This is Insane! Guy is Destroying his CNC company's reputation!

… it’s like watching a car crash in slow motion!
the owner/employee starts going off in the comments!
(u/DRobs86 seems to work for the company, or own it…) it’s cringe inducing

Wow. Dude just keeps doubling down.

Maybe that’s just me, but I find the seller very calm compared to the other douche.

Keep in mind that the dude who started the thread isn’t honest, he only shows the emails he got from the seller but doesn’t show his own emails he sent. I bet they were very agressive given the small overview we get from his attacks on reddit.

Also, I don’t get these people. They buy a CNC router just like they buy a lego set, they expect everything to match perfectly, follow the user guide without using their brains and not needing tinkering like the thing should be just plug and play. Well, sure you can expect things to be perfect if you pay for in a way, but when it comes to cheap tools you have to remain resonable… Scoop: you don’t even get plug and play with a million dollar Haas machining center!
I bought my mini lathe for cheap and it was quite crappy out of the box, didn’t occured to me to complain all over the internet and trash the seller, thing was cheap, I got what I paid for, I’ll just fix it myself and move on.

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The quote Barry has in his shop is very adequate!

“This machine has no brain, use yours”

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Seeing the seller being dismissive of the customer doesn’t really bother me that much, maybe I’m an insensitive jerk. It’s possible that a huge burden can come from a tiny percentage of customers, and it’s simply good business to cut them loose. It’s not “nice” and everyone is shocked, but it’s not as unreasonable as they make it out to be.

What does bother me is being so dismissive of what seem to be clear facts relating to quality. On reddit they say “it’s not about the screw” but for me it is absolutely about the screw and the attitude that it can’t be wrong. Quality does not come from not making mistakes, it comes from skepticism and paying attention.

Guy has no humility to customers, fine, but you must have humility to the engineering and measurement or you will have a terrible product.

The best customer service is not customer service that treats you nicely. The best customer service is unnecessary customer service.

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That’s ridiculous. They offered him a fix and advice and he just keeps going. I am with forcerouge: “I bought my mini lathe for cheap and it was quite crappy out of the box, didn’t occured to me to complain all over the internet and trash the seller, thing was cheap, I got what I paid for, I’ll just fix it myself and move on.”
I did the exact same with my lathe, mini mill and 2 of my 3d printers. They were crap out of the box so I fixed them. None of the machines I have ever used were : follow the directions, put together and it’s perfect. All require setup and troubleshooting . Hopefully this guy will learn to consider the solutions others offer and give the common courtesy of a thank you and move on. Why spend all that time trashing someone. It is better spent improving the machine.

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The way I read it, the OP already HAD a fix, he started by saying “I’ve already ordered longer screws”.

The issue isn’t even in the initial back and forth.

I was reading the entire exchange as (paraphrasing)

Hey, this isn’t working. I noticed the bolts are slightly different than the docs, and while I’ve already ordered longer ones to solve the problem, is there something I’m doing wrong.

Repeatedly the answer back was effectively

Nope, it works, math checks out

So the OP took pictures AND videos that clearly show he’s doing everything right, and it simply doesn’t work.

Now… here, the company could say

Hmm, strange. Let us do some checking, maybe we need to alter something.

Because… video evidence says clearly it’s not quite right.

But… they basically kept insisting

NO! The parts definitely fit!, but we’ll send you longer screws (despite the OP having already ordered longer screws)

They searched out his post on reddit, which, could have “just been a person complaining” … and while it “is” … the response to it is what bothers me. Ignoring the post on reddit… the OP just looks like a person complaining. Then multiple other people with the same machine said

Yep, same problem, I had to buy longer screws.

…so, clearly there’s a quality control issue on something. The issue isn’t that there is one. The issue isn’t that the solution is probably “longer screws” … the issue is how the owner handled themselves. Denying the reality that it simply didn’t work, and insisting it does. At some point it went beyond “fix my problem” (because the OP already had a solution) and moved into “why are you denying there could be a quality problem?”

But the owners are saying the other thousands have no problems ? What happened to those few? To cause problems? If it’s fixed my plan would be drop the dead horse and move on. He had a fix they offered the same fix so over

How many of those thousands just fixed it and didn’t say anything?

It’s quite possible that a small percentage of stuff shipped has tolerances that result in that bolt not catching the threads.

At work, we WANT to know about those kinds of issues so we can solve them for future customers.

Our CS also goes a bit above and beyond. We had a pricing error due to a product being configured wrong. It was a table. A $4000 table. On the website, it said $2000, because the table’s top wasn’t part of the Bill of Materials during product setup … whoops. (Thankfully it was caught before shipping)

We had several options

  1. cancel the order and apologize for the mistake
  2. call them, offer a discount, but not just give them the table for $2000
  3. call them, apologize for the mistake, ask which wood they had intended to order for the top (as because of the mis-configuration, we didn’t know) and still give them the table for $2000 because it was our mistake. Taking a bit a loss on that sale.

We did option 3.

We have had other customers CLEARLY order the wrong fabric on custom upholstered goods. We have a no refunds/returns on custom upholstered products… yet we STILL made it right. We remake the product how they intended, and we sell the wrong one in clearance. We probably break about even on that one.

We don’t always go this far. But if a customer calls us, and says something doesn’t go together right, we work with them, we don’t insinuate they don’t know how to use a screwdriver…and insist that there’s no chance there was a quality issue, and that it has to be their fault.

Same way in the grocery store I used to work at. I ran the deli/bakery, and as the department manager, I had 100% authority to resolve any issue any customer had about any product in my department by any means available. Full stop.
Saw one of the assistant store managers give away an entire basket of groceries to a customer once, something like 450 bucks. It was way overkill, but I don’t even remember what she was upset about. All I know is that she was in the 7th or 8th decile (tracked by customer spending) and he didn’t get in trouble. Top dog had a short conversation about alternatives that might have worked, then thanked him for putting the customer first.
Imagine my surprise, having come from a buffet restaurant where, for a short time at least, I want even ALLOWED to give refunds at the store. Had to take name/address and tell them to wait for a check from corporate.

I agree you dont know. Once it was resolved go on with life both sides I’m not responsible for anyone else other than comment to state the fix. Their stand is it fits and probably did or does in most cases. In my mind neither side came out on top the fix for that customer was offered early on and not accepted so they sould have stopped and once offered he had no other reason to continue

Some people just want to be heard and validated. It’s pretty bizarre to me. I believe him, 100%, that his only intent was to offer help with the documentation and an issue that was apparent (to him). Look at our community.
He thought he WAS being helpful, the owner disagreed. So he had to keep looking for that validation. Kind of a **** move, booting him from the forum, but not a lot of details on that, either. Like the owner dude said though, start your own business and run it however you want.
I think a year from now they’ll both defend their actions, but overall this won’t have helped anyone.

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The interesting thing, to me, is that it doesn’t matter if the customer is wrong…even if they’re acting like jerks.

…but what you do (should do) as a business owner is not make yourself ALSO look like an a**hole.

The customer has nothing to lose. You, as a business owner, have a reputation.

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I agree.

One thing to note, though, is that the company tried to bow out of the email thread multiple times. Each time, they mentioned that they had already agreed to send the longer bolts, but the guy already had them. Therefore, the end user already had his fix.

The end user is the one that kept coming back at the company.

The only way out of a situation at that point is, “Thank-you for your concern. We’ll take a look at that.” Then just let it go. Unfortunately, the company didn’t do that and insisted on a, “We’re perfect, you’re an idiot” approach.

I did Technical Support for a web hosting company for many years. There were may times I used that line with no intention of ever following up with it just to placate the end user and get them off the phone.

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Yes you are correct learn when to stop. Them not you sorry wrong wording there

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The thing about being wrong is, you are always convinced you aren’t.

Both sides should be honest with themselves that they may have made a mistake. But the vendor has more responsibility here. Users are trying to do it right. On some level, any mistakes they make are your fault and they will end up hurting the vendor.

There are a lot of simple things they should have done differently.

It makes me very happy to be here. The negative comments are constructive. The troubleshooting is humble. We work together, and we don’t censor.

I’ve read that 20% of the customers cost 80% of the support. I am sure that is true. But this person does seem to genuinely want to help.

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Good ol’ Pareto Principle at work.

(The thing about being wrong is, you are always convinced you aren’t)
That is a falisy nobody’s ever wrong it just the point of view :zipper_mouth_face: expecial me.
I’m not sure it is 20% that seems high in the mechanical world. Maybe electronic or software

The hosting business I worked for had numbers to prove the following:

10% of the customers made 90% of the support tickets.

Those same 10% of the customers were in the lower 1/4 MRR bracket.

Meaning our highest amount of customer issues came from our lowest amount of our monthly pay.

At one point, we actually increased our lowest tier server cost to cause a good chunk of them to seek hosting elsewhere.

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Smaller actuarial firm I used to work for had groups referred to a MGA on renewals…“make go away”.

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