Back in 2007 and was fresh out of High School so I had some money to blow, I ended up purchasing a two Alpine 12" Type E subs (SWE-1243), an Alpine 450w Mono Block (MRP-M450), an Alpine Headunit, sealed dual box, all the necessary wiring harnesses etc. I installed it so the subs are wired in parallel, and I've been running this setup since then with no problems. A few months ago one of my subs finally bit the dust, removed it from the box and checked, no ohm reading across the terminals, looks like it may have been a short, no scratchiness when moving the woofer, so voice coil seems fine, probably just age.
I started looking on eBay because I couldn't really find a suitable replacement sub, I ended up finding the exact same sub SWE-1243 listed as New - Open Box, Unused for $60 shipped. When I got it first thing I noticed is that the box beat up a little, no biggie, sub isn't wrapped in plastic, and it's missing the actual speaker grille cover, alright no biggie for open box, whatever. I installed it and turned the gain on my amp to half of what it was fired it up and it seemed to work okay. Over the next few days I babied it and left the gain down, I ended up tossing the packaging along with the inserts etc. The other evening I turned the gain up a little and noticed the sub wasn't working, I popped the trunk and noticed sure enough it's not moving, when I push in on the woofer a little it activates and it has that tell tale scratch of a damaged voice coil.
Now I know my little setup cannot push enough to damage a voice coil (at least to my understanding?), it seems like the sub was damaged maybe from being used as a display. I bought the sub using PayPal and using a Citi Credit Card, but I've discarded the box, inserts etc it came in. I reached out to the seller asking if he was sure this was unused and explained the situation, but no response. Should I attempt to file a PayPal claim, dispute with my CC? Or at this point should I just chalk it up to poor luck and find a replacement?
