Solidoodle Support Suggestion Box (Page 4 of 5)

Classic blame the customer tactic.

now imagine this scenario...

I decided on my own that i need a resistor.
I've already gone through the troubleshooting, that's why I know I'm need a resistor.
I email SD and they try to get me to go through all the BS because i'm the idiot and they know better. i feel insulted
I order resistor from somewhere else, make the repairs, printer works well again.
I conclude SD just puts me through that BS to deter people from asking for parts, and they don't care if my printer is working or not because they have my money already.

btw... thanks for nothing.

If 500 people are asking for a resistor that is a clear indication of a major issue. And they should recognize it with an easy solution not with a long drawn out process.

I'm sadly going to have to reiterate the need for a ticketing system on email. Even with the 'improvements' mentioned on the site here in the last few days - I'm still yet to receive a spare part that was being sent 4 weeks ago and have been trying for the past 30 hours to get a response out of support via E-Mail

I was understanding of the 12 emails back and forth to get to the 'ok we will send you a new part' - but the lack of communication since that back on 15th of March is very disappointing Not even a 'not sure, we will check and get back to you on the status' - just stone cold silence....

Great questions abound!

Solidoodle has a dedicated team for CS/Tech Support. There is always someone working on CS in a dedicated fashion. While Solidoodle is a small company, and we all pitch in, I don't think I've ever packed up a Solidoodle. I think all in all, wait times for tech support are pretty short. Most of the time you can raise us on skype in seconds. E-mails might take 6-12 hours.

Now, in terms of small parts, we've said it before and said it again: It's demand. We're just struggling to keep up with parts. As we've said before, we have a full time employee who just ships these parts. We are catching up bit by bit, but this does take time.

Support, Low Cost, Reliability

Choose two.

Support and reliability go hand in hand. If the Machine is "Reliable" then support will have one heck of an easy job to do.

Placed an order for 2 hotends 6 days ago.

As of today, order is still "processing".

How about an generated email upon order completion with an epub manual that contains download links, the entire setup, calibration and video links that we would watch anyway after we get pointed there by the community.
This ensures that people have a manual and this prevents accidental shipping snafus where someone forgets to include a manual, if one is ever implemented...
This also does away with the need for a driver/program disc, as the links can remain static in the epub and updated versions of the disc can easily be placed online.

I bet they are bursting with machine orders, the order numbers are sky rocketing.... So give em a break, they need time to hire people!!

p.s. just trying to get mine quicker.... :°)

My new j-head from hotends.com was ordered on Friday and shipped the following Tuesday...I think SD needs to pick up the pace just a bit.

you're missing the point.

earlier in this thread you promised that if it's listed as stocked then it's in stock ready to be shipped.
Either you lied or you don't know how to work the shop software. or things behind the scenes are just a huge mess

Then you order priority shipping at an increased cost for an item that you can't possibly ship with the deadline that the words "priority shipping" would engender because you don't even have the item, you'd need your supplier to have the item in stock first before you were able to order from them, then they'd need to reach you, then you need to repackage and post.

This isn't growing pains any more, you've been having these "growing pains" for nearly a year now and the exact same issue of right hand saying one thing whilst the left hand is busy proverbial slapping the customers in the face.

cranking them out as fast as you can is great.
but how hard would it be to have stock levels accurately listed in the shop?
it's not like I'm saying you need a billion dollar automated robotic system. but maybe just having someone accurately updating the stock levels for stock.

This is how you should quickly and easily ensure that there are no more issues like this.

you will need 1 cardboard box for each item that you sell in the shop, large enough to contain 10 of these items, (so the box containing rails will necessarily be bigger than the box containing thermistors!
additionally you will need a shelf to put these boxes on.

take ten of each item off the shop floor now and put them in a box an d up on a shelf.
then list the stock level as ten for each item.
as you re-stock your shop stock pile then you can update the values in the shop software.

it seems at the moment that you're working from one big bucket of parts that the internet shop and shop floor are sharing. it can't work like that because you don't know what your stock levels are.

run the internet shop "like" it was a separate business, let it have it's own stock piles and it's own stock level counters, treat the shop floor like it is a supplier to the internet shop business, and visa versa.

that way, nobody from the shop floor should be looking at the internet shops stock pile thinking I'll just borrow that hot end to complete my machine. and likewise, a run on products in the internet shop won't leave your factory staff on the shop floor without parts to build machines.

Now a single person can accurately keep stock levels and probably do all the wrapping/packing and shipping for the internet/spare parts shop

This isn't difficult.
it's common sense.

If you don't keep an accurate stock count of what is available for sale in the shop you're going to be destined to keep disappointing customers.

Where you have a customer who has received a broken machine and needs a new widget went out.
remember, you can take a part from the internet shop's stock boxes, but you must decrement the stock level in the online shop before you take this part out.

consider this.
10am you get an email saying an extruder broke in shipping.
10:05 you go and grab the last extruder in the internet shop stock pile
10:10 someone orders an extruder, with priority shipping
10:15 you go to decrement the stock list but can't because it's already at zero.

now you've got a customer that's unhappy because he received a broken machine, and a customer that's unhappy because you won't ship his parts for ages.
you'll have to deal with 2x unhappy customers, and 2x complaints, and again have to refund the priority shipping charges because you couldn't meet that promise.

Alternatively
consider this.
10am you get an email saying an extruder broke in shipping.
10:05 you go to decrement the stock list so that it reads zero.
10:10 you go and grab the last extruder in the internet shop stock pile
10:10 someone wants to order an extruder, with priority shipping, but they are told at the point of purchase that it's a back order.

Now you still have to deal with the guy who received a broken machine, but the other guy is happy because he at least knows where he stands, you haven't made promises that you'll end up breaking.

it's easy to say that it's not your fault that the promises get broken, it's just unlucky that the guy wanted to order before the stock counters were updated, it was only minutes or seconds. but that's bull.
if you don't keep accurate stock levels, if you don't make your stock levels reflect reality, then it's your fault.

(and after you promised the new extruder to the customer who got a broken one the stock level IS zero. it doesn't matter that the physical part is still in the stock pile, it's been promised to another person).

To be honest, the best thing that I can recommend you guys do is go look at how an ISO 9001 certified company operates.

I said earlier that this was common sense, maybe it's not common sense.

I'm not saying go and get certified, I'm saying take a leaf from the books of those companies.
have a written and documented procedure for how things work.
when things go wrong, it's normally because you are doing it wrong. you need to then go back and look at your procedures, where can they be improved etc.