Hilary G. writes:

My friends & I really like the Sony Fontopia headphones. The earbuds are soft & comfortable, and block outside noise well enough that you may listen at a civilized, Pete Townshend-sanctioned volume. They come with 4 removable earbuds, a pair each of small & medium. However, no matter how hard I try to be careful, eventually my headphones will wind up at the bottom of my bag with heavy junk thrown on top of them, or they’ll get caught on my coat collar, or a dog will chew on them, and with these headphones that means the earbud will get pulled off. And once they’re off, man those little suckers are hard to find.

The first time this happened, I just switched to the other size that came with them. The second time (yesterday), I had to go looking for a replacement. And guess what? Amazon doesn’t carry them. SonyStyles.com doesn’t carry them. I went over to BestBuy (who doesn’t carry them) and they said to go to the Sony store in midtown, and they’d tell me who to call. Right.

Hilary’s solution after the jump.

Yes I’m irresponsible with headphones, but I can’t be the only one! This was getting ridiculous, so I went down the Google search results to about Result #75, where voila! I finally found a site that sells them: Audiocubes.com.

But $10 plus $7 shipping for 2 new earbuds seemed too much – I’d be better off buying a new pair from Amazon for $25 and having 4 earbuds plus some new headphones. So I called Sony at 877-865-SONY and asked if they sell replacement Fontopia earbuds. The woman flatly said “No.” Really? “No.” OK, so I need to buy a whole new set of headphones? Well, I could try their parts & service number at 800-488-7669. A guy there was happy to charge me $9.90 plus $3 shipping for a new pair. Which is still too much, but there you go. I did it. He says they’ll ship in 5-7 days.

Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.