Arby's generous offer and the discussion of the fledgling electric boat industry struck a chord in me and makes me want to semi-rant.. Back in the fall of 2007 when I began to think about replacing my dead diesel with electric propulsion I started doing on line research. Joining this list was part of that endeavor. I finally decided on a system and began to make inquiries sending an email. I had some initial contact and then nothing. A while went by and I tried again. I then got a response that they had been having trouble with their email account. So we started again. Long story short. My inquiries and the responses were sporadic, many times my emails unanswered. I thought this was strange I was a customer with money in hand desperately wanting to buy a system. But, I had concerns and questions as NOBODY I knew had ever done this. I could not understand this behavior. I found that inquiries to the parent company in Europe where useless because they
forwarded them to the U.S. distributor. The only explanation I could think of is this was a small operation perhaps the U.S. distributor had a full time job and was completely swamped by inquires and could not keep up. I almost scraped the whole electric propulsion idea because if this was how it was before I turned over my money. How would it be afterward? Eventually I got my questions answered, a system spec'ed and felt confident enough to order a system which I am very happy with. But, I still have rather poor communication and unanswered emails on some minor issues. I was able to get some answered from other owners I've met on line. Also as a self reliant sailor who is very comfortable around electric systems I'm also able to figure a lot of things out myself. But, if the industry is to survive and grow the suppliers of EP systems need to be responsive to their customers. Happily my system has been relatively problem free and I am a happy
customer. But, I still find the unresponsiveness I encountered to be very strange and it almost cost them the sale. Such non response to customers questions may not move this fledging industry forward as fast as it should be going. But it's not just suppliers of systems it's also much bigger companies. I recently had a problem with my Xantrex battery monitor dislay. I sent an email to Xantrex tech support over a week ago and am still waiting for a reply. Because of this I am now also looking for a replacement for their product.
Mike
http://biankablog.
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