MiniDSP just sent me another email... I reset my SHD 3 times this month so far trying to debug the Ethernet problem.
Maybe a new thread about the miniDSP support should spell out their lack of support.
A company with this kind of support should not be encouraged (and receive rave product reviews).
Believe me, they know what people say about them. They don’t care. If you haven’t seen the mess from about 20 pages ago yet, at first it’s just us lot griping about their customer service and my specific problem starting around
here, then it really turned into a trainwreck
here when devteam shows up to refute me (they did so very poorly). ”Devteam” is them. I won’t @ them because I don’t want to risk tempting evil spirits.
I compiled a list of all the criticism they received during this episode and sent it to them in an email, entirely comprised of comments that were from other people, not me personally. Y’know, to keep it impartial. It’s daunting. This is just from ASR in the matter of a couple weeks in June 2021. I bolded the last one because it perfectly encapsulates what you and others are trying to get through to them.
Before devteam (Tony Rouget, the owner of miniDSP) appeared i
- “Their engagement with interested buyers is the worst I've ever seen”
- “100% agree this is terrible customer support”
- “I would definitely look for another solution before jumping on that train”
- “It seems to me that they were much more active, provided much better support and actively worked with the community to implement new features in their early days”
- “It is unbelievable for an electronics company to have such a unique and performant product and with the possibility of dominating Room Correction market can piss off customers this way. If they paid a little more attention to customer service, they could become a stellar audio electronics company.”
- “It's shame they aren't aiming higher in terms of customer service. If they are doing it because their margins are tight it seems like a false economy”
- “All this talk about several problems with the SHD and Minidsp's awful client service has really put me off buying a unit”
- “How incompetent do you have to be to have some of the best products in the industry, yet have customers actively despise you so much they will refuse to do business with you?”
- “Seems like this site has done a great job of flushing out and making obvious those companies that are less than complete (great products but non-existent customer service in this case).”
After devteam appeared:
- “Based upon your [miniDSP’s] above responses I am back open to reconsidering a shd purchase.”
- “We all make mistakes or have problems we encounter (product problems, timelines that arent met, etc) but what differentiates business leaders from those that dont survive is how they respond to those mistakes/problems.”
- “Seems most of this could have been avoided by offering a replacement unit up front, especially for a new unit under warranty. Does MiniDSP ever do this? As a consumer, I would expect this for a $1000+ product that can easily be shipped.”
- “Don’t really see why you [miniDSP] need to talk to the dealer a lot… in the grand scheme of things it would cost you, the manufacturer, much less to swap this unit for another one, given the likely sales you’ve already lost from people reading this thread.”
- “At this point, @devteam , the cost of a new replacement, delivered quickly, is the best (and least costly) investment you can make in the future of your company. Considering the amount of negative exposure this has received, and from this audience especially, the alternative could be disastrous.”
- “Speaking for myself, I have the SHD on a shortlist of my next major upgrade. Knowing I was rolling the dice with that amount of money has me reconsidering already...”
- “I am too on the fence but what is disappointing regardless of what the eventual outcome is, it took peer group pressure and negative exposure to get them to respond.”
- “A company with the right standards and ethics will ALWAYS do the right thing regardless of what pressure or exposure they receive. Its the leader that sets the standard for the company, not the other way around and as such these decisions are a reflection of their management.”
- “This is a very sad tale and does not reflect well on MiniDSP. The SHD is expensive and the customer should not have to deal with sending things back to HK.”
- “I followed this thread because I was very interested in MiniDSP. Was.”
- “Minidsp, I think, has bowed out. Good thing as the hole he was in was only getting deeper with each post. I do think though, he realizes the damage that has been done and no matter what is done to rectify, it wont make it disappear. The diving catch in the end zone was fumbled.”
- “I have learned that once that trust has been lost (by the community), it takes a long time to build it back and it will not be fixed by finally doing the right thing for @nothingman. Somehow these posts seem to find their way to the top of search engines results for a long time. The internet can be both a blessing and curse for businesses.”
- “That response from the distributor [Deer Creek] is totally [facepalm emoji].”
- “Sell the damn thing and buy another product from a company you can trust.”
- “Good lord, this is unbelievable, @devteam. I was about to buy an SHD but for miniDSP to stubbornly refuse to simply offer a replacement unit to this point is baffling.”
- “So it goes when an engineer runs the company I guess. They assume customers are willing to conduct endless if-then-else diagnostics with them until they finally solve the puzzle. They fail to see the damage it causes their company in terms of goodwill and reputation and subsequent downstream revenue losses. Nobody cares how many emails you sent back and forth - it doesn't make you look like you have good service to me. It makes it look like you're cheap and lack confidence in your own products and/or hope to pin the blame on the customer if you try enough. It's dodgy. Just replace the damn unit ASAP and take the faulty unit back; have your QA guys go over it and learn from it once you figure out the issue.....at your own pace ....and the customer gets to be happy and possibly evangelize the wonderments of miniDSP.....thusly leading to more sales downstream."
I remember in June 2021 they said they’d have someone starting in August 2021 to better attend to their forums and customer communications. Never happened. Their forum is more of a ghost town now than it was then. The same problems keep happening. It’ll never end.