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