A warning to anyone considering Emotiva products

[adk highlander]

Let's not jump the gun here. Emotiva is a solid company that has demonstrated their willingness to support their products over the years. They have grown by leaps and bounds and perhaps their customer service hasn't been able to quite keep up on occasion as a result. As for moral character, I've had personal dealings with most of, if not ALL of the primary folks at Emotiva and they have all been stand up people. Their products offer great value and are snake oil free.

I'm glad yet another customer service issue has been resolved but I don't like our forum to be used for company bashing anytime an issue like this occurs for them or any brand for that matter.

Gene, He was not referring to Emotiva. He was responding to TLS's purchase from a not so honest ebay seller.

 

[itschris]

Yeah Gene!

 

[3db]

Lets not beat up Gene.. I can count on one hand how many times I read too quickly and took things out of context.

 

[gene]

Gene, you misunderstood my point. I wasn't calling out Emotiva at all. I was calling out people who sell defective products on EBAY to try and recoop from a loss. I hope this clarifies things.

That's what I get for speed reading and multi-tasking. This thread seems very one sided however and I won't speak for Emotiva other than the fact that I've never experienced safety issues with their products. There are always product failures with any company and my experience is that Emotiva takes care of their customers.

 

[UrdnotWrex]

That's what I get for speed reading and multi-tasking. This thread seems very one sided however and I won't speak for Emotiva other than the fact that I've never experienced safety issues with their products. There are always product failures with any company and my experience is that Emotiva takes care of their customers.

I sincerely hope that my experience was an anomaly; rarely--if ever repeated. I think it would at least be better if, once they determined that the product was, indeed, defective, that they offered to reimburse the customer for the return shipping costs. It's not the customer's fault, after all (unless it is, in which case, they would be under no obligation to offer shipping reimbursement). Still, even if they had done that, there's still the considerable inconvenience of (if you're a fool like me) hooking everything up only to find that it's defective, disconnecting it all again, packaging it back up, taking the time out of my day to take it back to the UPS store, being without the component for however long it takes for the manufacturer to repair/replace, then getting it, hooking it all back up again, and hoping it works. I had to do this for 3 out of the 4 products I purchased from them, and they never offered to cover return shipping costs until I had a bit of a fit in the last/most recent instance. I also encountered considerable difficulty, resistance, and delay when attempting to engage their customer support via email. Couple that with the fact that at least one of those products failed in a way that was fairly dangerous/conducive to fire outbreak (and costly to ship back), the attitude of indignation I received from Emotiva employees when pointing out these facts, and their censorship of their forums if something doesn't suit them...it just doesn't bode well, at least from my perspective.

 

[Lonnie]

A quick note about Emotiva and safety.

I see here and on other forums where there are several people jumping on the bandwagon saying that we don’t have safety certifications on our products. The implication being that our products are unsafe. Well, I would like to set the record straight, nothing could be further from the truth!

All of our products go through a very stringent safety test to get CE certification. Why not UL you might say? Simple, UL is not a requirement; UL is simply a testing service similar to the one we use to certify our products. UL compliance is voluntary. In Europe and many other parts of the world, CE compliance is mandated. The big difference is that UL typically tests for safety; the CE test scheme tests for safety, harmful chemicals, proper isolation, mechanical and structural integrity, as well freedom from and isolation from EMI and RFI radiation. It is a much more difficult and stringent set of tests that goes way beyond UL testing.

All of our products meet and exceed all the CE requirements, plain and simple. I would also like to state that we use an internationally credited third party test facility to do all of our certification and testing. We do not self certify any of our products, unlike many other the high-end audio companies. UL is great for toasters and Christmas lights, but when it comes to electronics, I put my faith in CE.

Any reputable company that uses the CE mark should have a certificate of conformity on file for each product, issued by a recognized and approved test lab. We do, so you can purchase with confidence knowing all of our products have passed a very rigid safety and compliance test regimen.

Lonnie

 

[psbfan9]

Let's not jump the gun here. Emotiva is a solid company that has demonstrated their willingness to support their products over the years.
I'm glad yet another customer service issue has been resolved but I don't like our forum to be used for company bashing anytime an issue like this occurs for them or any brand for that matter.

These threads about Emotiva are becoming more frequent. I think these posts are good for the forum to let others know what to expect when dealing with Emotiva or any other company with CS or any other type of issue. Unless one sided, distorted, or an outright lie I think these posts are as beneficial to members as the threads praising a company.

A quick note about Emotiva and safety.


Lonnie

Lonnie,

I think it's great you chimed in, but why no mention of the OP's issue with customer service? Is it growing pains, under staffed, or poor training? Unfortunately, these threads are becoming more frequent.

 

[sharkman]

Hello all--I don't see a way to update my original post, but I wanted to update this thread. After raising hell with Emotiva, I've received a response from their customer service and they've agreed to provide a replacement UMC-200. They will also generate a shipping label so that I will not have to pay to return the defective unit.

Yours is not the first time I've read of people emailing Emotiva's customer support and getting no response and it seems to happen a fair amount. By comparison, as I said earlier, on a Saturday I emailed Oppo with a double purchase/wrong email snafu I had committed and THEY NOT ONLY RESPONDED TO ME WITHIN 3 HOURS, THEY ALSO SOLVED THE ISSUE FOR ME AND SHIPPED MY ORDER. Now that, my friends, is service.

There are times when an Emotiva customer gets stuck with a situation that Emotiva will not budge on. That person has no recourse but to grin and bear it, and risk getting banned from the Emotiva forum as they sanitize undesirable stories. If said person has little internet savvy, and doesn't know much about forums such as these, then they are out of luck. Special privilege exists, however, for those who post on forums such as these. It appears that Emotiva will grant such people their wishes so as to shut down bad press. Now we have Keith and Lonnie himself patrolling these forums looking to 'correct the record'.

I think all customers should be treated equally, Emotiva's response shouldn't depend on whether one starts a thread in a forum they can't delete. Look, Emotiva makes some good products, although it's hard to say whether their failure rate of units sold is higher than say a Marantz or Parasound. But they do seem to be flying by the seat of their pants when it comes to warranty issues.

 

[UrdnotWrex]

I wouldn't even mind if I didn't get responses on weekends, as long as I got responses on weekdays within 24 hours of emailing--even if it wasn't a resolution, and just an acknowledgement that someone was working on it. If they have even one dedicated customer support guy who's checking emails to their support@emotiva.com distribution group, that should be quite feasible.

 

[PENG]

I have no experience with EMO amps other than I wish they have CSA, ULC or UL certifications as they do offer great specs for the money. I do know CE is not accepted in Canada (likely the same in the US too) from Safety certificaion stand point. If anyone wants to know more, like the reasons behind all that, just do a quick Google but stick with reliable sources, not forums etc.

 

[jinjuku]

A quick note about Emotiva and safety.

I see here and on other forums where there are several people jumping on the bandwagon....
Lonnie

These threads about Emotiva are becoming more frequent. I think these posts are good for the forum to let others know what to expect when dealing with Emotiva or any other company with CS or any other type of issue. Unless one sided, distorted, or an outright lie I think these posts are as beneficial to members as the threads praising a company.

Lonnie,

I think it's great you chimed in, but why no mention of the OP's issue with customer service? Is it growing pains, under staffed, or poor training? Unfortunately, these threads are becoming more frequent.

I have to agree with PSBFan 100%. You only spoke about a perceived (or not perceived?) slight against Emotiva products. No where was the elephant in the room addressed:

Why there is yet another person out publicly posting their frustration at both Emotiva QC and then the 2nd shoe to drop: the required CS? On 75% of the product from you.

You and I have one thing in common: We are both heads of companies offering products to customers. My company offers point of sale solutions on a SaaS model with no contract required. My customers can walk anytime they wish. You betcha that makes us work that much harder, smarter, and QC / CS aware.

I have a customer that I recommended some Emotiva product years ago. I had a long weekend to play with it and found it a stellar value. Period. It's been working reliably every day since. But the communities at large are starting to see more threads like this pop.

As a CEO I would be back in CS and Accounting and looking at my warranty rates, my defect from tape out rates, my customer satisfaction rates.

 

[UrdnotWrex]

Since we're on the subject of Emotiva customer service, it seems that lack of response to email seems to be a fairly common occurrence as others have expressed similar sentiments. I would also like to point out that I have mentioned that my post in Emotiva's forum was met with an attitude of indignation. Well, I just so happened to save most of the original thread before it was removed. The original post was almost identical to the original post in this thread--so if you want to read the OP that these are responses to, it's at the top of this thread. Now, here's how an Emotiva employee named Andrew Robinson responded to me:

2 hours ago QuoteEditlikePost Options Post by urdnotwrex on 2 hours ago
Andrew Robinson Avatar
2 hours ago Andrew Robinson said:
I would like to help you but I'm a little lost as to what you'd like us to do? You mentioned you sent your amps in for service, I'm assuming you got them back and they're working properly -again, this is my assumption as you did not state anything to the contrary. So at this point, the only item in question is the UMC-200 firmware update correct? If so, a call to support will likely remedy your troubles. I get that you work the same hours that we're open and/or offering over the phone support, but I have to think that you have a few minutes to chat maybe over lunch or a scheduled break.

So he's basically telling me here that they don't need to check their emails, rather--I need to take my personal time and use my lunch break to call them.

Here's his other response:

2 hours ago QuoteEditlikePost Options Post by urdnotwrex on 2 hours ago
Andrew Robinson Avatar
2 hours ago Andrew Robinson said:
Unless you've changed email addresses the only email you've sent us at Support@Emotiva.com was from 18 hours ago -6:39pm on Jan. 5th to be exact. So I'm not certain where these other dates are emanating from. Again, we want to help you, but we can't if we're not given accurate information from you. You sent us an email outside of business hours coming off of a holiday break, please understand that it might take a day or two for us to respond.

So, right off the bat, he doesn't ask me to forward the emails I sent that were never responded to, he just immediately dismisses my claim as if I'm full of it. Also, holiday break or no, it should not take "a day or two" to respond to an email. It might take that, or more, to resolve a request or fully answer a question, but it should not take that long just to acknowledge that you have received the email and someone is looking at it. Then, the next thing I knew, the thread had been removed. I don't have it anymore since I deleted my profile on their forum (vowing never to return), but I sent Andrew a PM expressing my disappointment that the thread was removed with no explanation. He simply responded that he had no idea the thread had been removed (I seriously question the veracity of this statement), and basically said he didn't know anything about it and that "my assertions that he had removed it were wrong" (I hadn't accused him by name of removing it, I was addressing him as a representative of Emotiva, and someone from Emotiva obviously did remove it). So...does this sound like excellent customer service to anyone? Because I think it's pretty dismal.

 

[TLS Guy]

I have to agree with PSBFan 100%. You only spoke about a perceived (or not perceived?) slight against Emotiva products. No where was the elephant in the room addressed:

Why there is yet another person out publicly posting their frustration at both Emotiva QC and then the 2nd shoe to drop: the required CS? On 75% of the product from you.

You and I have one thing in common: We are both heads of companies offering products to customers. My company offers point of sale solutions on a SaaS model with no contract required. My customers can walk anytime they wish. You betcha that makes us work that much harder, smarter, and QC / CS aware.

I have a customer that I recommended some Emotiva product years ago. I had a long weekend to play with it and found it a stellar value. Period. It's been working reliably every day since. But the communities at large are starting to see more threads like this pop.

As a CEO I would be back in CS and Accounting and looking at my warranty rates, my defect from tape out rates, my customer satisfaction rates.

I think you have framed the problem eloquently.

I would add one more point. This discussion really belongs on the Emotiva forum. Censorship of these issues on their forum speaks volumes to me. What we ought to be seeing on the forums is honest admissions when they fall short, and plans for improvement. If there are QC and OS problems, then they should not hide from them. If people feel problems are not being owned up to it will be devastating. On the other hand if problems are acknowledged and plans are seen to be in place for improvement, with interaction from their customer base, it will almost certainly build loyalty.

If customers are at fault then that needs to be tactfully shared as well with evidence.

In this day and age you certainly can't sweep problems under the rug, if you ever could.

I remember Peter Walker having problems now and again, there always are. When problems were known, every attempt was made to contact customers and get their units sent back for revision at no charge and that was even if they were out of warranty. Peter always owned a design or manufacturing problem. That is the way you protect your reputation.

Now Lonnie, if you are still following this thread, was that cap explosion a one off, or are there others? Tell the truth, because if another comes to light that you know about and conceal, your company is in mortal jeopardy.

 

[gene]

I think this thread has run its coarse. The OP has been able to tell his entire story and clearly express his displeasure.

Emotiva shared more of the story with me about this customer issue and hearing both sides of the story now has me satisfied that this issue has been very fairly resolved. The Audioholics forum is NOT a place for consumers to vent off against manufacturers. At this point, the thread has just become a downward cycle.

Enough is enough as I don't like some of the accusations being thrown around here, especially dealing with safety issues.

 

[gene]

Lonnie Vaughn from Emotiva has provided this response to finish off the thread:

<!--[if gte mso 9]><![endif]--> I am sorry, that I did not respond to the OP directly, but I am presently at the CES show and do not have all the facts at hand. It would be irresponsible for me to make any statements without knowing the facts and the back story. Please remember that there is always two sides to every story and all I have right now, is what is stated here.

If we dropped the ball on this, then I am truly sorry and will do whatever is needed to improve our CS and take care of our customers. Also, if we did drop the ball and we didn't return an email, I am sorry, honestly, I am very sorry. But you don't have to take it to a public forum, all you have to do is call us. I realize that you shouldn't have to do this but it is the most constructive way to get a resolution if you don't get a reply by email.

Please don't take the following as an excuse because there is no excuse for bad customer service, I am simply stating the following facts so that everyone here will better understand why I want to dig into this before making judgement. In the last decade we have grown a minimum of 30% per year and have well in excess of 20,000+ customers. Every year we have added new staff, upgraded computer systems, added special software to track emails and phone calls, all in the effort to take care of our customers. But even with all that we have done, we do occasionally drop the ball. When we do and when we find out, we will do everything we can to correct the issue and make it right.

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