Bomb Squad response times and customer service issues

[Petri Teittinen]

Some background: I placed an order for a R1 and some accessories in mid-November and paid the order in full a few days later.

It took a couple of days from paying the deposit to first hearing from a Bomb squad rep. Once I paid the order in full, I have received zero emails from the rep. I haven't even received an email letting me know if the money I sent has arrived in RED's bank account.

I emailed the rep a very important question on the 19th of November. I have yet to receive a reply.

This is an example of poor customer service, no matter how you slice it. There are no excuses for that either, not in the world we live in today. Everyone can be reached anywhere 24/7. People may fall ill or be extraordinarily busy, but even that is no excuse for leaving a customer twisting in the wind, so to speak.

I live in Northern Europe and do regular business with several US companies. Most of the companies reply within 24 hours, and the ones that don't, I hear from within 48 hours. The reply might be "I don't have the information yet, I'll get back to you as soon as possible" - but it's a reply.


Why not replying at all is such a big no-no

I contacted a member of the RED team with a few technical questions. He replied promptly and provided some very helpful information but left some of my questions unanswered. I replied and submitted, politely, the unanswered questions again.

Five days later and no reply. This leaves me wondering if A) the e-mail got lost, B) I offended the person somehow, C) I was inquiring about something which is a trade secret, or D) the person is up to his armpits in work and simply hasn't had time to formulate the answers.

Which is it? I have no way of knowing.

In case of (B), I certainly don't want to re-send my email and risk offending the person further. In fact, I might consider never contacting the person again. Also keep in mind that actions (and non-actions) of all personnel always affect the image a customer has of the entire company.

But perhaps it wasn't (B) but (C), instead. Again, I have no way of knowing. A quick note along the lines of "Sorry, that's proprietary information and a trade secret" would have taken less than half a minute to type and send, and would have laid the matter to rest immediately.

(D), while the most probable one, is still no excuse for leaving the customer guessing. Just have a template email stored which says basically "Sorry, I'm swamped with urgent work and can't reply to you just yet. Please rest assured your email has been received and I will reply once things cool down a bit."

You can actually set the email client to reply automatically to all queries with the template email when you're too busy to check your inbox.

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While I love RED to bits for all their innovation, trailblazing and sheer ballsiness when it comes to developing cameras, their customer service via e-mail seems to leave some room for improvement.

[Tyler Black]

Petri,

RED's responses may be getting filtered into your spam folder. I experienced this firsthand with a repair order. After putting RED in my address book, I began to get immediate replies to all of my email. I found their customer service and response to be exceptional.

[Petri Teittinen]

RED's responses may be getting filtered into your spam folder.

The email address I use for corresponding with RED has no spam filtering enabled, so no, they're not.

[Brent@RED]

We pride ourselves in customer service so I assure you that there is not ignoring and we are very difficult to offend. Along the lines of what Tyler mentioned, it could be your emails getting caught up in our filters. If you can forward to me at brent - at - red - dot - com what emails that you sent that there was no reply to, I can have IT track them in our system. Please PM me here after you send them in case they get caught in RED's filters so I know they were sent and that I did not get them.

And, I note that you live in Europe, please don't hesitate to contact our RED EUROPE office at Pinewood if you need assistance. They should be a little more time zone friendly for you...

BC

PS, please note that it was a US national holiday last Thursday and Friday. If there is/was a delayed response, our reps were out of the office those days.

[Petri Teittinen]

Thank you for your kind response, Brent.

We pride ourselves in customer service so I assure you that there is not ignoring and we are very difficult to offend.

At no stage have I even entertained the possibility of the silence being something personal (like ignoring emails on purpose) - and I'm sure none of my emails have contained anything offending. But that's my point: I have no way to tell what's going on when there's no reply of any kind.

it could be your emails getting caught up in our filters.

I don't think so; I've been using the same email address the whole time and I know at least some of them have reached their destination. And, if I'm allowed some nitpicking here, shouldn't RED add their customers' email addresses on the whitelist to prevent something like that from happening?

If you can forward to me at brent - at - red - dot - com what emails that you sent that there was no reply to, I can have IT track them in our system.

I will, thank you. Regardless, I would like to point out that good customer service means the customer does not need to raise a stink on a forum to get that service.

please don't hesitate to contact our RED EUROPE office at Pinewood if you need assistance. They should be a little more time zone friendly for you...

Time zones are not an issue. Like I mentioned, I'm used to the 24-48 hour response times when dealing with companies on the other side of the planet.

[Brent@RED]

Never a need to raise a stink to get service. As I have posted in this forum before, if you have an issue, email me. Or call me - 949.206.7900. REDUSER is certainly a less direct route to RED than directly contacting them.

As with each time someone has complained here on response times, there has been a logical explanation for it - be it junk filters, holidays, etc.

BC

[KETCH ROSSi]

With the purchase of 6 RED ONE Cameras true my direct contact, few 18-85's and an array of accessories I can attest that RED has constantly and repeatedly provided with immediate and satisfactory responses, even on weekends and Holidays!!

At only exception of my last assisted purchase for a RED ONE in Italy, which wire transfers timing needed to be taken in consideration and one can't pretend an immediate response after payment as RED might not see such a payment till after is credited in their account, which can take days.

Just saying, I commend RED customer service like no other company in my well over twenty years of experience world wide.

[Rob Gardner]

I have had issues with email's from my business email address being blocked by Red's filters and it was a problem stemming from my own website's server. We fixed it with a phone call and Red was very quick to respond.

I have had a couple of delays dealing with Red's support, but I have two Red bodies and overall the customer service has been just excellent. I also have Sony and Panasonic equipment and there is simply no comparison between Red's support system and the larger company's.

Without too much exaggeration, both Sony and Panasonic are kind of like dealing with the Soviet Bureau of Citizen Complaints. At Red there is a real human being to contact and for the most part they really seem to care if you live or die.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it...

[Alberto Sanchez]

I bought my R1 my camera one year ago and have a similar problem with the e-mails, for some reason that we never understood some of the addresses of the people at RED rejected my e-mails including the sales representative that was in charge of my purchase, Justin Jones, the only e-mail that worked for me was the one from the support page, and they re-diret those mails to Justin, and everything worked very well, and then though more expensive I used the phone and everything was better and he was very kind and efficient all the time.

[Petri Teittinen]

I wasn't in the least bit ticked off when I wrote the initial post, and I was quite satisfied with Brent's replies (both here and in email), but I have to admit it's posts like Mr. Rossi's that really make my blood boil.

OK, you've had nothing but good customer service from RED. So what? What did you think you'd achieve by posting your experiences? That I might completely change my mind about my experiences? It's like driving by a car crash, seeing someone on the ground bleeding, and stopping by long enough to tell the person that both you and your car are in perfect condition, then expecting him to jump up and drive away. I mean... WTF?

Honestly, this is mostly a great forum for newbies such as myself, but the White Knighting and totally unnecessary defending of RED's honour do grate one's nerves.