Is Robo support really this hopeless?

Our Robo R2 arrived on Thursday the 7th. Although my wife and I have both used them at the local maker space, this is our first 3D printer. So we wisely (we thought) got a fully-assembled one from a reputable company that appears to provide itself on quality 24x7 support.

That... has not turned out so well.

On the first test print, the machine laid down one line of filament broken in two places, then the bed dropped a couple of cm and the extruder started spewing melted filament into midair nonstop, creating a tangled mess until I finally somehow got it to stop.

Updated the out-of-date firmware, downloaded the new version of the out-of-date instructions.

Then I figured out that the bed wasn’t level; the extruder head was driving into the bed every time it moved toward the right rear corner.

Discovered the right rear corner of the bed couldn’t *be* leveled.

So I contacted their vaunted 24x7 telephone customer service.

Spent over 45 minutes on hold.

Took less than 5 minutes to establish that the guy on the phone wasn’t even going to try to help me.

Instead, he told me to go online to set up an appointment to speak with customer service.

The online appointment booker showed 10 days into the future, and every single appointment time during those days was X’d out.

The guy on the phone opened an email ticket for me.

Over three days passed with no response.

Finally got a response from someone that just says to update the firmware and to "forcefully bend” the bed mounting platform.

I replied that the firmware was already up to date and that I had determined that the pogo bin springs are so strong they are pushing the bed up. (Same problem described elsewhere on this very forum by jwmueller on September 15th in one of the many threads about pogo pin problems, but I can't post links.) Bending the bed mounting platform up in the front certainly would be possible, but it won’t fix that, and any attempt to bend up the rear left to match would certainly ruin the bed’s ability to travel up and down. (And likely void the warranty.)

Another day of no response.

We bought this on Amazon, and Braydon is very free on there with his email address and "contact me with problems!" So I did, and explained the problem.

He wrote back and told me to level the bed and run the Z offset wizard. He also said someone would get back in touch with me.

The support person wrote back to me again, ignored everything I said, and insisted that bending the mounting platform in the front would solve the problem.

I wrote back to both Braydon and the support person explaining the problem again.

Today, another person responds to me -- apparently at Braydon's request -- and says I should try setting the Z axis on my "R1+ Plus."

An hour or so after that the original support guy writes to me again, tells me that I'm wrong and that the pogo pins wouldn't be supporting the back corner if I wasn't "trying to lower the rear of the bed so much to try to compensate that you are pulling the bed off the magnets." (Which is absolutely not what is happening, but hey, I'm just the one who can see and touch the machine, what do I know?)

I've tried to be polite and patient throughout all of this, but at this point I am flat out of nice.

What I've done for now is used tape to hold the back right of the bed down slightly, so the pogo springs give way enough for the bed to make contact with the right rear magnet, giving a relatively stable bed. That sort of works, well enough that I was able to level the bed and make it through a test print.

This leaves me with two concerns.

First, tape is obviously not a permanent solution. The correct solution would obviously be to replace the pogo pins, but holding my breath on that doesn't seem like a smart move.

Second, if/when other issues arise, if this is how their service deals with them, yikes. Of the four people I've interacted with, one flat-out told me he couldn't help, two said they want to help but between them they can't get farther than sending me links for how to level the bed of a different machine, and the fourth basically says he won't help me further until I wreck the machine to prove he's wrong.

At this point, I am so sick of this machine and everyone at Robo, everything in me is telling me to ship it back to Amazon and wash my hands of it. (And, to be honest, as satisfying as wreck the machine to prove that guy wrong would be, I feel like Amazon's going to have some questions if I return it as defective and it's visibly bent and has teeth marks from vice grips all over it.)

Hence my main question. Is Robo support really this terrible? Or is this just some sort of awful mixup that can be salvaged? I get that there will always be some fiddling with 3D printers, but I bought a 3D printer to 3D print, not to spend weeks working around breakage and arguing with support people.

My secondary question is whether anybody knows of another noninvasive way to solve this problem than taping the bed down. In the other post I found with this issue, jwmueller put borosilicate glass on his bed and that weighed it down enough to collapse the springs, but I don't have one of those, and I'm concerned about what he wrote about the effect of that on bed heating times. (Though I confess I'm not experienced enough with 3D printing to even know how much of a concern that is. All I know is that the "print right on the PEI bed and easily remove your prints" is super appealing at my experience level.)

I did see the mod someone did to pass the power through the magnetic stands and forego the pogo pins entirely, which looks like a great idea, but again it's an obvious warranty-voider and I don't want to permanently saddle myself with this machine if the next problem I can't get help with might be right around the corner.

Thanks for any advice!

 

Thanks! You are right, and that is a really good point.

If I can get any of them to stop telling me to set the Z-axis long enough to listen to me, I'll try that.

 

However, if you call Robo or email Jerry or someone directly, you will most likely be able to get them to send you a v2 of the unit (the one with buildtak and no pogo pins). If you just go through Amazon, you could get new, old stock, which means one of the v1 R2 units.


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After I posted this, they did contact me about sending out a V2 bed.

Hopefully that gets here relatively soon and resolves the issue!

Returning it to Amazon was kind of the default plan, but shortly after we bought it, they dropped the price $225. (And no, sadly they don't do any kind of price guarantee anymore.) That does sound like clearing old stock.

Everyone's feedback and input is super appreciated!

 

Now if only Robo would raise the bar to match Amazon's customer service, we might have a winning combo!

 

If you get someone physically at Robo, you will be in great shape. their Tier 0 sucks, and they know it.

If you can get Rob, he is a great start, and will escalate it to Jerry or other folks appropriately.

The thing that I like about this self-help community is we get a searchable knowledge base. Sometimes, no, always, this group has helped me isolate the problem and educate myself so that I am smart sounding when I am talking to those guys at Robo.


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