What is up this company and their customer service?

So we met the Robo team at the Del Mar Electronics Show 0n May 1st. At the show we were talking to a young guy named Coby or Cody or something of that nature. When we asked about the delivery of the printer he told us that they were a little back ordered by about three weeks but that they were receiving a shipment of printers that day so the wait time should be shorter.
So when we got back to the shop the next day we ordered the printer. That was May 2nd. This Friday will be 5 weeks. in that 5 weeks I have emailed them 5 times, and called the phone number on a card for Mike Pilkington-Director of Operations, twice and left voice mails both times. Simply asking for a status on our order. We have had ZERO response from them. ZERO. The only evidence we have that an order was placed is in the account page of the website it shows the order number as being paid in full and the order unfulfilled. Beyond that we received one mass generic email stating that they had received, I believe 500, units and printers would be shipping soon.
Needless to say, we are starting to feel uncomfortable about our decision to purchase from Robo. If not by the fact that there is no phone number or address on their website, or anything more than a nonresponsive email account and unmanned cell number on a business card, we are seriously worried that even if we ever do receive anything from them, and there is some sort of issue with the equipment, we will be dead in the water...
Has anyone else had a similar experience with these people?

 

Not sure whats going on with no email response, Jerry has always been responsive to me, although to say the ship date estimates are a little off is being too kind I fear.

Now that the front page has ship times of THREE WEEKS (the 2nd time its been shortened in the past 1½ months), its going to be pretty hard to swallow multiple people claiming order dates from 8+ weeks ago being unfulfilled. It appears that they are catching up, but thats what many thought a month ago as well.

 

I have also attempted several times to contact them via their web page and a received NO response. I have been thinking the same thing about getting ahold of them should a problem arise if and when I get the 3D printer. As far as order status... Has anyone gotten ANY updates?

 

What questions did you have that warranted trying to communicate with them 7 times over 5 weeks? What the status of your order was? I get the feeling they get more of these than they can handle, and they don't have time to look up every order number and try and estimate how long x number of printers will take when the QA times can vary wildly.

"Estimated" 5 weeks.

Technical support requests are always handled with the highest priority.

 

Yes guys, please keep in mind the importance of this forum and the great guys on here should technical problems ever arise.
That was the bar-none, single reason aside from price, that I decided to buy a Robo3d printer. This forum alone.

I have never been a fan of waiting 24-48 hours or more for answers to questions from company's. This forum is like 24 hour priority service with a huge database of helpful answers.

I've had most of the usual learning issues. However, there has only been ONE time I needed to actually contact Robo themselves and that was a small replacement part, that they sent me quickly and free of charge by the way.

 

When I ordered it said 6-8 weeks, I think I got mine at the 8 week mark. It is a wait... that is for sure. Well worth it if you ask me though.

 

So it wasn't until i posted on the forum that I got a response from them. At that point they somehow magically found my emails and responded that they were just waiting for filament to arrive and that my order would ship out early next week. Meaning early this week. It's Thursday and still nothing. I even responded to the email asking them to substitute a different color and ship my printer now. No response. So I just sent another message through the website asking the same thing. Unfortunately, due to their track record I don't hope to get a response. That's why I'm back here. Seems the forum is the only way to get their attention. To the person saying 7 times over 5 weeks is unwarranted. .. They told me three weeks or less to my face! That's how it became warranted!
Does anyone have an address for these people? Maybe if I show up on their door step I will get what we paid for...

 

Try starting a conversation with harry, he's the best In right now.

 

I'm in the same boat, ordered on the 5th of may. Past the 5 week mark. I only emailed once for a kind update, no response as of yet. I have spoken to them over email prior to ordering however.

I'm OK but there's two things that annoy me. 1) their estimated shipping time got reduced from 3-5 to 3 weeks since I ordered, so that being the case I would expect mine to have shipped already.

2) If you're waiting on filament then I'm waiting on filament. Quite honestly I would have figured the printers are in short supply, not filament. I don't like that my order is possibly on hold due to filament that I could have just bought it elsewhere. I'd much rather say just refund me for the filament and get this sucker in the mail. If the filament is not in stock at the time of ordering it should say out of stock, then I wouldn't order it and be waiting on it.

 

The filament will show out of stock if they're out: http://www.robo3dprinter.com/collections/abs-filament/products/black-abs-1-kg-spool

 

I mean fair enough but I'm just responding to the reality of this statement, "they were just waiting for filament to arrive and that my order would ship out early next week." Makes me curious why they would be waiting for filament to arrive is it was presumably in stock when he ordered it originally.

To be fair their website has odds and ends of incorrect or stale information, which I've told them before, pointed out specific examples and they thanked me for their input. So grain of salt here.

 

Who knows what's going on. All I know is that they're working their butts off and printers go out as soon as they're ready

 

Try using the chat feature on the website. Someone always seems to be manning it and you can talk to them in real time.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

Couldn't find the chat feature. I'm not very irate just every couple of days I'm like, oh ya where's that printer I ordered. Very confusing to see shipping times advertised, reduced, when I'm 6 weeks in a holding pattern. If anything I'd expect to see the advertised wait time increase based on that. It's nice to get prompt responses from support so that I know my order didn't somehow fall through the cracks.

 

They've never lost an order yet, it just takes time and not much of it is available for answering every shipping status query. They're looking for ways to handle all of these but presently they can't respond to them due to time limitations.

 

I don't agree with the sentiment of your message. Much larger companies have shipping errors. Whether you know if they've made mistakes with any orders to date or not doesn't exclude the possibility of a mistake moving forward.

"it just takes time" doesn't cut it. They've had a thousand of my dollars for more than 6 weeks. Being busy and unable to cope with the demands of their customers doesn't exclude them from better communication (even a blanket statement, and general update) or perhaps hiring more people so they have time (more person hours).

We're talking about a quarter million gross in pending orders. This isn't the initial kickstarter where you almost expect delays getting off the ground. They have a store now, as a customer I expect a store to behave like a store. Missing their shipping dates by say double warrants an explanation. I had some things I had been hoping to do this month but I have doubts I'll get it before the end of july.

It isn't unreasonable to pay someone and expect to be able to get in touch with their support team. I get hundreds of emails a day at work and I read them, it doesn't mean I spend all day reading email.

This plants a seed, that I worry if I have an issue when I receive my printer, that it will be a huge headache to contact them for remediation.