Presonus customer service?

dgatwood

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Has anyone else had obscenely bad experiences with Presonus customer service? I sent my FIREPOD back to them to be repaired. The S/PDIF input and output weren't working. It arrived at Presonus on 6/9---four weeks ago today.

As of today, I have not gotten the unit back. I emailed them about two weeks ago and asked what was going on, but got to response. I called them today and the service rep confirmed that they received it on 6/9. He said they would transfer me to their manager to try to figure out what was going on. I got the manager's voice mail.... I left a message. That was at 7:30 or 8:00 this morning (PST). The manager didn't even have the courtesy to get back to me.

At this point, I'm seriously starting to wonder if I'm going to have to retain a lawyer to get back up and running before Christmas, and I will no longer recommend buying Presonus gear to ANYONE. If my employer's customer service were this bad, we'd have been out of business two decades ago!!!

Does anybody else have horror stories about Presonus customer service, or am I just the unluckiest sonofabitch in the world when it comes to tech support hell?
 
you must be unlucky. I only had to contact them once about a problem, and it was solved immediately.

Of course I never sent any hardware back to them either, so what do I know...?
 
Status Update: Presonus sucks.

At this point, I've come to the conclusion that Presonus seriously sucks.

I've been without the FIREPOD for six weeks tomorrow. I have not received a return phone call from their customer service manager after more than a week.

I called them again yesterday and got their voice mail (even though their message said that it was during their normal operating hours). I left a message demanding to know what the hell could possibly take them five weeks to fix. Today, I sent the following email:

To: cdkelly AT presonus.com
Cc:kbueche AT presonus.com, rnavqi AT presonus.com, mtwilliams AT presonus.com, bzell AT presonus.com

Dear sirs,

Several weeks ago, I returned my FIREPOD to you for repair due to defective S/PDIF input and output. At that time, I contacted you and obtained a return authorization. The unit was shipped to you on June 5, 2006. According to UPS tracking, the unit arrived at Presonus on June 9, 2006.

Approximately three weeks after I shipped the FIREPOD to you, I became concerned when it had not yet arrived back. I emailed your customer service email address and asked what was going on. I never heard back from them.

About two weeks later (July 7), I contacted your telephone support. At this point, it had been out of my hands for five weeks and in your hands for four. During that call, your customer service rep verified that you received the unit on June 6. He did not know why it was taking so long for the repair, and transferred me to your customer service manager. Your customer service manager was not in. I left a voice mail message containing my name and phone number. My phone call was never returned.

So why isn't anyone answering my email messages or my phone messages? Is this really the kind of customer service that people should expect from your company? I guarantee that if I did my job as badly as your support people have done their jobs in the course of this repair, I'd have gotten canned a week after I started.

At this point, this customer service experience borders on criminal negligence. It has now been six weeks since I shipped my FIREPOD to you for repairs. It has not been returned to me, and your company has repeatedly failed to return requests for information on why it is taking such an obscenely long time to repair it. Any reasonable person would consider this to be a completely unreasonable amount of time for repairs. Any reasonable person would construe your repeated failure to return my calls and emails as gross negligence.

Do you not keep any refurbished units on standby? Does your repair staff consist of a single 98-year-old guy who is in the hospital with pneumonia? Did you have to ship the dead unit by surface mail both ways to China on a freighter? Did you all decide to simultaneously take the summer off? Did your secretary quit in disgust and change all the locks on your building? Did last year's hurricane leave you operating out of a tent? Seriously. I want to know. I want to know how in the hell it could POSSIBLY take FIVE WEEKS to fix this thing. That beats my worst ever repair time with ANY OTHER COMPANY by more than a FACTOR OF TWO!

Hell, even if the five of you are the only employees of the company, you should be able to do better than a six week turn around for such a simple repair. Since you are at approximately the same location as your retail presence, there is no reason whatsoever that you should have been unable to replace the unit with a new one if it became clear that the unit was unfixable or would take such a ludicrously long time to repair. Then fix mine and send it to the next unlucky bastard who has to return one for repair.

I used to recommend your gear to the tune of several thousand dollars in purchases per month. As of today, I will be actively recommending AGAINST the purchase of any products from your company and will direct interested parties to a public thread that I have begun which chronicles this experience.

California law stipulates a maximum of 30 days for repairs of any consumer product to be completed, and this continued unprofessional behavior from your company will not be tolerated.

http://www.dca.ca.gov/acp/pdf_files/lemonaid2006.pdf
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=civ&group=01001-02000&file=1792-1795.7

I expect to have either a fully working FIREPOD in my hands or a complete refund of the purchase price no later than Friday of this week. Further, if you return the FIREPOD, I expect written confirmation that the warranty has been extended by no less than the complete period that it has been out of my hands, in full compliance with California law. If it is not in my hands in working condition by this weekend, I intend to contact the CA attorney general's department of consumer affairs, and may obtain legal counsel to take civil action.



Sincerely,
David A. Gatwood
 
Ya' know ....... I just moved from Baton Rouge and I played gigs with one of their higher ups ..... ummmm ..... Rick something or other.
Now that I live in Florida I don't give a crap about him so I'll look tomorrow and find his cell phone #

:D:D:D

I should have it and I'll PM it to ya'.
 
I vouch for the good support of Presonus.

I had issues early on with things re. my Firebox. They were prompt and thorough in their replies to my emails.

Things happen. It'll all turn out well in the end.
 
Their tech support gave me some wrong information when I was trying to get a compatability question figured out before purchace... fortunatly the wrong answer caused me to not buy it... and I went with Edirol.

But I know your pain... I run http://asg.hopto.org (the Aardvark Support Group) ... man were their execs worried when I started calling them at home... unfortunatly Mr.Levin (the only one that mattered) fled to California... I even tracked down previous emloyees.
 
Looks like my broad spectrum email message finally got the point across. There's a new one on its way by 3-day.

It's sad when I have to push this hard on a company to get a product repaired. 45 days this Thursday (the day it should arrive). All I can imagine is that they don't actually do any nontrivial repairs and just replace them the next time they get a boat shipment from China or someplace.

Now if they had just said that when I inquired by email three weeks ago or phone a week ago, I wouldn't have had to get nasty. It makes me feel bad that it came to that.... I don't like chewing people out... but enough is enough....
 
Update. I had a nice conversation with their marketing VP. Seems it basically just sat on a shelf, forgotten. They never got my previous voice mail or email communications.

The most entertaining part of the conversation would be when he described taking the tech support manager to lunch and reading them certain paragraphs of my letter aloud in an irate tone. :D

Beyond that, we had a nice chat about CRM technology, their phone tree system, one particular generic tech support email address on their web site that seems to be a bit bucket, an email message that mysteriously reached one of their employees despite the address being misspelled, some process suggestions for the RA process, etc.

It sounds like they're trying to figure out how this slipped through the cracks so badly and are working to ensure it doesn't happen in the future. He also gave me the direct phone numbers of several folks to ensure that if it dies again, repair will be expedited. :)

The new unit came today (scheduled delivery was tomorrow; I think my employer must bribe the shippers or something, as getting packages early seems to be the norm here, but I digress).

It still has the old firmware... and since my previous one never worked after I installed the current firmware, I don't intend to touch it. 'Tis better to leave well enough alone.


Preliminary tests:
* FireWire port 1 check: passed
* FireWire port 2 check: passed
* Sync to V-Amp Pro (44.1kHz): passed
* Sync to FW1814 (96kHz): passed(*)
* M-Audio FW1814 Sync to FIREPOD:
+ 96kHz: passed
+ 88.2kHz: passed
+ 48kHz: passed
+ 44.1kHz: passed

NOTES:

FW1814 sync test seemed to stabilize, then lost sync after a couple of
seconds, then regained sync. Five minute burn-in test passed with no sync
loss, so I am going to assume that it is simply a little slow at acquiring sync @96kHz.
 
Things happen...it's not very professional...but things happen.

There's some line that goes something like..."For a man to bet his house and everything he owns on one roll of the dice, lose, and still walk away with all his faculties in charge, and to know that nothing has really been lost...well then, you know you've really got something"

Thing is, life's a gamble, there's no guarantees...not even in customer service. Even the best doctors in the world lose patients. Shit happens.

It's all about how you handle it and how you walk away from it.
 
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