Anyone else had a huge customer support issue like this?
I originally thought Prusa was a great company and bought an FDM printer kit from them. Everything went great with support etc, but I guess that was before they became too big to remain honorable? That first printer is still going strong after minor tweaks after all these years.
However that all changed with my next purchase.
I'm partially disabled and so my health vacillates between perfect and horrible at random. This means I can't really afford the SL1, but a wealthy relative wanted some custom printing work done and bought the printer, so I was delighted to work for it.
Trouble started as soon as it arrived. It wouldn't print. After lots of back and forth with support finally they identified that the screen was coming on but not brightly. I wanted them to replace the whole thing but they basically begged me to fix it myself. I relented because I was still feeling like this was a smallish family business with real people running the show. Boy was I wrong.
So, they had me re-seat a cable that connects the screen and it began printing. They promised me repeatedly that they'd replace the whole thing if it stopped working again later. ....it stopped working again later and you can see where this is going.
I didn't have time to do a lot of printing (because of illness) so after a few prints it sat idle a fair while. All in all there were no more than 8-10 total prints on it before it broke again. After having my son go through the troubleshooting with them and reseating the cable again, it's now a $2000 anchor on my desk that printed 10 times. Basically I did the work for the wealthy relative and got nothing out of it.
When I mentioned all the conversations and support tickets they obviously have, and the fact that it came to me flawed, they just asked me to produce proof that they said they'd replace it. And since officially it had passed some time mark, they just weren't going to do anything at all.
They screwed me and there's nothing I can do about it.
That's just not the same company I bought the first printer from.
I suppose this is a last ditch effort to see if anyone honorable is left at their company before I go to every 3D printing forum and well known 3D printing YouTuber to share my story since just letting it sit like I have so far would be a disservice to other people who might buy from this company.
RE: Anyone else had a huge customer support issue like this?
Do you have any emails with reports of all the issues you had with it initially, or was it all verbal phone stuff? I haven't had to have any warranty work done, so I don't have any data for you.
RE: Anyone else had a huge customer support issue like this?
Sometimes when a company grows fast friends and family are the first to get hired- then protected from their own mediocrity. Then they hire more friends and family, then a perfectly good company gets ruined by nepotism and cronyism. With an owner as proud of himself as this one seems to be, it becomes easy to pull things over on him as long as it is done with a smile and flattery. Mediocrity becomes the norm as those who sound the alarm just get ganged up on with personal attacks. Not saying this is what is happening, but after rapid organic growth, a good look at organizational design and effectiveness needs to be looked at.
RE: Anyone else had a huge customer support issue like this?
I have not seen any issues with their support. For me, it has always been superb.
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Chuck H
3D Printer Review Blog
RE:
Just don´t ...
I try to give answers to the best of my ability, but I am not a 3D printing pro by any means, and anything you do you do at your own risk. BTW: I have no food for…
RE: Anyone else had a huge customer support issue like this?
Do you have any emails with reports of all the issues you had with it initially, or was it all verbal phone stuff? I haven't had to have any warranty work done, so I don't have any data for you.
A ton of it was through text chat on the site but some of it was telephone. There's a ton of digital record, or at least should be.
Sometimes when a company grows fast friends and family are the first to get hired- then protected from their own mediocrity. Then they hire more friends and family, then a perfectly good company gets ruined by nepotism and cronyism. With an owner as proud of himself as this one seems to be, it becomes easy to pull things over on him as long as it is done with a smile and flattery. Mediocrity becomes the norm as those who sound the alarm just get ganged up on with personal attacks. Not saying this is what is happening, but after rapid organic growth, a good look at organizational design and effectiveness needs to be looked at.
Happens all the time... So disappointing.
Just don´t ...
Don't what? Make trouble for a company that remorselessly screwed me over?
Don't let them know they are declining so they can fix it?
Don't keep others from being screwed?
Not sure which of those you mean but none of them are just.
RE: Anyone else had a huge customer support issue like this?
Just don't feed the troll?
Just don´t ...
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Chuck H
3D Printer Review Blog
RE: Anyone else had a huge customer support issue like this?
To be up front. I have had my Prusa for about 3 years. I recently bought the MMU2S upgrade for it. I ran the new MMU2S for about 9 months, then it started having trouble doing color changes without having errors.. So, I did some troubleshooting to no avail. I contacted support. I was told to upgrade the firmware to the newest and did so. This caused it to work "okay" for a while. Then, I started getting the MMU issue where all lights blink and it points to power. So, before doing anything I contacted support to troubleshoot so I would have documentation on this one. They decided to troubleshoot I would need to put in the newest firmware. So, I did this. Now it will not function at all and I am having to wait over a week to get any reply from the support group. At this point I have a printer that I can't use and was looking at upgrading to the MK4 with the MMU3 but after the interaction I have had with customer support and trying to blame everything but the fact that the firmware upgrade caused the system to stop functioning I have come to realize exactly what was brought up earlier that Prusa grew too fast and can no longer support their members as they used to. At this point I have am expensive paper weight and I am expecting they are going to tell me that I will not qualify for the upgrade and I will have to repurchase.... And with the multiple reviews I am seeing of the printers arriving broken or DOA... I will not be going with a Prusa...
RE: Anyone else had a huge customer support issue like this?
I had an issue with my CW1S. Support walked me through some analysis steps which required me to more or less disassemble the whole unit, but once I had jumped through the hoops they did replace the faulty sensor free of charge. Replies were okay in terms of response times. No complaints here.
RE: Anyone else had a huge customer support issue like this?
I will share my experience with my prusa MK4 here:
Warning for who is expecting for a customer support on Prusa 3d printers!
I bought my "Prusa i3 MK3/S/+ to MK4 upgrade kit" in 19/09/23 (order 1695156651),and received it in 20/12/23
Mounted it, worked correctly until 05/06/24: the printer stopped working, showing a blue screen (see image 1).I contacted the online support, and it was said that they would send a new mainboard (xBuddy)
I received the mainboard in 14/06/24, changed it, the printer worked, but in 20/06/24, the printer stopped again, showing a red screen (heatbed port overcurrent, see image 2).I turned it off, then turned it back on, but, now it only showed a black screen on it
Contacted the support, did all the requests they have said (photos, videos, etc), showing that the hardware was intact, no damage on any of the cables
The support said only that it was strange, and said that he would send the case to the support and they would contact me through e-mail
Gmail - Broken MK4
Resuming the e-mail, they said that they would send other xbuddy with the cables in 08/06/24; I asked for the tracking number, and today they respond with the tracking number of the first xbuddy that didn't work, and that's it!
So, very careful for who is trying to buy a Prusa printer, you may have a bricked printer, without any assistance, very different for what they say
RE: Anyone else had a huge customer support issue like this?
I have had nothing but issues with my XL for over 2 months now. The customer support email responses are long winded gibberish that show up in a non timely manner and on occasion the response is not even applicable to the issues. Yes, issues, one after the other. I am such a beta tester. Today is day 7 waiting for "what are my next steps" response, support line is dead. USB issues is the biggest, USB errors after 10 or 12 hours, and does not properly recover. If it can't print it is a brick, don't buy expensive bricks.
RE: Anyone else had a huge customer support issue like this?
I would never use email - use the shop chat. Responses are relatively quick and reliable.
I have had nothing but issues with my XL for over 2 months now. The customer support email responses are long winded gibberish that show up in a non timely manner and on occasion the response is not even applicable to the issues. Yes, issues, one after the other. I am such a beta tester. Today is day 7 waiting for "what are my next steps" response, support line is dead. USB issues is the biggest, USB errors after 10 or 12 hours, and does not properly recover. If it can't print it is a brick, don't buy expensive bricks.
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Chuck H
3D Printer Review Blog
RE: Anyone else had a huge customer support issue like this?
I had various levels of quality of support with prusa. Chat is most of the time polite and helpful to the extend of their knowledge (which is quite good for a helpdesk) and predefined scripts. If it can easily proven that is something faulty (happened with me with a faulty sls lcd and mk3 bed thermistor) they will quickly and hassle free send you a replacement. This is a HUGE plus for a company. Most of them will try desperately to find a reason to not compensate you even if it blatantly obvious that there is an issue and its under warranty. The problem arises when their first level of support (chat) cannot solve the problem and goes through to a technical team. This most of the time is slow, problematic and in a few of my cases i had to send a few followup emails and initiate new discussions with chat to go forward. It was like they were waiting for the problem to solve itself or for me to grow tired. If i had to guess is that their technical team has their hands full with development etc and they dont go though the support cases in a timely fashion... or bother so much. BUT again to give credit along with complains , in one of those cases, where my XL was scratching the sheet while probing , even if the email response was REALLY slow and as i said i had to go through reminders and reopened chats, at the end the problem was solved and they replaced the XL satin sheet. I sometime complain about Prusa. I find my self to easily post complains about the things i dont like with Prusa than to also post how good is their response sometimes.