Horrible Experience with MP3car support

hari-bhari · 03-31-2009, 12:31 PM

I sent in my 2140 to be repaired around mid-January because the DLYON was not functioning. The unit was out of warranty but they kindly agreed to have it looked at and I offered to pay for any repair that was necessary. After about 2 months of emails back and forth (not 30-45 days as claimed in the FAQ), I finally get a notification that my product has been repaired and is being shipped back. Throughout this time, any inquiry I make takes at least 1-2 weeks to get a response (if at all), so I have no idea if my product is even reparable. So finally, I get this email and am being notified of shipment, except it is being shipped to the WRONG ADDRESS. Within THIRTEEN MINUTES, I reply to the email telling them that it is a very old address and to please ship it to the correct one which I provided along with the original RMA. Here is the my response along with the original email, please take note of the timestamps:

Quote:

Subject: Re: [Ticket#197-3036] P2140 DLYON was reversed
From: XXXX@mcg.edu
Date: March 16, 2009 12:39:10 PM EDT
To: carnetix@mp3car.com

No no! That is an OLD apartment address. It need to go to:

Hari XXXXXX
2111 XXXXXXXXXX
Augusta, GA XXXXX.

That address was listed on the support ticket.

On Mar 16, 2009, at 12:26 PM, carnetix@mp3car.com wrote:

Hari,

We replaced the Q9 transistor. I haven't had a chance to test it, but it should work. We're shipping it out today to the following address:

Hari XXXX
914 XXXXX
XXXXX
Atlanta, GA XXXXX

Best,
Goce

So of course after this, I wait patiently for a week or two and hear nothing, so I try and send as polite of an email on March 27th, 2009. I don't believe in getting upset or yelling at the wrong person, so I try and stay civil:

Quote:

I have been waiting for my unit to be repaired and sent back to me since January. The last email I got was on March 16th from Goce, informing me it was being shipped out. However he listed an old address at which I no longer reside. My current address was listed correctly on my RMA form, so I have no idea why the old one was used. Can I please get on the phone and talk to someone to have this resolved? I have been waiting very patiently and sent multiple emails with no response. Please help!

Hari

Despite claims of 24 hour responses, I get this email back FOUR days later, March 31st, 2009:

Quote:

This is the first thing we have heard from you in 15 days since we notified you were were shipping back the repaired unit.

We don't monitor Return address on inbound boxes. If you had a change of address we would have needed to have been informed of that over e-mail or you could have notified us within a few days so we could re-route the package.

Since you did not notify us the package was delivered via UPS on tracking number 1Z4XXXXXXXXXXXX

Perhaps you can contact the person who signed for it at the old address and ask them to send it to you. According to UPS, the signer was "WHIBDY"

Now I have replied to them with another polite email stating that I am stuck and out of a $135 product, but who knows if I'll ever hear back. I understand that my product was out of warranty and they did fix it (which I did offer to pay for), however I don't believe this is the proper way to treat a customer who has purchased at least a few hundred dollars worth of items. It's not even as if the 2140 was completely non-functional. Only the DLYON was not working, so it still would have been perfectly useable as I could have just triggered the amp with the ignition wire instead of the DLYON. I know Goce is the only Carnetix repair person on staff and is probably very busy, but if there is such a high volume of customers then they should either hire/train someone else or think twice before taking over a company and not being able to adequately support its products. Even if I had been kept up-to-date by another staff member and at least NOTIFIED of what was going on and known I would have had to wait for so long, that would have been marginally better than this situation. As far as I can tell from my experience and other posts, if you purchase a Carnetix product, you are pretty much on your own (who knows about other brands). Anyways, thanks for reading and I hope this reaches someone who can help me, or if not at least warns other customers of the support experience at mp3car.

Maheriano · 03-31-2009, 02:51 PM

Their fault = They should have caught that first email where you told them it's the wrong address and done something about it.
Your fault = You should have followed up the next day and every other day after to make sure they knew it was the wrong address.

hari-bhari · 03-31-2009, 03:24 PM

Yea except since I had 2.5 months of experience of not getting any responses, I sort of knew by that point what was going to happen. Plus I didn't want to be an annoying, nagging customer.

Tidder · 03-31-2009, 03:31 PM

As the old saying goes... the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

If it were me, I would have made it a point to try and contact them on a daily basis.

hari-bhari · 03-31-2009, 03:36 PM

Point noted, however I don't subscribe to the notion that you should annoy the crap out of people (especially the wrong people) to get what you want. Regardless, it shouldn't HAVE to be that way to get service. So even if I had to bug them 13432 times and I eventually got a result, I'd still be posting here with my complaint.

Tidder · 03-31-2009, 03:44 PM

True, but at least at that point you'd know you did everything in your power to get it done how you wanted it.

I have customers that bug the living hell out of me, and sometimes that's the real motivation to get done what they need done. I may have more important jobs, or jobs that would make me more money, but damn it all I just want them to shut up.

So anyway, where did your package end up? Any luck getting ahold of who it got delivered to?

hari-bhari · 03-31-2009, 06:05 PM

So looks like they are basically telling me to go ***** myself. I really hope someone reads this and avoids buying something from mp3car in the future. Might as well get it off eBay b/c you're not gonna get any customer service there either, but at least you'll save some money.

Quote:

Look the point is not when I purchased it. The point is that you agreed to fix it and I even OFFERED to pay for the repair on more than one occasion. I am not looking for a freebie here. However I do expect that when I send something in, I at least receive it back in some sort of timely manner or in this case - AT ALL. Just like the other threads on the customer service forum, you are turning around and blaming the customer without even offering an apology or explanation for your conduct. How do you suppose that my mail server magically decided to not send a SINGLE crucial email after sending thousands for the last two years with no problem. In addition, if it had not been delivered I would have received a notification. Obviously in this case there is a much more likely and plausible explanation - that you guys missed it, and it would be nice to at least have it acknowledged that mp3car made a mistake instead of turning it around and slapping the blame on me. I've not heard a single apology throughout this entire case - not for the 2.5 month turnaround time, not for the horrible lack of communication, and certainly not for the loss of my $135 product which I am sure I am going to have to replace on my own. But as was stated in the other support threads, mp3car is obviously being 'nice' and carries none of the blame for this situation. I hate to have to finally be rude, but you guys really need to expand your staff and work on your customer service. I know I will not be recommending purchases from mp3car to anyone in the future, nor will I EVER recommend a Carnetix product (ONE tech support person for the entire world. GOOD IDEA!!!)

On Mar 31, 2009, at 5:24 PM, sales@mp3car.com wrote:

You bought this unit 713 days ago and it is and was WAY out of warranty. We repaired it even though it was out of warranty and you overloaded your delay on circuit.

We have all of your other e-mails in our system except that one. Maybe there was a problem with your mail server on that day. Either way, please contact the person who signed for it at your old address.

Edit: I just realized this is post 666 for me. How ominous.

avengerki · 03-31-2009, 06:18 PM

If you were already used to slow email response. I would have sent the email. And also called them. Probably even faxed them since if they had the wrong address you have a very short period of time to get ahold of them to correct. I would repeat this process like hourly until you get some form of response. Sure you don't want to be an annoying customer but when they are getting ready to ship it to the wrong address you have to be annoying to get them to notice otherwise it is business as usual type of additude.

hari-bhari · 03-31-2009, 06:26 PM

Call? Yea, right. MP3car stopped accepting calls a long time ago. I found the number through google maps (not listed on the mp3car website), and called and dialed every damn extension possible but got no response. But yea I guess this whole thing is MY fault since I didn't bug the crap out of them and they 'lost' my email. What is this, 4th grade? Sorry teacher, my dog at my homework!!

Tidder · 03-31-2009, 08:50 PM

Yeah, imo that was a VERY bad business choice for mp3car. They could have hired a minimum wage teen-ager to answer phones and weed out some of the junk calls. But "to better service" to their customers, they have stopped accepting phone calls.

I mean if they're getting THAT many calls that was hindering productivity, surely they could have afforded a receptionist. But who knows.

Did you find out who WHIBDY is?

kibble · 04-01-2009, 12:24 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by Tidder

Did you find out who WHIBDY is?

I'm wondering that too.

It really sucks to hear that your package was shipped to the wrong place.

I'm wondering what it takes to work for mp3Car... I need a job...

RipplingHurst · 04-01-2009, 01:31 AM

I'm with you, Hari-Bari...thanks for posting that, good to know about your post-sale experience.

Hope they pay you, they owe you that for their mistake. I don't think you should have been an annoying customer either, but maybe we should all be from now on. Lesson learned.

spuzzdawg · 04-01-2009, 05:09 AM

Hang on a second, mp3car are claiming that perhaps your mail server had a fault that one day and they didn't receive that particular email. Whilst plausible, however unlikely, we can give them the benefit of the doubt. They still sent an item to an address that was not on the RA slip. That indicates an extreme short coming in their processes. What do mp3car expect, everyone to live in the same house forever?

Fiberoptic · 04-01-2009, 10:14 AM

I would like to first of all say that we go out of our way to help customers with needs. All of our e-mail is tracked by a very accurate CRM system to help us work with the volume of customers who write to us. We retain all messages from all customers for several years.

The customer first bought from us 756 days ago and bought a p1290. 37 days later we allowed him a no cost exchange this for a p2140. His p2140 order was placed 714 days ago.

~630 days after the free p2140 exchange the customer destroyed their unit by overloading his DYLON. Even though this was out of warranty and it was damaged by the customer two of our engineers repaired his unit at our cost and we even paid for the return shipping. Engineering and manual component replacement takes time. There is no way around it.

The unfortunate misunderstanding occurred with the return address. We seem to have gotten every other e-mail from this customer and mysteriously the last minute after the fact address change e-mail doesn’t show up.

It should also be noted that in previous communications the new return address was never noted by the customer before he sent us the unit.

Neither one of us know what happened to this last minute plea for a change of address, but none the less the customer waits 15 days to contact us a second time.

As far as a 4 day turnaround time on this e-mail, the customer sent an e-mail Friday at ~5.30pm. We replied 2 business days later on Tuesday after we had time to research the issue.

We did not tell the customer to ****** himself. We politely asked if he could contact the person who signed for his package at the old address and kindly ask them to forward it along. He refused to do that and decided to post this thread and tell us he was filling a complaint.

Given that we went out of our way to repair the unit out of warranty at no cost that the customer destroyed we would have appreciated some cooperation in contacting his old address, a little bit more gratitude and a little less hostility.

Tidder · 04-01-2009, 12:09 PM

That's all fine and good, and personally I wouldn't fault mp3car totally.

But what really gets me in situations like this is a simple phone call would have cleared things up.

Now I don't know much about dealings with mp3car, I've never had to email tech support or anything. Do you guys at least have an automated "hey we received your email and are planning to get back to you soon" response when someone sends you an email?

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