One of my Ultra12's failed, and made me love Emotiva MORE!!

[digicidal]

This has to be the first time in my life that I've actually grown more fond of a company because of one of their products failing!

The amp on one of my Ultra12's went out suddenly some time recently (at first I didn't notice... just finished rearranging the furniture on the other side of the room and figured the imbalanced bass was just due to listening position changes at first). At first I felt the dread setting in... nothing worse than having a problem with a piece of equipment after running smoothly for 3 months.

So I got on the phone and prepared myself for the "customer service circus sideshow"... only what happened next was completely unexpected. An actual person answered the phone that was able to help me without 4 transfers and a disconnection (nice), secondly they didn't ask me to perform a bunch of tests or try to blame me for incorrect usage/configuration (very nice), thirdly they were extremely polite and apologetic and simply checked my contact info against their database and instructed me to have the problem sub boxed and ready as the replacement would come with FedEx slip to send back with driver that delivered the new sub (very very nice).

Four days later the new sub arrived, old sub left. Unpacked the sub, put it back in position, plugged it in - everything is happy back in audio land! This entire process took me less than an hour in total labor on my part (between calling, packing old sub, unpacking new one) and cost me $0.

Now nothing about this story should be out of the ordinary - 20 years ago I regularly had these kind of customer service experiences.... however, these days it's almost never the case. (Although I should note that my Aperion experiences have been just as enjoyable).

Usually an early product-death causes me to avoid the vendor in the future - in this case I'll be ordering a couple of their amps this summer for sure, and maybe another couple Ultra12's just for the quad-effect!

 

[tattoo_Dan]

nice to hear about a positive experience like that !

and it's also good to know since I own a ultra 12 and love it.

 

[dctrombly]

Glad to see this because I may be getting me an Ultra 12!

 

[j_garcia]

I had an issue with the amp I got from them and customer service was also quite excellent for me as well. Big thumbs up for Emotiva!

 

[timoteo]

I had a similar experience with Emo just last week. I went online & saw that the XPA-5 that i had purchased just 2 weeks prior had dropped from the $899 i paid down to $799!!!
My heart dropped thinking i had missed the sale. I thought hey what the heck, ill shoot them a call. So i did & left a message letting them know that i was still in the 30 day trial & was hoping to get the sale price. The very next morning a rep called me, asked for my acct info then without even having to ask twice she told me a $100 check would be sent to me!!
Now THAT is killer service so im not suprised to see others are getting the same good service. They are so smart to run a company honest & generous because they are gaining a very large loyal customer base. Stack on the fact that they made a wonderful product makes them one of the best companies around IMO!!

 

[timoteo]

BTW digicidal i dig the TOOL avatar pic you have!!

 

[7andabit]

That's how companies build good rep. By simple customer relations. Look at Corsair. Great to see.

 

[LAB3]

Posted in wrong place. Ultra 12 SVS sub

 

[MidnightSensi2]

Usually an early product-death causes me to avoid the vendor in the future - in this case I'll be ordering a couple of their amps this summer for sure, and maybe another couple Ultra12's just for the quad-effect!

Actually numerous studies have shown that early product failures coupled with great customer support has the potential to create great brand loyalty, moreso than if the product didn't fail. Read this in everything from college business classes to Havard Business Review. It's a perhaps strange, but, has been shown to be true by multiple sources.

The main reason tends to be that the customer feels that the company took care of them, and then they have invested interest in that company and faith that they will protect them even if the product fails.

Shows you how damaging poor customer service can be to a company. That, by having good customer service, you can actually benefit from product failures. Not that you want failures as a brand, because it costs, but, in the event of, to gain loyalty from it is a great thing.

Well done Emotiva.

 

[LAB3]

Now if they can ever get a UMC-1 to not have issues with the HDMI and the firmware problems I will purchase one.