TheBloke:
You do however realize that by opening it you may have voided your warranty (unless you email them and say you shook it a few times or you noticed the top plate was a little loose & you tightened the screws a little and it appears to have started working reliably so far, so you are going to hold off on shipping it back for now) and allowed 3FVape to bully you into that action rather than comply with their own Published Policies as Advertised on their Website:
Of course. And yes I absolutely should not have been put in that position.
But for me, it was simple - I was not going to wait 5 weeks for a replacement when there was a reasonable chance of a quick fix at home. And certainly not if I had to pay upfront shipping. But even with a tracked RMA label, I was unlikely ever to do that. Had the screen been cracked, or if it were obvious that the chip was fried, that would be different. But with you guys saying it might be an easy loose connection, I was always going to try and repair it myself, because waiting 5 weeks was unacceptable.
I fought as much as I could with 3F over several long emails, and when they went home late Friday night (their time) having not moved an inch, I went ahead with trying to fix it myself.
If I had broken it trying, then I would have gone and ordered another one (from Focal). That would have taken the total cost of the unit to £100, from £50, which would have been a big shame especially given the multi-week wait, but was still no more than the cost of buying a Kangxin clone in the UK from the only person I've seen so far who has imported from Alibaba or whatever.
If my long "little boy" post may have given the impression that I had forgiven 3F, then let me reverse that now - I absolutely think they dropped the ball and are offering very poor customer service. I did say in that post that I replied again at length to them, re-iterating that I felt they were handling things badly, that their actions will lose them custom not only from myself, but others as well.
I am a little confused as to how they got around the fact that: [shipping etc]
They didn't, she made little to no mention of any of that. I addressed it again in my reply to her, which is as yet unanswered.
The customer service saga with 3F is not finished yet. I have not yet decided how much further I will pursue it, given I do have a working flask - though I can't be sure it actually
is working, permanently. It could still have been a dislodged bit of solder that got semi-secured while I was fiddling with it and could start moving again; that piece of wire I extracted may have not been there before I opened it up.
It would seem the Era of Outstanding Customer Service at 3Fvape is over and they have gone from one of the best to one of the worst overnight if they do not live up to the promises they advertise on their website! While I wholeheartedly support their right to enforce the letter of their advertised customer service policies, it would seem that they are now ignoring them altogether by trying to limit return shipping costs to $15 and that bodes well for no one in the future unless we as a community do not allow them to take these liberties in the future!
I agree. It's the sort of policy that will get quickly reversed if we all communicate about it. Their current situation with the shipping label is totally unacceptable and must be fixed before too many other people get that email from them.
Not to go too far off on a tangent here, but ya'll do realize why stuff from China is so much cheaper, right? Where that cost savings is coming from? It's not Amazon, it's not even Ebay. You want top notch customer service, you need to pay for it (and even then, you don't always get it, but you have a more reasonable expectation of receiving it).
I absolutely disagree. That we're ordering at low prices from China does not at all have to mean bad customer service. In fact, it's every reason to make the service better, not worse!
The trade-off we make for these low prices is that a) the products are all clones and b) we have to wait weeks for shipping. That's the only trade-offs we should have to make. The products are not so much cheaper than the same products sold by our local vendors as to warrant further compromise. And sometimes the products are not cheaper at all, such as in the case of the genuines, including Chinese made originals like Kanger and Smok. (The Smok M80 from 3F is the same price I paid in the UK, and more expensive than most US vendors.)
This isn't like buying an item from a market-stall holder while on holiday in Shenzen. This is a relatively large company, selling online to the world, using Paypal to do so, communicating with us via Facebook and Twitter and (probably) forum messages and promotions.
There's no reason at all to treat them any differently than any other supplier.
They buy products at Wholesale Price X, they sell them to the consumer at Wholesale + Profit Y. They can offer these low prices because the products they sell are cheap to begin with, and especially because, being in Shenzen, they get them at the very lowest wholesale price to begin with.
What is the difference ultimately in my buying a Kayfun v4 clone from 3FVape versus my local B+M or online vendor? Why should I expect good service from the latter, but let the former off the hook? Both companies bought it from a distributor in China. Both companies marked it up so it was profitable. Both companies can return it to their distributor. In fact the difference is in the favour of 3F, who are local to the distributor and don't have to worry about shipping dead products overseas. They should provide
better service than my local vendor.
Better service for that reason, and for the other reason I keep mentioning - they are overseas and their business naturally involves long delays. You posted yesterday saying "It's the long delays that made this seem unreasonable, many companies expect return." And you're exactly right, but that's the whole point! The long days are absolutely the point in everything here, because they are integral to all 3F does. They are an overseas supplier, selling 100% to long-distance customers. It's not like me ordering from a US vendor, who sells to US customers and the occasional non-US who is willing to pay for shipping and wait. 3F's entire business model relies on selling to people in the US and Europe.
Therefore their policies must reflect that, otherwise far fewer people are going to buy from them. What might be reasonable from a local vendor ("send it back to us and wait for us to look at it") is not reasonable when that involves a 5 week further delay, and further up-front cost to the customer.
And even more damning is that isn't even the experience I get from local vendors - making 3F seem far worse!
Ok, I guess I am going off on a tangent. I'm sick and tired of witch hunts and outrage and bullying that can destroy a person or a company. A false rape claim, or a manufactured story about a homophobic pizza shop, or a vendor with its hands tied. Crap just gets to me. There's no moderation, there's no empathy, just an almost instant "burn the witch!" attitude these days, no benefit of the doubt, no forgiveness.
Just take a breath and think about the impact of what you type might have folks. It's real people on the receiving end of your ire. And unlike blowing your cool in a bank lobby or auto repair shop or fast food joint because something went bad for you, putting it out in the internet is forever, and reaches a hell of a lot more people than the handful that saw you lose it at Starbucks.
Yeah this is a tangent that has no relevance to this discussion, I feel.
No-one has been launching witch hunts. We do however want the service we pay for, and we want to know up-front what service we're going to get. The way we ensure we get that is by communicating, sharing information on current and past purchases.
And absolutely we must hold vendors to account on the service they provide. In these situations is always they who hold all the cards, and we must balance that out as far as we can by sharing knowledge and experiences.
Which goes both ways - every good experience will result in more sales for them, as it should; there's a reason I gush about myepack, and a result.
I will say again that there is absolutely nothing exceptional about the customer service I expected from 3F, and have not so far received. What is exceptional is that, in not providing it, they have made the situation much worse than any local vendor would have. But the service I wanted from them is the exact service I have received from UK vendors - and heard of others receiving from many US vendors.
If a one-man company in the UK can do this why can not a 10+ person company in China? If that UK company can accept an immediate return of a China-made clone, before he's had the slightest chance to discuss it with the Chinese supplier (if he even plans to do so), why cannot a company based in China themselves? Especially when the UK vendor undoubtedly paid more at wholesale for that same clone than the Chinese vendor did.
I thought at first it was cute that Kate got all seemingly emotional and talked about "little boy fighting the world", but frankly the more I think about it the more disingenuous it appears. They may be smaller than other Chinese vendors, but they're still far larger than many other vendors who are providing better service, at greater cost to themselves.
