Should You Repair Your Headphones or Buy New Ones?

Repair them, if they were designed to be repaired. Repairing Valco headphones costs €69, and that price covers labour, parts, and shipping both ways across the whole EU. It doesn’t matter what’s wrong, the price doesn’t change. We don’t repair other brands’ headphones, because they weren’t designed to be opened, and we don’t have parts for them. That’s basically the whole point of this article.

What €69 Gets You

The process is simple: you buy the repair package from our webshop, you get a referral and a shipping label by email, you send us your headphones, Hannes repairs and tests them in Kajaani, and the mailman brings them back. The whole thing usually takes about a week, depending on the post and how alert the repair crew happens to be. You’ll find detailed shipping instructions on our support site.

A flat price means a flat price. Replacing the ear cushions costs €69. Replacing the battery costs €69. Replacing the entire circuit board costs €69. We know some of you will overpay a bit for your cushions, and someone else will get a circuit board dirt cheap. On average it evens out, and nobody has to sweat over a cost estimate. Same logic as a buffet: some people eat three plates, some eat one, and everyone still knows what lunch costs. The starting point is that your headphones come back like new, for a flat €69, a big chunk of which goes straight into postage.

The repair applies to VMK25.2, VMK25, VMK20, VMK19, and VMK15 models sold by Valco or our resellers. Warranty is a separate matter: if your headphones broke on their own within two years, the repair costs you nothing. This €69 package is for the situations where the warranty has run out, or the damage is your own handiwork. A dog. An EV charger. A backside. We’ve seen it all, and we don’t ask unnecessary questions.

What Usually Breaks on Headphones

The part that wears out fastest is the ear cushion, which sits against your skin day after day (you can, by the way, buy those separately as spare parts). Next up is the battery, worn down by years of charging, the cables and connectors, which suffer at the bottom of a backpack, and the hinge, if the headphones get folded open and shut a hundred times a day. An electronics fault is the rarest but the one we know best: the original VMK20’s circuit board fault once nearly bankrupted us, and that exact crisis is what forced us to build our own repair service. These days, that same service replaces everything listed above.

The Math of Repairing

Let’s take an example. You bought a pair of VMK20s in 2020, and the battery is starting to wear out. Option one: a €69 repair, and your headphones sound great for years more. Option two: new headphones of similar quality, €150-400 depending on the model. This isn’t a hard equation, even though it would be more profitable for us if you always bought new ones.

This also answers the headline question more generally: headphones you can’t repair aren’t a product, they’re a subscription fee. You pay for new ones every two or three years for as long as you listen to music. Repairable headphones cancel that subscription.

When Repairing Isn’t Worth It

Honesty obliges us to say: repairing isn’t always the smart move. If your headphones cost €30 new, a €69 repair is bad math, and you usually can’t even open a cheap pair without breaking it further. And let’s say this straight out too: our own Nordell speakers fall into the same category. They come with a two-year warranty, but after that we don’t repair them, because the speaker wasn’t designed to be opened the same way our headphones are. We’re saying it out loud, because we’d demand the same honesty from anyone else.

Our strategy is to work toward a future where all of our products are repairable, but we started with headphones. Probably about 90% of our revenue comes from headphone sales.

You Swap the Cushions Yourself

The part that wears fastest doesn’t require a repair trip. Replacement cushions cost €29.90-34.90, and you can swap them at your kitchen table without any tools. There’s a how-to video on our support site, but honestly, you’ll manage fine without it. Our support site also answers the eternal question of whether gluing your cushion voids the warranty.

Try These Before You Mail Them In

A lot of broken headphones aren’t actually broken. First check the charge, forget the device in your phone’s Bluetooth settings, and pair again. If the sound only cuts out in one specific spot, the problem is the spot, not the headphones. Our support site has troubleshooting guides by model. If the problem doesn’t go away, then it’s time to mail them in.

If Repair Isn’t Enough Anymore

Old VMK20 or VMK25 headphones get you about €40-60 in trade-in credit when buying new ones, so even a pair beyond repair isn’t worthless. Traded-in units get serviced and sold in our used collection starting at €109, with a 24-month warranty. The cycle continues, and nobody had to pay full price for anything. And if you’re wondering what to buy next, we wrote a separate honest buyer’s guide to noise cancelling headphones for that.

Why We Do This

Because it’s worth it, and the law would soon require it anyway. The EU’s right to repair came into force in 2026, and it didn’t change a thing for us: we were already repairing headphones back when the big manufacturers thought it was mostly a funny idea. The circular economy works when it’s an actual business, not just a phrase in a sustainability report.

And let’s admit this too: every repaired pair of headphones keeps the customer with us. The next pair gets bought from wherever the last one got fixed. The money goes to the Death Star, but that’s a topic for another article.