Equipment & Techniques > Cameras, Lenses and Shooting gear

360Precision closed?

<< < (2/3) > >>

Huib:
Finally after a post on a Panotool forum I got a message that I have to take contact with them on MSN. Really, after I bought and paid they didn't reply any of the emails with just a simple friendly asked question "When can I aspect the head?"
After installing MSN (I never use MSN, neither mine customers) I got contact but found the contact still very difficult. I have to say a lot of people on this very good panorama forum are big friends and defenders of 360Precision.
Finally I received 19 January the PrecisionHead.
Very well made but still very difficult to comminicate with 360Precision. They send me a tab for Sigma 8mm F3.5 and I have the Sigma 8mm F4. They never ask which one I need. I didn't know of the difference but they blame me. No solution or something like that.
They have 6 ways to communicate but not with email or phone.

More information about there communication you can find on  thread about the 360precision communcation: http://www.panoguide.com/forums/qna/5726/
And also here: http://mattlauder.wordpress.com/2008/10/29...on/#comment-747
ANd http://mattlauder.wordpress.com/2008/04/04...precision-head/
Add if you look well there is much more to find

360precision:

--- Quote from: Huib ---Finally after a post on a Panotool forum I got a message that I have to take contact with them on MSN. Really, after I bought and paid they didn't reply any of the emails with just a simple friendly asked question "When can I aspect the head?"
After installing MSN (I never use MSN, neither mine customers) I got contact but found the contact still very difficult. I have to say a lot of people on this very good panorama forum are big friends and defenders of 360Precision.
Finally I received 19 January the PrecisionHead.
Very well made but still very difficult to comminicate with 360Precision. They send me a tab for Sigma 8mm F3.5 and I have the Sigma 8mm F4. They never ask which one I need. I didn't know of the difference but they blame me. No solution or something like that.
They have 6 ways to communicate but not with email or phone.
--- End quote ---

I'm sorry but you are now really starting to get on my nerves. How many forums and email lists do you need to post this on ? If you put even a small percentage of this time and effort into contacting us there would never have been any problems. Instead I'm now having to waste hours of my time dealing with this nonsense.

Firstly during the ordering process we offered to ship you the 1Ds/8mm head on receipt of payment THEN ship the Sigma 15mm camera tab after it had been CUSTOM machined. You told me not to worry about doing that as you weren't in any hurry. If you urgently needed the equipment why tell us this ? You then post all these messages on forums and email lists but fail to explain the entire story.

Even now with this post you fail to mention that it was your fault for ordering the wrong Sigma 8mm tab. I specifically asked you to place the order via the website for the 8mm head and I'd manually add the 15mm tab to the order. Did you do this ? No, of course you didn't but do you explain this in your numerous posts or emails ? No ! My only mistake was making the assumption that a customer with a 1DsMK2 and 1DsMK3 would be using the newer version of the lens and not a version that had been out of production for over two years.

When you were quoted the timeframe for delivery you clearly failed to understand that the 7-10 days were business days. You submitted the order on the 17th of December and we were closed from the 23rd of December until the 7th of January. Technically 360Precision wasn't closed but the machine shop and anodisers close down during those dates. If you take the holidays into consideration then the build time on your CUSTOM order was nine days. You then received it on the 10th business day.

As for the communication methods, I have well over 1,000 customers on my iChat, MSN and Skype accounts combined. Very few and I mean less than a handful have any issue with using chat software. Just because your clients don't use up-to-date communications methods doesn’t mean we can't. It clearly explains on the website that we do not accept telephone calls from international numbers due to the massive numbers of marketing and junk calls received. I simply do not have the time to answer 50 calls to get to speak to 1 customer.

As for email, we have very few issues with customers using paid or professional email accounts like yourself. When I check back through my records I can see that all your emails were answered in the 24-48 hours as quoted in our automated replies. When and if you receive the replies is beyond my control hence the insistence on using one of the chat methods or the online support desk.

If you choose to ignore the support channels that we have in place that's purely your choice. But to then go onto the internet and complain about it is really unbelievable. Running a business like 360precision gives me the opportunity to deal with and meet some really fantastic people. Some of my customers are amongst my best friends that I visit with on a regular basis. But it only take a few customers like you to really put a dampener on things and sometimes makes me wonder if it's worth the effort. Seriously though it's so depressing having customers unjustly post like this after all the effort we go to, to bring our products to market.

You just have to remember that the product you ordered was custom made specifically for you which in itself is a massive undertaking. You'd be hard pressed to find any company in any industry that will custom machine a precision product for ONE customer so quickly and for no added cost. PLUS you also fail to mention that you were given one of the camera tabs for FREE and the shipping was also FREE.

Matthew Rogers
co-founder
360Precision Ltd
http://www.360precision.com
msn: support [insert symbol here] 360precision.com
iChat: threesixtyprecision [insert symbol here] mac.com

360precision:

--- Quote from: happyman ---There are two guys at 360.precision - Matthew and Stuart. Matthew is the one who don´t like to communicate. It is a pain to get into contact with him. I don´t know why he is so stubbornly. There products are so good, i already have the precision and ordered an atome with the same problems you describe.

Stuart is the nice guy. But it seems that he is not involved in every transaction, only after you sending him a personal mail he will investigate.
This is his mail adress: stuart@360precision.com

Good luck and please report your experience.

I will do the same.
--- End quote ---

You crack me up, doesn't like to communicate and I'm stubborn, are you serious ? Over the post four years I've sent well over 100,000 emails in reply to customer emails sent to my personal email account. This doesn't include emails in reply to order queries which would take the total to over 130,000.

My typical day starts at 6-7am, on a busy day I can spent 5-6 hours just answering emails, posting replies to forums or dealing with chat requests. At any given time I can have up to a dozen live chats going. On an average day I speak to around 10-15 different people via chat.

Just see how long it takes to get to speak to the owners of other companies in this industry. Anyone can get a hold of me most hours during business opening times in a matter of minutes, if not seconds.

And you're right, Stuart isn't involved in the day-to-day running of the business. When someone only receives one email/week to an email address it's easy to reply to. But getting Stuart involved only complicates matters and slows things down.

Matthew Rogers
co-founder
360Precision Ltd
http://www.360precision.com
msn: support [insert symbol here] 360precision.com
iChat: threesixtyprecision [insert symbol here] mac.com

Huib:
Matthew you are really strange guy. It would be much wisher to answer some emails, then bringing back this old post which had a last post over 19 days old. It cost you a lot of time and will not do well to your reputation.
I find out that I am not the only person who had communication problems with you. Everybody can read the links above from other customers of you.
Even on your own support desk, I have 2 request which you haven’t answer.
So, I know now for sure that you are reading this, when are you going to send me or can I aspect the tab for the 1Ds / Sigma 8mm f4.
The wrong tab I have send 1 ½ week ago to you. Have you received it? Just some questions from me.

Btw. I personally don’t think that this should be the best way to communicate with you. This is not good for the forum and not for 360Precision which make very good products.

Huib:
I like to reopen this post. People has to know what kind of company 360Precision is before they place any order there. From many other people I got personal mails that they have the same problem with 360Precision.
I got the wrong arm tab. I send it back in January. Matthew last answer on mine request when I can aspect mine arm tab is:

Matthew Rogers, Apr 14 10:38:
Unfortunately I have NO CONTROL over the production queue. As the part you're ordering is out of production we need to be able to fit it in. If you want you can happily pay us what it costs to run one machine for one part, approximately £750. As we don't want to charge this fee the only option is to wait until spare machine time is available.
Matt
________________________________________

Here is another link to the PT Panotools forum where Matt is very active and has a lot of friends.

Someone suggest that I contact Oxfordshire Trading Standards, which is a government department who deal with company bad practice. Is that the way to go?

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page