I recently had a terrible customer service experience with Enertion and a great one with Maytech.
On the Enertion front, I won’t make any assertions as to who was wrong or right (because that doesn’t exist, there is only good and bad, and that’s a matter of perception), but in comparison to the customer service I have been exposed to in my work in the field of engineering and additionally in most other spheres of life (maybe good customer service is just a South African thing?), I’ve been left very disappointed.
A couple of weeks back (8th May), I pre-ordered 3 VESCs from Enertion - fully paid up front, when there was still much uncertainty as to if and when they would actually materialize. They were fully transparent about that, saying that they actually had no idea when they would be to ship orders out, and I took my risks there and accepted it for what it was. I was going to order 4, but my partner had cash flow difficulties and at that stage couldn’t pay for the 4th. With knowledge of an impending price boom, we decided to cut our losses and order 3 for the bulk pricing and add a 4th when the funds were available, hopefully before the price increase and to maintain the price break. Bearing this in mind, I tried to ask for an estimate as to when the order would be available for shipping so that we could plan accordingly to ship the 4 together, and I was met with “it depends on when you ordered” (which kind of says absolutely nothing).
Funds became available and I immediately asked if I could add another to my order (this was quite some time before the first price increase). After much back and forth, the long and the short of it is that they said they couldn’t add items to orders because of their “system”. I urged them to make another plan ie just let me pay for another one via PayPal or whatever and just ship the 4 together. They got back to me after they increased the price to US$125 (they are pretty slow at replying and I think I’ve only got one reply within 24hrs, as they strive to do) saying they weren’t willing to make another plan to maintain the bulk pricing. I then asked if I could order another at the old price and they said no, and when I complained about the service I was met with a very angry passive aggressive message from Jason (perhaps fueled by that single malt he seems to love talking about in his videos?) accusing me of threatening his staff and etc, when I did nothing of the sort, other than saying I was going to talk about this.
The price is now US$130, almost 50% more than when I made the request to order another. My friend could afford another VESC, all things being equal in a perfect world, but because of Enertions’s lack of will to try and make a plan, now he can’t. That’s his problem, I guess.
So who’s right and who’s wrong in this? No one is. It’s just bad service. Not making any effort to trying to process a very simple request of adding another item to your order (or allowing you to create another completely separate order, whatever) at the same cost (at the time of the request), however complicated you find your system, is just bad service. Or at least it’s not very good. I don’t care about how your system works. You advertise a bulk price and I want to pre-order 3 and then I want to pre-order another long before the items are even available to be shipped and now it’s a huge problem? The supplier should make a plan. I didn’t even mind being pushed to the back of the queue.
My friend now sits with 1 VESC, and he’s looking elsewhere for the next one. Ollinboardco is looking like his option of choice, but Maytech may very well be an option, as it seems they will have the cheapest consistent offering when they become available (at around US$105).
I will add that I will not purchase anything again from Enertion, as a supplier who is not willing to make a simple plan for a customer does not deserve my business, and doesn’t seem to want it either. They’re not doing anyone any favours by selling stuff.
The contrasting experience came from amazing customer service from Maytech. Due to the same problem with not being able to afford a second VESC at the time, my friend also opted for only one motor, so we ordered 3 x 6355 230Kv motors. They shipped these out to my Aramex box in Shanghai a couple of days after we ordered (they were made to order, and super quickly I might add).
When the cash became available to order the 4th motor, this coincided with us finding out that Aramex refused to ship our motors down to South Africa as they are unacceptable items (probably the magnets). We told Maytech about our problem and it turns out that they had heard about this from Aramex and had already made a plan to collect the motors for us! Agnes at Maytech emailed us with her ID and asked us to authorise her to collect our motors. We emailed her asking to add the 4th motor and to quote for shipping, and then we put the order through. No problem.
Agnes emailed me a day later saying she messed up the shipping quote, and said that we needed to pay the outstanding amount.
I went through the quote and thought she had made a mistake (the weight on their website is for the motor only, not the additional accessories). She replied that she hadn’t, but that Maytech would absorb the extra shipping cost. Absolutely amazing. And from a Chinese supplier even? My mind has been blown. Not only did they have no problem adding an item to my order, they without prompt made arrangements to fix our shipping problem (which was my fault), and gave us a discount on shipping.
So, yeah. I think the conclusion to this is that Enertion doesn’t seem to want your business all that much. At least not enough to do the very least to help a customer out. I guess they could try to refute that here? Perhaps they’re growing too quickly? I just hope they don’t forget their roots and lose their business. Although I often find myself thankful for the some of the resources they’ve provided over the years (which bear in mind are all completely in the interests of their business), they’ve lost my business.
Maytech on the other hand really does seem to want your business, and are willing to go more than out of their way to help you, as far as my experience goes. I’ll be buying from them a lot more in future.
Enertion, not so much.
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. Maybe I’ll experience a turnaround and order from them again, but it isn’t looking likely.