In January 2011 I bought a new Besson 2052 with silver finishing. Almost immediately after I bought it, scratches appeared in the silver finishing, just below the lead pipe (and later on also at other places). These scratches were caused by the euphonium rubbing against the inside of its case, the silver finishing being too soft. After long discussions with the shop owner (LEMCA, Belgium) and Buffet-Crampon, Buffet-Crampon recognised that they had had some problem in their manufacturing process with the hardness of the silver finishing and I got a completely new instrument in April 2012. Altogether this was great customer service, BUT immediately after the replacement, I noticed that the new instrument (serial number 11000368, so produced in 2011) has exactly the same problem. Last week I restarted sending letters to the shopkeeper and to Buffet-Crampon. The shopkeeper now claims that all Besson Prestige instruments have this problem and other customers accept this and live with it. My first instrument had serial number 10000569, produced in 2010, so it seems that the same manufacturing problem occurred in 2010 and 2011.
Hence my question : has anyone experienced the same problem or heard about it? Or do you have a silver Besson Prestige with perfectly hard finishing that does not get scratched? From which year? I am of course mainly interested in the instruments that were produced in Germany (since 2007 or so?). I would like to know if this is a specific quality problem or a general one. Of course the sound and playing quality is not affected, but when I bought this magnificent instrument for 5.818 ?, I saw this as a once-in-a-lifetime purchase that I trusted would remain in good condition for the whole of my musical career. I certainly did not expect that it would loose its beautiful appearance and get scratched within one month.