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What is up this company and their customer service?

Discussion in 'Off Topic' started by LW Reinhold, Jun 3, 2014.

  1. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    They do need to step up the support. It is almost non-existent from the company side, but the user side support (like this forum) is excellent.

    It is problematic trying to work with them for issues, this they need to fix. Six months ago you would never get a response, now they do seem to be better (use the support email address). They really need to be proactive and at the moment are still very much in a reactive mode (and have room to improve there as well).

    At this stage you (the customer) have to be willing to be very hands-on with doing fixes and upgrades yourself to avoid other problems.

    Still a good product at the price and the community involvement makes things a lot better.
     
  2. Mike Kelly

    Mike Kelly Volunteer

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    Trust me, if someone's order was lost I'd have heard about it. To date Robo has fulfilled every order put through to them.

    It does cut it because that's the nature of running a small business. Everything in due time.

    I'm not excusing their actions. They need to step up on the communication. But were I their consumer I'd rather know they're hard at work building printers than answering people shipping queries for 8 hours a day. Though I'm not the kind of person to ask in the first place. It'll be done when it's done.

    The solution is not to hire more employees. At least in the sense of full time employees. If they hire too many people and orders slow down they'll be left over employed and have to do layoffs. Not something a small company wants to do.

    They're looking at getting contractors to help field the incessant order status queries. They just can't handle them all nor do I understand they have a good method for determining where an order lies. Since they use the same number system for filament orders, replacement parts, and printers. An order number might be far off from the next one. Saying they shipped 2400 and you're 2500 could mean there's 100 printers in queue, or 1, it's hard to know.

    With that in mind, the need for QA in their shop is going away. The production leads are over in china right now verifying the build quality of the next 1000 printers. They'll return from china when the 1000 printers get loaded up for their trip home. When these printers are in stock they'll have a surplus and the lead time will drop to 0.

    I also need to emphasize, an estimate is not a lead time. Yes it sucks when an estimate is off, but that's why it's an estimate, and not a guarantee.

    I also request you put some perspective into this. When was the last time you bought a $800 dollar device for a company valued at under $10 million? I'm going to assume never, because I know I sure haven't. From your perspective that's a lot of money. From the perspective of a small company like that it's an ENORMOUS amount of money. Whereas a company like HP that's absolutely no money. Please do not expect a company of this magnitude to operate on the same level as a billion dollar enterprise.

    I hope you use the support forums first, but you should be aware the person handling the communication deals with technical support requests first, and then if he has time he deals with the general inquiries. They treat their customers well,

    With all this in mind, please I implore you to be patient.

    It's just takes time.
     
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  3. ssshake

    ssshake Member

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    Anyway, it's been 8 weeks now and I can't even hear back from them to say, cancel my order. Which unless I get an answer on when it should ship, at this point I'd prefer to reluctantly cancel my order.

    I still don't agree with your justification. I've bought plenty of crowd funded / small company products, I'd say this one has been the worst. I even waited for ever for my oculus rift, but the communication was still better and compared to its demand it was relatively faster to arrive.

    I still don't get why they reduced their shipping estimate to 3 weeks considering they know they can't meet that demand. I think that's a little sneaky. And the attitude I get from people like you is "hey you should be patient, you should know better, its you, the customer, who's got the wrong perspective here". Ya cause I knew before buying that they were mickey mouse. Their website looks professional enough to me and I've heard good things.

    They got 500 units that they had to retrofit and test. If they only could do 10 a day in parallel they would all be done by now.

    If I don't hear something this week sadly I'm going to have to approach paypal about getting my cash back in my pocket. :( I just wanted a printer for all of my projects.

    Not really any point reiterating that I need be patient or explaining the state of affairs at the company. I'm not even sure how you know this or how you're an authority on the matter. If you can tell me something useful, great. Else it's a wasted effort.
     
  4. ssshake

    ssshake Member

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    In the time I've been waiting the shipping estimate has been reduce from 3-5 weeks, to 3 weeks, now to 2-3 weeks. I'm actually plainly insulted now.
     
  5. midnightangel0013

    midnightangel0013 New Member

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    I have been very tempted to cancel my order and request a full refund. It has been 9 weeks since I placed my order and have received zero response as to the status of my order and the two messages I have sent have been completely ignored.
     
  6. Printed Solid

    Printed Solid Volunteer Admin
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    I can totally understand the frustration on this, especially with the lack of transparent communication.

    I actually have no idea if you guys are the same people already involved in the facebook group, so apologies if you've already heard this.
    Braydon (Robo's CEO) has said that printers were being held for the bed connector issue (which reared it's head within a few days of their receiving a huge shipment of printers that would have met the 5 week lead time you were originally promised). They are now confident in a solution and are shipping printers again. I believe that they have stock beyond the current backlog of orders, which is why the lead time keeps dropping.

    Holding product when you have a quality issue is the right thing to do. Leaving customers hanging as they creep weeks past their estimated lead time? not so much. I don't know why the communication hasn't been better, but I really do think that they're coming around the corner on this issue. I'd ask you guys to consider sticking around a little longer. It really is a good machine, and I think that with the community we have here, the overall experience great.

    I've been told an official announcement is coming.
     
  7. CAMBO3D

    CAMBO3D New Member

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    [QUOTE="

    I still don't get why they reduced their shipping estimate to 3 weeks considering they know they can't meet that demand. I think that's a little sneaky. And the attitude I get from people like you is "hey you should be patient, you should know better, its you, the customer, who's got the wrong perspective here". Ya cause I knew before buying that they were mickey mouse. Their website looks professional enough to me and I've heard good things

    .[/QUOTE]

    totally agree.. I said the same thing a couple weeks ago.. unfortunately that post got deleted... When i made a suggestion to stop taking orders until old orders were filled... it was taken as an insult by some moderators on this forum..
     
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  8. Steve K.

    Steve K. Member

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    They have no technical support that I know of and have not answered my emails. I have had my printer for over a month and can't even connect my computer to it. My last email (yesterday) asked for the way to ship my printer back for a refund. I bet it will not be answered. The Robo printer has many problems.
     
  9. Steve K.

    Steve K. Member

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    I agree with you ............................
     
  10. ssshake

    ssshake Member

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    I hadn't heard this, and if they put the effort into sending a blanket email to all the people on their waiting list explaining this delay I would have been much more accommodating. Like truly I'd rather have transparency about their problems than silence.

    I haven't heard anything official and even though I still really want one, I'm trying to cancel my order at this point. However there's no way to cancel directly as I can't contact anyone at the company. My only options are a very ugly process with VISA and/or PayPal.

    If they told me my printer will ship in "3 days, we promise" or something like that, I'd sit tight. But if they can't tell me anything I have no reason to think it will be any time soon and I want that G back in my pocket.

    :(:(:(:(:
     
  11. Steve K.

    Steve K. Member

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    If you have a problem, contact someone on the Robo forum. They will be the only response you will get. Robo has no customer support and you can expect many problems. I have had my Robo R1 for over a month and it still wouldn't work. I wish I could have cancelled my order. I am now out $830 unless I can return it and get a refund. I have sent a email to Robo but I will bet they will not answer it.
     
  12. ssshake

    ssshake Member

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    I'm reluctant to post this until my selfish problems are solved but on their website instead of using the support request form I just hit the email link and I got a response back within minutes.

    "I am not sure who you are messaging, but I am here to help. Our website is now 2-3 weeks as we just received a large shipment. Your order should be going out in about 3 days. I just checked your name and email. I can refund no problem, but let me know if you would rather receive your machine."
     
  13. AxisLab

    AxisLab Well-Known Member

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    Steve K, That is a slanderous personal opinion, telling people they "can expect many problems". Just because you have an issue that you can't figure out doesn't mean everyone does.
    There are many people that get their machines and love them, myself included. Your connection issue is something on your end not the printer. User error and a computer problem. If you cant figure it out, that is not the printers fault.

    Not to mention I have NEVER had an issue with support from robo. I don't know what your attitude is when you write them or how you are trying to contact them, but again saying they "have no customer support" is a lie as well.
     
  14. Steve K.

    Steve K. Member

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    I make my statements based on my experiences. What I have posted are facts. You might want to talk to Mike and Harry to understand what I am talking about.
     
  15. ssshake

    ssshake Member

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    However that's kind of the point of this whole thread.. "What is up this company and their customer service?"

    I'll jump in here and defend both points. I agree his issue sounds to me like a config problem on his end, having said that I don't expect these to be the easiest to set up and will require some messing around. Not exactly plug and play. So probably not a defective unit which is what you're suggesting.

    However, what if it was? Maybe something is damaged on the PCB? Maybe his firmware load was messed up, and he just has to reload but doesn't know how.

    When you say "Not to mention I have NEVER had an issue with support from robo." I have a hard time assigning any weight to your claim as I first hand have had issues with robo3d's support and I don't even have a printer yet. There communication is pretty absent right now.

    Although they have replied to me saying my printer will ship in 3 days from now(awesome[and this was only after finding a different way to contact them]), this whole experience does make me wonder, if I have a faulty part, it's going to be a hell of a rough ride before a get a replacement part on that way. They only have a 6 month warranty. So if I'm waiting say 1-1.5 months to a replacement part, what if something else goes wrong? Maybe that part's issue was further up stream from other issues, so until it's fixed, others issues can't be identified. I'll be running out of time pretty quick.

    Can I just wrap this up and say they aren't doing a good job at running the day to day business side of things and they simply just need to become competent at that. Two months ago when I first ordered my printer, the email support was actually quite acceptable. Compared to how it is now, I honestly was wondering if maybe they were about to close up shop by the number or crickets I was hearing. So plain and simple, day to day business ops is a core competency that they currently don't have. I hope they get better at it sooner than later. And I really hope there are no defects with my printer so that I don't have to find out the hard way.
     
  16. Steve K.

    Steve K. Member

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    ssshake .................... I hope you do not have any problems. If you have, the forum members will always try to help you. See if you can find on the forum CONVERSATIONS, then click on PICTURES to see how Mike Kelly and Harry V helped me. There are 4 pages of conversations with me to solve problems I had and my printer wasn't even running yet. Both indicated I had a ramp board problem. Harry checked and said Robo told him that they sent me a board on June 18th. It is now June 30th and I have not received the board. When it comes to Robo actions, there doesn't seem to be any action taken. Good Luck with your printer .............
     
  17. Steve K.

    Steve K. Member

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    I just received a email from Jerry Grauman on the last email I sent to Robo. I thank him for this fast response. I have suggested two solutions to my problems and I hope he responds with the last one I suggested. If he does, I think we will both benefit from it.
     
  18. AxisLab

    AxisLab Well-Known Member

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    "Harry checked and said Robo told him that they sent me a board on June 18th. It is now June 30th and I have not received the board. When it comes to Robo actions, there doesn't seem to be any action taken."

    ....... They are mailing you a new board, How is that no action taken? Slow action and "no" action are two very different things.
     
  19. Steve K.

    Steve K. Member

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    Axislab ................. You can talk the talk, now walk the walk. There is no evidence of the walk except talk.
     
  20. AxisLab

    AxisLab Well-Known Member

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    ?? that makes no sense lol. Okay.

    What TALK am I talking? You know what, forget it. I have not been insulting but you seem to take it that way so it's a waste of energy talking to you.

    You really should consider just sending it back, your attitude toward this one problem shows that once you actually DO get your printer up and running and face the real problems of 3D printing, you are just going to cry about those too and tell everyone to stay away from this printer because it "doesn't work".

    Good luck.
     

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