Lets talk business practises customer support Read this if you are considering one of these printers  

Re: Lets talk business practises customer support Read this if you are considering one of these printers

OK, this person, from the tone and style of their posts, comes over as someone suffering from ADHD or something similar. If so the best thing to do will be to leave them alone and let Prusa handle this; maybe by deleting this thread.

If they are not suffering from a condition such as ADHD, depression, etc. then they come over as arrogant, egotistical, offensive, patronising and very childish! There is no excuse for name calling. The tone of the original post is of someone who has broken their printer themselves by doing something wrong and has the sulks because they aren't getting their own way when they try to make out it's a design fault. For someone who claims
to have 20 odd years of working in the CNC industry (and thus must be round 38 at least) they come over as a spoilt teenager not getting their way!

its broken and prusa wont send over new parts because I didn't buy direct what am i suppose to do pull out new parts out of thin air.

No, by contacting the company you actually bought it from "filaments.ca"!! Here you go:

Toll Free Phone Number: 1-888-536-5551

Local Number: 647-556-0186

Email Address: [email protected]

They are your first point of contact NOT Prusa!

From the filaments.ca site:
Returning an open product:

Open product return will only be accepted in case of a defective product. If the product you received is found to be defective, we will accept it back and will issue a full refund or exchange.

In order to determine if a product is defective, please contact us and send us as much details as possible about the issue, including a detailed description, pictures, videos etc.

All shipping costs associated with a defective product will be covered by us.

If they fail to provide support then you can contact Prusa and ask them to help, but it will be up to them to decide. For example, they could argue that making adaptations like using a non-Prusa/E3D A2 Steel Nozzle invalidates their liability to provide warranty cover...

We ask to see that picture you sent Prusa because you say it is melted yet Dan says he can't see any melting... If you want to be taken seriously on these forums then you need to back up your claims... for all we know you could just be taking a backhander from a rival company to bad mouth Prusa on here...

Prusa Research Printers ARE NOT garbage, and their support is excellent... when you deserve it!

Re: Lets talk business practises customer support Read this if you are considering one of these printers

If any admin is reading: Don't feel bad closing this topic (dont delete it) and temporarily banning jeff from this forum (just a few days' enough I would say).

Re: Lets talk business practises customer support Read this if you are considering one of these printers

If any admin is reading: Don't feel bad closing this topic (dont delete it) and temporarily banning jeff from this forum (just a few days' enough I would say).

Seconded

Re: Lets talk business practises customer support Read this if you are considering one of these printers

Thirded.

But Josef is not likely to delete this thread; he has never felt the need in the past. Nor is he likely to ban the user; we had one user who on two occasions requested that he have his forum account closed, but Josef, although he was aware of the requests did not do so.

For me, Josef has been proven correct with his actions in this regard and I very much respect him for that.

Yet another example of how brilliant Josef and his company are.

Peter

Re: Lets talk business practises customer support Read this if you are considering one of these printers

There is one thing everyone should realize before buying 3D printer.
$1000 printers are NOT plug'n'play. If you want PnP 3D printer, you will have to put a few times more money than $1000.
Hobby 3D printers require some knowledge to make them work and some experience to make them produce good quality outputs.
Speaking for myself, PR's products belong to group of best printers in their price class. I use MK2 every day and I have to say that it's the best 3D printer I owned so far.

I kind of agree with you, but for the worst possible reasons. I also kind of agree with jeff.w3, which puts me in a weird position.

The Prusa i3 MK2 is a great printer which is lowered to a mediocre printer by a large pile of avoidable mistakes.

I mean, i complain a lot, but believe it or not, I've actually been holding back on my complaints, and most of my complaints come with a solution.

It doesn't help to differentiate between price points. The only things that matter are the actual architecture and implementation. I predicted a few problems with the MK2 when I did my research, but felt that it was "close enough" to go for.

It's surprising that a design as simple and "mature" as the I3 is still so screwed up after this many years, and this many iterations.

I wish I would have done more research before paying for such horrible service I'm sure some of you have a great printer but mine is a piece of garbage.

So what prevented you from doing more research? Alzheimers? Adult onset diabetes? Irritable bowel syndrome? Your wife?

I'm not some moron either I'm a mechanical engineer who programmed and operated million dollar CNC equipment for 20 years.

If you were an engineer, why would you want to talk about business? Wouldn't an engineer want to talk about... engineering? What's the point of being an engineer of you turn around and "business" your way through problems?

You're not a mechanical engineer. You're at best technician level. Not an engineer.

As far as PR support, they're about as good as you can expect. As an engineer, you would know this. Support people work in support for a reason. Because they're not engineers; at least not the 1st level support staff. You constrain your interactions with non-engineers to mostly binary questions: "Do you have one of these in stock? Here is my money, give me one." Anything outside of that is asking too much, and this applies to support and essentially any non-technical people you run into. As an engineer, you would know this.

Furthermore, I kind of want to guess that you're Boomer generation, or very close to it. The most entitled, coddled, selfish generation this world has ever seen. Nobody cares about you. Nobody cares about how unhappy your wife is.

If you have technical input regarding the printer, now's the time to brandish it.

(And I have sad news on top of that: even if you do have technical input, the 3d printer community typically doesn't listen anyways. They're going to keep rehashing the same broken designs over and over until some random event causes them to switch.)

Re: Lets talk business practises customer support Read this if you are considering one of these printers

I don't get how you can say that the design is no good?! Prusa Research have sold thousands of this printer and only a tiny few have come on here to complain. I myself have had no problems at all, other than one's caused by my own lack of experience. The printer prints everything I throw at it first time, everytime! If the design was that bad then there would be hundreds of people on here queueing to have a go at Josef, et al. I believe that most of the problems are due to things out of Prusa's hands, such as poor builds by inexperienced users, damage in shipping, users modifying the printer themselves, lack of knowledge on the users part when it comes to the software and hardware.

When my wife bought the MK1 for me, she and her friends assembled it themselves and had problems due to their complete lack of experience with anything like it... but Prusa got them sorted out. After I got it as an Xmas present I had nothing but problems with calibrating it, again due to my inexperience and lack of patience. Now the MK2 my wife and I built together using the upgrade kit and it went perfect and has printed like a dream! The fact that I have done nothing special to it yet it works brilliantly means that there is nothing wrong with the design. There will always be some people who get something with a dud part, or something missing, but that is normal for any business!

I am amazed how many people blame products and companies for everything, how they think just because something doesn't work for them then they must be a bad design! Most of the time it something they've done (or not done) that causes the problems in the first place! Also how if something doesn't work for them they think nobody should be buying the thing and the company somehow deserves to go bust! They act Entitled!

3D Printers are still in their baby days, they are not mass produced consumer goods. They will need tweaking, have a high learning curve and you need patience and perseverance to use them, even the most top of the line ones. One day you will be able to pop in the supermarket and just pick one up for under £100, take it home, plug it in and off you go... but that's a while away. At the moment there are a lot of unknown variables and problems... which is better bowden or direct, Delta or Cartesian, extruder on the z-axis or build plate on the z-axis, etc. We are all 3D Printer Beta testers in a sense, it will be the next generation who get to buy them in Tesco's (Walmart, etc). I think a lot of people buy a 3D Printer without doing enough research into the subject as a whole, they just watch a YouTube video and think "oh yeah, I want one of those!". I spent months reading books on them, watching documentaries, yes and YouTube videos of them, perusing forums, etc. and even then I just said to my wife "I think I would like one.". That was early in the year, and she got me my Prusa MK1 for that Xmas.

So before buying one people need to think about:

1) Do they have the mechanical skills to build one or should they buy a pre-built one?

2) Do they realise that even pre-assembled it will need a certain amount of skill to maintain (and upgrade)?

3) Are they able to use the relevant software?

4) Do they have the patience for when things don't work right?

5) Have they got the money for spare parts, consumables, etc.

6) Do they know at least the basics about how they work and how to make them work?

7) Do they realise that they will have to learn, explore and work out settings, etc. for themselves?

8) Where do they want to buy from (Local vs. International company)?

If they answer no to any of these then they should either not buy one or go away and learn the bit they don't know before purchasing.

To use the tired old car analogy - 3D Printers are currently in the days of the Kit-car and the Ford Model-T and not the state of the art ones you get today.

Of all the companies out there that make 3D Printers comparable to Prusa Research's MK1/MK2 I believe Josef's is the best. That is based on a lot of research and analysis prior to choosing. That also included studying how they deal with support issues and the level of design skills they have. The main issues I read about, not that there have been many, was defective parts... now Josef was quick to admit they were having issues with the quality of the parts they were supplied with and took the necessary steps... he went to a new supplier, they cost more but the defects rates are MUCH lower. Most companies wouldn't admit to the problem let alone fix it as quick as Prusa did!

So remember, next time something goes wrong don't act all entitled, you may be the only one having that problem, or be one of only a few out of thousands, so don't expect a company to just jump on it just for you. If they do, then be very grateful! If the company does honestly do something that you feel is genuinely an issue then by all means post about it, but explain the issues clearly and back them up with information (E.g. photos) so that others can make a fair and rational conclusion of their own as to it's validity. Also remember that none of us now you in real life and so are not going to just automatically take your word over anyone else's... we don't know we can trust your information unless you back it up with proof...

Re: Lets talk business practises customer support Read this if you are considering one of these printers

(And I have sad news on top of that: even if you do have technical input, the 3d printer community typically doesn't listen anyways. They're going to keep rehashing the same broken designs over and over until some random event causes them to switch.)

I don't think they don't listen, quite the opposite, I think it's a lot of people don't understand how the community works. 3D Printers are very much in the Maker community where if you have a new idea you are welcome to share it, but if you want it to be accepted fully and developed then you need to prove it by making the the thing yourself. If, for example, you think you have the answer to moire patterns on Delta printers then design and build one that proves it, don't just give out your idea and expect others to do all the hard work. In general, if you present a fully working new concept then the community will be on it like flies on... well you get the idea! I occasionally post ideas I've had in the improvements section on here. I don't have the skills to build any of them so I just put up the ideas in case they inspire someone more skilled than me to invent something new, or find a new way to fix something. If they do then great if not then no loss to me.

As for rehashing the same broken designs, well, a quick look around the Net shows that there are hundreds if not thousands of unique designs being worked on by as many or more people! There are new ideas appearing every day, some work and are incorporated into new and existing models, others are abandoned.

Re: Lets talk business practises customer support Read this if you are considering one of these printers

I'm not some moron either I'm a mechanical engineer who programmed and operated million dollar CNC equipment for 20 years.

And I designed the Saturn V and am the first man to perform open-heart surgery in low-earth orbit. Everybody can make mistakes,

If you want a 3d-printer that requires zero tinkering, you need to raise your budget to a level well beyond 1000CAD. Parts breaking down and tinkering are a part of using a reprap printer. In fact printing replacement parts is one of the most common bits of advice given to owners of new preassembled and self-assembled reprap 3d-printers. You're not buying a fully assembled machine guaranteed to work from a Samsung or Apple, you bought a self-assembly kit.

I also miss where Dan from support was supposedly rude to you. Filaments.ca re-sold you a kit they bought from PR. They should be your first point of contact as they're the ones who purchased the kit from PR. From your post history I can gather you did make prints and have been experimenting, so the parts were clearly not faulty on arrival.

Re: Lets talk business practises customer support Read this if you are considering one of these printers

Guess what us North Americans stick together once word gets out this thing is garbage bye bye prusa

Ummm, no. I'm pretty sure 1 pissed off Canadian DOES NOT equate to North America.

If you go to Best Buy and purchase a Samsung TV and you have a problem with it in the first 30 days where do you take it? Best Buy and then they will determine whether it should be replaced or sent to Samsung. If you try to send it to Samsung first without going through Best Buy they will tell you no, take it to Best Buy first. I'm not sure why this is so hard for you to understand.

In the amount of time and energy you have wasted complaining you could have contacted filaments.ca and had them send a replacement part if it was determined to be under warranty.

Re: Lets talk business practises customer support Read this if you are considering one of these printers

@jeff.w3 The common practice worldwide is to contact the company you bought a product from in the case of difficulties or a faulty product, within a set time. (warranty) Varies from country to country. To kick off and be rude to Prusa Research and the forum here will maybe alienate people. My home built Prusa MK1 upgraded by me to a MK2 both supplied by Prusa Research direct from the Czech republic, gives me brilliant prints with all the different filaments I have tried, PLA, ABS, PETG, NGEN. Your Prusa I3 printer was provided by a 3rd party. Your problems are with them, not Prusa Research directly.

I suggest to take a breath, and count to 10, you seem an angry person. Being polite gets you further in life.

Re: Lets talk business practises customer support Read this if you are considering one of these printers

Look everyone here are the Internet losers who will bash someone for being victimized byou a fraudulent company trying to pass itself as world class. You won't get any help in this forum trust me.

Re: Lets talk business practises customer support Read this if you are considering one of these printers

You know what is really funny is how much time you have spent wasted on me because I'm a dissatisfied customer. Lol you have no idea how little I care about what you say.

Re: Lets talk business practises customer support Read this if you are considering one of these printers

Lol you have no idea how little I care about what you say.
Probably about the same as others care about your "don't buy this crap" whines. 😉

Re: Lets talk business practises customer support Read this if you are considering one of these printers

To be completely honest he is not the first to have crap service from Prusa.

I find it absolutely amazing that both PJR and 3dDelight amount others are the first to comment and make sure people know its not Prusa's fault and deal a hard time to upset customers..........As if they work for Prusa.

I am not doubting both PJR and 3dDelight and others play a massive role in helping people with problems which are fixable and they are extremely knowledgeable on this support forum but when they cant help, tend to deal even more crap then you get from Prusa chat or email.

I would like to say that victimization on the internet is actually a criminal offense, not that I am the internet police but you have all singled him out and others who have problems on this forum.

It is absolutely amazing you come to a support forum and get this behavior and its hardly an isolated problem and the more people get it and hear about it, it will not be long until Prusa starts seeing a downward spiral of company reputation especially when it starts flying around social media. Social media is a powerful thing and it does not take more the 10 unhappy people for people to see there is a problem with Prusa products.

Prusa sell the mk2 as a kit but a pnp kit so I am not sure how it is not a pnp kit. It should work straight away once it is built. Its certainly not the £150 kits from ebay now is it!!! It would seem Prusa are getting a little big for their boots. Cannot keep up with demand for one. Not a bad thing these days but when support cannot keep up or spares come to think of it there is a problem growing.

You can abuse, carry on along with the abuse all you like but what you should do is keep quiet and let Prusa deal with it. All the time your commenting, google is picking up on it and when someone does do research guess what...... there going to see all the comments you all decide to put on this forum about problems.

I love my printer, Prusa have done a great job with it. The support from Prusa is pretty poor for after sales. For new sales they are amazing. To me if I knew it would take me 5 weeks to try and get a spare part I would have thought a little longer and shopped around abit harder. In fact at one stage I thought I had wasted my money and was not going to be able to get the spare part but the guys and girls at Prusa came through and helped me out.

All that said the printer is absolutely amazing, I do not regret it. I wish the support forum would support all of its members and not want to abuse those who are a little annoyed with Prusa. It is not your place, but Prusa's to deal with major problems like this.
Please do not make this a personal forum, I do not want to see Prusa's reputation go downhill or go to the middle, I think they deserve to be at the top purely on the fact the printer is amazing when it is running. There is just a few problems that need to be dealt with. Every product has problems.

Re: Lets talk business practises customer support Read this if you are considering one of these printers

when you heat up the extruder to the same melting point as the abs body holding the extruder in place its going to melt when you claim you can print abs and nylon and other exotic materials. that's what happened to mine. its amateur engineering.

Re: Lets talk business practises customer support Read this if you are considering one of these printers

whats even funnier is how this company is trolling me with fake accounts because they are too embarrassed the truth about this printer is finally being exposed for the fake it is.

Re: Lets talk business practises customer support Read this if you are considering one of these printers

Whoa, what a thread.

Lets get constructive for a moment.

If you got a jam and nozzle melted out of the body, that means one thing, that nozzle cooling fan was not working. I don't know if you were doing any work on it lately, but it might got broken during disassembling. This fan always spins up when the nozzle is over 50°C. Please check that. Our farm does have 1200 hours of print time every day, 50°C ambient and 270°C nozzle temp and it runs alright.

With Filaments.ca, we do sell them only kits. I recently found out they assemble the printers themselves too. We obviously do not have control over this, and those assembled would be not covered by our warranty.

Did you get preassembled or a kit?

You can easily read it from the SN on the silver sticker.

CZPX2316X003XC09999 means complete (preassembled)
CZPX2316X003XK09999 means kit

Re: Lets talk business practises customer support Read this if you are considering one of these printers

Look everyone here are the Internet losers who will bash someone for being victimized byou a fraudulent company trying to pass itself as world class. You won't get any help in this forum trust me.

Jeff

I can say with all honesty that I am not one of your "losers", having owned a Prusa "original" for almost a year now, the printers (Mk1 and Mk2) have provided me with excellent prints which I take to a variety of exhibitions; without this printer I really would not be earning the money that I am now.

Now, you call Prusa Research a "fraudulent company". If I were you I would be very careful with my words, especially when there is not a grain of truth in them.

When you purchased your printer, you made a contract with the supplier of the printer and not Prusa Research. Prusa Research's contract is with your supplier and definitely not yourself. Go speak with your suppliers, tell them what you have done and they will deal with your situation accordingly.

Ben

I totally agree with you that mistakes can and do happen; that is the nature of humans. There may have been a mistake in your case, but the threats you made were somewhat nonsensical, yet had you carried them out, you may have impacted severely on all users of Prusa printers, including myself.

You are quite right in saying that internet victimisation should be a criminal offence; go tell that to Jeff.

Peter

Re: Lets talk business practises customer support Read this if you are considering one of these printers

I agree with what Peter and Josef have said above.

To Ben: I am not and never have been anything other than an ordinary customer of Prusa's. I have had my fair share of issues, and (due to disabilities) have had a pop at Prusa at one point over something that, when I calmed down, I realised was silly and not a problem at all. I would point out that a kit of this type is not 'PnP', but something that requires a certain degree of skill. Also, as I said, the whole 3D Printer concept is still very new, and there will be issues that you have to handle yourself. PnP would be if it came in three parts that you connect together with three connector wires and it's done! No one has single Jeff out, he came on here ranting and raving and making unsupported accusations, we tried to be polite and he retaliated in an offensive manner and resorted to name slinging. He was/is not interested in getting help just revenge and he came on here, a public forum, to get it, so must accept there will be a certain amount of criticism heading his way. The 3D Printer community is just that... a community... and in a community you stick up for your friends and for those who you believe to be innocent of wrong doing, and that is what we did in this case. We (well certainly not myself) did not bully him!

There are some people who act very entitled and if something doesn't go their way they throw a tantrum and try to convince everybody that the 'thing' in question is rubbish and should not be bought.

Prusa have always been helpful when I've had a problem. Sometimes they have not seemed to grasp what I am getting at but I think that has more to do with English not being their first language so confusion is to be expected when something is complicated or your own English is very colloquial.

In general I have found their support to work on a very efficient 4 step system:

1) Report the issue in the chat, they will ask for photos in most cases.
2) Send them the requested photos.
3) They look them over and decide if the issue is covered by their warranty.
4) They either send out a new part (for free) OR inform you that it is not covered by their warranty, but they will still usually try to help you with the problem.

But remember, this applies only if you bought the printer direct from Prusa. In all other cases you need to go to the company you bought it from first. If you feel they aren't doing enough or won't honour their warranty then by all means contact Prusa directly, but don't assume that they will automatically send you parts - they are under no legal obligation to do so. Be polite, respectful and try to keep to the facts. Try to avoid using slang and colloquialisms, English is not the native language in Czechoslovakia! Also remember there is a time difference, you may be emailing Prusa at 3 in the afternoon but it may be midnight in Czechoslovakia!

Sometimes it can take them a little while to respond, but remember they are a small, relatively new company. I have had far worse customer service from some top brand international companies.

Internet bullying is a crime, as it should be, but people often don't think it applies when they attack a company. They forget that there are real people working there, with feelings like anyone else. Josef (and the others) have worked hard to get Prusa Research up and running and it must hurt when someone launches the kind of vitriolic diatribe that Jeff did. I certainly don't appreciate being called a loser and a nobody!

Please remember people that those of you who have problems (whether your fault or Prusa's) are just one or two out of the many thousands that they have sold, the huge majority of which that have worked perfectly. So don't rant and rave, but instead seek advice in a respectful and polite manner both from Prusa and the community, that way you'll get the help you need. If you break it yourself, then try to get it fixed under warranty but fail, don't go throwing a tantrum... you tried to beat the system, you failed, move on, take it on the chin.

My hope is that Jeff will get the help he needs and that he will soon be back to happily printing!

Re: Lets talk business practises customer support Read this if you are considering one of these printers

My Point proven. Certainly making it a personal forum you two 🙄

I will agree however you should contact the supplier first before having a complete moan. But then again as there's no love lost here in the support forum Jeff get posting on facebook and twitter and get some pictures of the problems on those posts to show everyone just how bad a Prusa. Nothing stopping Jeff if he feels that way.

His post done exactly what he wanted it to do yet you are moaning about it. If I search Prusa and see this post and a few others popping up I might consider buying an UP. 😕

I am considering my second Prusa but the more I read on here the more I wonder what the future holds for its support forum with you two on it running around like you own it. Yes you guys give some great advice but you do also give out some shit comments. Just bare in mind there is some owners who are on here and are annoyed with Prusa but do not say anything merely as they are concerned they may get ridiculed. Its a bloody support forum, you will get problems and unhappy people.
A car forum is littered with problems with cars. You rarely end up with a forum dedicated to how good something is. Its a support forum. 😉

On another note you are advised to set the pinda at a certain level, then do a calibration. If it passes calibration you are good to go printing. Now I followed the instructions to the word. The pinda was set perfectly. The pinda is supposed to stop the nozzle hitting the deck. So after calibration why did the pinda not stop the nozzle hitting the deck. That my friends is not my fault as I done everything via the book and to the letter. Funny how Prusa know its a problem because two days later they release a new firmware which guess what..... stops the nozzle hitting the bed because it uses the pinda to check!
Again that was not my fault but a actually a Prusa problem. It is amazing just how many people would say that was their fault. Those who had the pinda miles away from where it should be, that is your fault as the instructions clearly show you where is should be but many others its a firmware problem not using the pinda to check the bed even after calibration. Now if I wanted to make a case to send it back because of that, I could of. I did think it was a cura problem but in fact the pinda once calibrated should have stopped that happening. Even you two should know that yet you still went on to tell me it was my fault!
Now I was only merely having a moan because I wanted a spare part, certainly not saying the printer was a complete load of crud and no one should buy one... Although a few points I felt like that!

Jeff's post could have been ignored by you two after you realised there was no helping him!!