has no £ sign and there is no indication of its meaning.
I will let readers of your reviews make up their own minds. My advice is to avoid your business.