T.C.Electronic is dead to me. I now boycott them.

[pbasswil]

I'd be very interested to get more comments from this UKHTCE guy. We don't know if he's ignoring the other posters, or if he just hasn't checked back in.

Bongo, in your PMs with him, can you make sure he knows that the rest of us TBers would like to hear his thoughts on the whole issue.

If he's smart, he'll realize that to simply acknowledge that something went very, very wrong with their customer service could give his company a fighting chance at earning back some TB sympathy.

OTOH, it's just occurred to me: Maybe the UK in his name means that, whatever his private opinion is, he couldn't publicly comment on the customer service on this side of the Atlantic.

 

[gnasher1993]

Which raises the question, if your stuff is usable, tank-like, and cheap, do you need customer service?

Yes; when they stop working...

They're lacking on the customer services front but back to TC...

 

[Kosko]

I apologize about using the word "boycott", and really didn't mean to sound aggressive about it. I'm just saying that they have an opportunity to influence people around here.

And as a person whose read Bongo's reviews, TCE always seemed like one of his favorite, so to see a situation such as this is very surprising.

I don't mean "boycott", but we are a niche market in some regards, and this is one of the largest sites on the internet as far as bass is concerned. I just think TCE should take this opportunity to explain what happened; and make sure nothing sullies their reputation.

I read "the Consumerist" blog for these reasons, to show a companies true intentions toward their customers. For instance, I would love to never go into a Best Buy again; and it was once a favorite store of mine.

 

[Matt Dean]

I'm pretty confident that Bongo knows how to operate a compressor.

But even if he didn't, even if he was a total dummy who didn't know where to plug the instrument jack, that customer service response would be totally out of line.

If this were some crazy arcane device designed many years ago by a long-gone engineer, they might have an explanation for nobody knowing how it works. But since this is something that's currently available for purchase new, that's pretty unacceptable.

edit: Bongo beat me to it.

A big plus one.

 

[Silent Fly]

Twice in row is a little bit too much... but **** happens. I am very surprised that Bongomania had such bad experience with TCE.

A while ago I needed information on a TCE product. I contacted them and they replied in just a few hours. I needed further information and they answered back very quickly until the issue was resolved.

Heh, I know of plenty of companies, with severly bad CS, and people still buy their stuff all day long.

More sadly, companies with people buying their products have severely bad CS.

Fortunately, it happens rarely to [sfx] but when something goes wrong with one of my products (under warranty or not) it becomes a top priority for me. If a musician shows his support buying what I build, the very least I can do it is support him.

More importantly, the reason why I support my customers the best I can is that I am proud of my work. Supporting my customers is what I do; it is not a necessary evil.

(&#8230Plus, the word of one person on an internet forum has never ment conclusive truth to me before, as of today, that has not changed.

I agree.

Providing "conclusive truth" exists, it is a principle that applies to everything – internet forums or not. IMO, it is a matter of trust, reputation and use common sense about other people’s opinion.

Bongomania can be wrong of course but I know him and I trust his judgment. If the claim came from someone else I would be less incline to believe it.

 

[Darkstrike]

Bongomania can be wrong of course but I know him and I trust his judgment.

Oh, what I said, isn't ment to be anti-Bongo, he's a cool dude, I would say the same thing if it were anyone, and would expect to be looked upon the same way, were it me that was on the other end of the stick.

 

[JimmyM]

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=210264606343&ref=mf

When a company proves itself to treat customers like whale droppings repeatedly, something like this happens. There are 167 (at this time and date) people who will never buy from that company again, or at the very least until they come forward with a damn good explanation of their behavior. That is a considerable number of potential customers to have lost to a company that small.

well only a fool or someone who never reads the internet would buy from dr bass at this point. that's not a boycott...that's common sense

 

[bongomania]

For the record, I'm not taking anybody's disagreement or alternate views "personally" at all. I don't mind if people doubt, we all look at other peoples' claims through our own filters, and I'm prone to doubting too. I'm not trying to get anyone to "do my bidding", only to express exactly how I perceive the situation, and what I am doing about it.

Uffe emailed me, I have emailed back, we'll see how that progresses. At this time I am fairly confident that the pedal is not "broken" but was instead designed badly. The pedal is a lost cause, but maybe Eric will get some retraining. And even if Eric was an individual bad apple, TC will need to step up its customer service platform. The process via the chat page went for weeks with no response, and the user forum is pretty desolate--there are very few replies to posts there, from TC or anyone.

 

[bishopfunk]

"Eric" is the only person answering TCE's customer service site. If he is a bad employee, he is also the only person to talk to--so he represents TCE fully.

It is not working in that it does not compress, first off. Secondly, the noise gate is set so that it only opens at all at one extreme threshold setting, and even then it labors to open, it sounds like a "slow gear" effect.

T.C.E. = Totally Controlled by Eric...

 

[Silent Fly]

(...) At this time I am fairly confident that the pedal is not "broken" but was instead designed badly. (...)

I haven't tried the pedal so I can't be sure but there might be another possibility.

As far as I know the Sustain+Parametric EQ has some internal trimpot to set the pedal functioning (e.g. bias level). It is possible that something went wrong with the production and the batch was badly setup.

 

[bongomania]

The reissue has no internal trim pots, and the original has no visible/accessible trim pots.

 

[AndyLES]

Hmmmm......perhaps the pedal gear isn't built to the same standards as the rack stuff? I've seen the latter in outboard racks at clubs up and down the Eastern seaboard, and the stuff seems to run flawlessly for years and years.

 

[Wud]

TC make some quality products, of that there is no doubt.
Supporting those products is however far from being a priority as far as I can see.
I've had many issues with my TC Powercore DSP card, if you want to see poor CS have a look at the threads on the TC Powercore user forum.
Some of the confirmed major problems have gone unfixed for years, so I wouldn't hold my breath in expecting too much from TC in all honesty.

 

[JimmyM]

did i mention that i tol...eh, never mind

companies would do well not to put themselves above their customer base, lest there be no customer base.

 

[ettsn]

For the record, I wasn't throwing Bongo under the bus. Just asking if it was possible he was doing something that was making the device do funny stuff. Yes, the CS response wasn't very good, but I still maintain that tce makes some of the best stuff out there (I love all my tc gear -- a point Jimmy and I have discussed before! lol)

Sorry you had a bad experience, and hopefully Uffe makes it right.

 

[My name is Mudd]

To me, the issues the compressor may or may not have is now secondary...Eric's attitude is the primary - the apparent fact that he has no knowledge of his employers' products is scary; that he told a customer that a possibly-defective product is '...not their problem...' is scarier; and that Eric tried to foist the problem off onto the retailer is scariest.

I've been where Eric is (cust. service/tech support) and I can guarantee you that if I had said anything like what Eric told Bongo, I'd have been fired immediately.

 

[Iversen]

I have one of those old TC Stereo Chorus Flanger+ sitting on my board and it's not a reissue. It works just fine.

I think Eric's the problem here. He never talked to Denmark to begin with. Why would anyone employed at TC Denmark claim to NOT know one of their better selling pedals of the 80's?

 

[bongomania]

Here is the exact quote from the guy in Denmark (according to Eric): "Hi Eric, i couldn't get any infos other than that the pedal is discontinued. and that the founder of TC designed it way back when."

Of course what's strange about that is that we're talking about the recent production reissue, not the original old one; and the reissue seems to me to be designed quite differently from the old one.

 

[Taylor Livingston]

I have actually heard stories of things that were designed long ago and nobody currently with a company understands how they work. But this can only reasonably be applied to companies with 50+ year histories, and to products that have long been out of production. For example, if you asked somebody at Moog right now what transistors you'd need to fix up a broken Bode frequency shifter, I wouldn't be surprised if all you got were furrowed brows. Or try calling up Sony to ask about what kind of battery you need for one of their 1950s transistor radios.

That's not at all a reasonable thing to say about something you are currently selling. Even if there are no EEs around who get the low-level functioning, surely somebody knows how it's supposed to sound? That's the area of marketing guys, and I'm certain TC has some of those around...

 

[bongomania]

So, I just now got off the phone with Eric's manager. He was a total **** to me. He would not listen to what I was saying, and kept trying to talk over me. He repeatedly insisted "that's how the system works", and would not hear me saying that the system was not helping the customer. His only defense was that his TC USA department had only been in business for one year, and they had no record of this pedal because it was apparently discontinued just about one year ago. They don't have any of these pedals to test, and they've never seen one. When I asked him how come Denmark had no answers either, he said "I guess since you're talking to the sales VP in Denmark, you should talk to him about that." True, but a snotty reply IMO. He says the case is not closed, and Eric and others there are devoting a lot of effort to solving the problem, but here's the thing--Eric never said anything like that. All he could say was "send it back to the retailer." When I suggested to the manager guy that Eric could have averted most of my frustration by simply telling me that he was actually trying to solve the problem in some way, the manager said "he did"--but he and I are both looking at the same transcript, and that was a lie. At the end all he could say was "If you feel like you weren't treated well then I'm sorry, but we were just following the course that was available to us."