Thread: Waiting for my Xenarc MDT X-7000 for almost 7 months now

Hey djsuck

I do not mean to be pushy, but I just want to let you know that we have not received your email to the store, with your bank information needed to send you a wire.

I wanted to make sure that this happened today, but it looks like it wont happen.
So please send this over the weekend and we will process Monday.

I just sent it to store@mp3car.com

Originally Posted by djsuck

Hi armine,

thanks for the quick response (even though it's not the answer I was waiting for)

Well - I can honestly say, that I didn't get that Email (I created a specific rule in my MTA to push any "MP3Car" related stuff in a special folder)
... well... this kinda stuff somtimes just happens - I have to deal with it everyday on my job - no hard feelings there.

There are a few things, that make me a bit sad, though.
You say, that I didn't spent over 1k - well... thats just not true. I'm living in Germany so here is what I had to pay:
770$ MDT X7000
68$ shipping
32$ international money transfer
178$ toll and taxes to import it to Germany
========
1048 $ total

djsuck - Just curious - especially as you live in Germany why you bought from Mp3car ? There is a large German based CarPC store there ( I wont mention the name as I'll get banned ) and if you live on the local forums they now own them...... ?

Terran

In the UK at least the seller has to refund the the shipping costs to the buyer if the product is found to be faulty. They also have to pay the buyers costs in shipping the product back.

Why should the end use lose out if a seller sends out product with is faulty? Does not make sense.



NB the costs involved going through customs is another thing and they should be got back from customs, although the seller may need to confirm the product was indeed faulty and shipped back out of the country.

Why should the end use lose out if a seller sends out product with is faulty? Does not make sense.

The only thing that would change is where the end-user pays for the cost. If you force the seller to refund shipping on a product, then they have to raise prices to compensate. As long as this is covered in the T&Cs, there shouldn't be too much problem with it, but I wish every seller followed the same standard so you wouldn't have to dig around for that kind of information.

I recommend MP3Car clearly lays out terms for international buyers and their refund policy, if this is not already. Being dodgy causes conflict and just wastes everyone's time.

If you sell good product in the first place, then prices wouldn't change much as the return rate would be low. She's making it sound like we all should know that the "quality" of the product is iffy because this is a hobby market and we should expect this kind of workmanship and behavior. I didn't know that. I don't see why the quality would suck just because this is a niche market. I can't imagine pcengines.ch sells a butt-load of ALIX and WRAP boards, and no you won't see them at best buy either, but out of the 35 or so I've bought, I haven't had a problem with any except a power adapter. I don't get the reasoning behind it. If the product is known crappy by the store, get something else or don't sell it maybe?

Originally Posted by armine

I am sorry for your bad experience with Xenarc. However, this is a hobby, these products are often prototypes. Many customers were disappointed and Mp3Car has worked hard to make sure that customers received a refund.

The above also concerns me too.... why sell Prototypes ? You should sell production units only.

It may be worth armine looking in to the skills of Six Sigma...... ( before you ask me... its about defects and the effect on product success and delivery... )

Terran

And some customer service skills, as well, but hey, thats just me.

I'm far from an "old timer" on here, and been here less time than others posting in this thread, but I've been around for a while. From before this hobby became so mainstream. My first unit had a tank circuit with an isolation solenoid/extra battery to handle startup/shutdown (if you don't know what a tank circuit is, search and all will be revealed).

It wasn't but a few years ago that the mp3car store had <1/4 the product it has now. And many of those were hobbyist' production runs of 10-20 units. Armen was building his own screens for sale, and the idea of a pre-built all-in-one carputer wasn't anything but a pipedream. Front end software was so rudimentary compared to what is around now (remember when mapmonkey got worked into Frodo?), and an auto-power mod on a lilliput was the big to do.

Before you yell about me being attached to the "old ways," I'm not. I LOVE my transreflective screen, my intelligent PSU, etc... I wouldn't want to go back to tank circuits, etc... for any reason. But it's only been a couple of years since this hobby was at that point. We've come so far, and the fact that there are companies building products just for us is amazing. But we are a very small niche market. If you look at the number of people who actually have completed working projects, it's amazing that anyone even bothers to make products for the hobby.


I have had bad products, and I'm pretty sure most of us here have gotten at least one. It sucks. It would be wonderful if this was a standard, mainstream community and large companies dumped tens/hundreds of thousands of dollars into R&D, but it's not. We're dealing mainly with small overseas manufacturers who have generally provided decent products, that doesn't mean that all of them will be good. And the only way the folks at the mp3car store (and the others) can really know if it's a bunk product is for it to be tested, and often that falls to us. Any amount of poking around the forums and research should reveal that things in this world work a heck of a lot less often than they should. And because of patience, etc... new, reliable products are available.

I know it's been said before, but if you want something that you're not going to have to work for, and will (almost) 100% work right out of the box then you should head to best buy and buy a mass-produced head unit and be done with it. We are still called a hobby for a reason.

The folks at the store, Armen of DWW, and the other vendors out there making products available to us are very small outfits with tight profit margins. They don't overcharge by 150% plus like best buy, so they can't afford to absorb everything like a big box can. Personally, I've never had a problem getting a hold of the store when I've needed to. I've been burned by StreetDeck just recently. Lack of updates, etc... And I'm not very happy about it, but that has more to do with the developer than the vendor, and coming onto the forum running my mouth about how horrible mp3car is because a product isn't being supported to my liking isn't going to do any real good.

These folks work their tails off for us. They make mistakes too, there have been plenty of genuine problems with things getting forgotten about, missed, etc... But as far as I've seen, they always make an attempt to do good. If you feel like there's been an injustice, make real attempts to contact them. If they don't answer, maybe they were in the john? Try back. They're helpful, but you've got to understand that they don't have a large call center staffed by 50 people and a fancy automated call queuing system. On their side, laying out T&C's more clearly I agree would cut down on these kinds of problems.

Bottom Line, if you're not happy with the available product, come up with an idea, and make it. This hobby is still so young that that there is plenty of room for improvement, even if you're one guy/gal working from your basement, and we are not yet at the point of having to compete with mega-corps. If you're not happy with a vendor, use another. That's how business works.

*off soapbox*

@ Tidder:
I think that as soon as the store realized that the MDT was a poor product, they pulled it and that's the whole reason for this thread in the first place. You've been here longer than I have, and should know by now that we're usually the beta test folks.