A little less than a year ago we have purchased the Stanmore 2 wifi (with Google Assistant).  A stunning beautifull speaker at a relatively high price. At this price one would expect the best quality. 

Pretty much immediately we noticed that when using the speaker on wifi there is a crackling sounds that interupts the music every so often.  At times this crackling sound can be rather loud and disturbing. We contacted marshall customer support on numerrous ocations. 

After our first contact we got given some advice on how to solve the problem. This is what we were told: 

- There may be other appliences near by that are causing the interferance

- Our music source may be running out of energy/power

- Our Wifi may not be strong enough 

- Asked to try resetting the speaker to factory settings. 

After having tried all of the above and moving the speaker all over the house, pluggin out all other appliences and plugging in the music source to the power the problem did not go away. We immediately contacted customer support again. Though they were friendly I found it strange that they actually just gave me the same message again, with no additional solutions. Almost as if my second message (where I explained what we have tried in detail) was not even read. 

After a couple of attempts of getting through to customer support they finally responded with a more realistic solution; Returning the speaker. This is where I really got annoyed. I have explained in my mails that the crackling sound is not constant. In their response about me being able to return the speak for them to see what the problem is they were clear that should they find no problem that the postal costs (and all other additional costs) would be charged to me. Since the crackling sound is not constant, the chance is big that when they test it they may not hear the crackling at that moment and then blame and charge me. 

All in all this is not what I would expect of a comapany with this reputation and price tag. Simply put this problem should not even exist. I have a couple of other speakers at home (Bluetooth, wifi) all working perfectly at a fraction of the price. Non of them have ' interferance issues', power Issues etc. A speaker at this price  of the Stanmore should simply not have these problems to start with. 

I believe Marshall should take responsibility for this problem and admit it is an issue with their speaker and not due to 'circumstances' at my house. There are enough complaints about this issue online to proof that the fault lies with the speaker. 

Marshall please fix the problem and please replace my speaker.