Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Very dissatisfied with RED customer service and support

Status
Not open for further replies.
J

John Sovie II

Member
Joined
Mar 9, 2013
Messages
17
Reaction score
0
Points
1
Location
NY
Website
www.johnbsovieii.com
VERY dissatisfied in RED customer service thus far........ I'm at the end of the 3-5 day turnaround and the camera hasn't been shipped back to me yet. I cancelled a shoot over the weekend because of it and postponed it for Tomorrow (Wednesday) which I now have to cancel. I had the camera for less than two weeks, turned it on ~5 times, put 2.8 hours on it in total and it failed. RED doesn't seem to care that I have now cancelled two gigs because of this. Poor customer support for a professional tool. Everyone I contact just pushes me off to another department who then gives me an automated, cookie cutter response. No one seems to care that I am losing money because of a non working tool they sold me.

Argghhhhhh sorry to everyone just venting.....Figured maybe someone on here would care. Should have stuck with Sony and bought an F5.

P.S. Years ago Canon took care of me quicker and with more respect with a T2i that had failed. Yes, better customer support with a T2i!

Disgusted.....

Camera issue discussed here: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?97940-What-s-wrong-with-my-Scarlet-Help
 
Hi John,

I looked into this and see your SCARLET-X was shipped back to you earlier today. Please feel free to email me directly at nick-dot-grow-at red-dot-com and I will send you the FedEx Priority Overnight tracking number.

NICK
 
Hi Nick thanks for responding. I just got the tracking information. I guess the word of the day for me is patience. Jumped the gun way to fast...... SORRY
 
Disgusted ...for a few shipping days?

I think you are behaving like a little kid, if i was RED I would return you money and tell you to go play with that T2i of yours.

You made 2 threads here, one about your camera failure and one about the poor service... I'm not a moderator or such but do you not think one thread is enough for a few days service problem / delay?

A little advice, when working with professional gear make sure to have a production insurance that covers. If your camera goes down then you rent another one, for a days shoot thats probable less than 500usd, if that sum is hard for you to wing and if it's halting your whole production then, yes, I totally understand your frustration...

Another thing, if you buy anything else than toys from Sony you will learn that their customer support is not even close to what RED is trying to do, so thats kind of shitty threat to throw.
 
As stated above always have insurance that covers your renting gear to replace broken gear while it is being repaired. That is clutch.

Also, I have never had any issues with RED support although I have not needed it often, they were always quick and answered questions when I needed them answered. The one time I had to send the camera back I was very happy with their turn around time.
 
Björn, I apologized for jumping the gun and calling RED service out too soon in regards to this situation. I am now satisfied with the turnaround time as they said 3-5 days and they are hitting it right on the mark. T2i hahaha that was years ago...... With all this said since it was a BRAND NEW camera with 2.8 hrs of use on (so I essentially received a defective product to begin with) I was kind of upset that they hadn't just immediately shipped me a replacement body overnight. That would have been A++ top notch customer support and buying into RED that's what I thought I was getting. I am def not going to be confident with the camera going forward for awhile as camera failure will always weigh heavily on the back of mind. If it does fail again and needs to be sent back for a reason not related to operator error I will just dump it and switch companies. No big deal.....That's how brand allegiances are formed.

 
cancelled shoots over a $200 body rental? i do agree that red should provide a loaner body if the one they sold you has a mechanical or technical defect.
but i dont think you can complain about loosing money when scarlet bodys rent for sooooo cheap.
 
A little hysterical... maybe?

The sad part is that you can never change the title of the thread and so you are forever associated with an hysterical rant, no matter what you say later in the thread. :-(
 
John, are you a professional?

Part of being a professional is having a plan B when gear goes titsup (as it will from time to time). You have backups proportional to the importance of the shoot. Yeah, sometimes even a professional can end up in a no-win situation, but your clients are paying for performance, not excuses or blame-passing.

This is especially important with a brand-new camera; RED will QC it and burn it in as best they can, but there's *still* such a thing as 'infant mortality' in electronics. You don't trust a brand-new camera until you have a good few hours on it; that's one of the times you *expect* it to fail.

That's the lesson here, as others have pointed out. Sorry if it sounds harsh, but it needs to be said.

Mike
 
It is the sweet nature of fated things that I hold in the emotive response in the hope that the happy ending will come, I'll find the lost object, I will discover and fix the problem, the traffic gridlock will thin out and let me get home wild and free.

Eventually I find frustration too much to bear and let fly. The little spots on the inside of the windsceen bear mute testimony to my moments of lesser vocal control.

Only AFTER I have got the red mist and made a fool of myself and feel all chagrined and regretful, even if no one else heard my beserker rage and the foul language, that the lost object turns up, the solution to the problem presents itself. I feel selfish and crass when I pass the road smash up ahead, fresh cleaned off the road, someone's real misfortune, not my own imagined one.


You are not the first who has thrown stones at the fence or booted the catfood can down the backyard when the chain came off the bike. Nor will you be the last. You have plenty of company.

All we can do is commit to try not to let things get the better of us. I find myself very envious of those rare souls who just carry on and get things done all calm and sedate like when the manure heap begins to slide towards the snowblower. ( Plagiarised shamelessly from an old post I read somewhere ).
 
John Sovie II said:
Björn, I apologized for jumping the gun and calling RED service out too soon in regards to this situation. I am now satisfied with the turnaround time as they said 3-5 days and they are hitting it right on the mark. T2i hahaha that was years ago...... With all this said since it was a BRAND NEW camera with 2.8 hrs of use on (so I essentially received a defective product to begin with) I was kind of upset that they hadn't just immediately shipped me a replacement body overnight. That would have been A++ top notch customer support and buying into RED that's what I thought I was getting. I am def not going to be confident with the camera going forward for awhile as camera failure will always weigh heavily on the back of mind. If it does fail again and needs to be sent back for a reason not related to operator error I will just dump it and switch companies. No big deal.....That's how brand allegiances are formed.

Click to expand...

Just one thing to add
Apple is good example of what I am trying to say. When something goes wrong I always prefer my unit to be fixed, rather then getting a new replacement. I know that the unit has been looked at and tested (after fixing) far more rigorously and probably by a far more experienced and skilled technician than a new unit would have been...
There is no guarantee that the new unit will not suffer from what ever yours suffered in the first place. When - on the other hand - they actually spend the time and resources to analyze what is wrong with your camera and they fix it - you have a properly working unit looking forward to. The technicians employed by RED are not cheap - nor is the gear that they use for troubleshooting and repairs. It is far easier and lot cheaper for a company to just send you a replacement unit - such as Canon did with the T2i. So comparing the two tiers is apples to oranges...

Peter
 
We were on-set on a celebrity-driven commercial and an assistant took off the entire PL mount, leaving the area around the sensor of our camera covered in oil and its fragile wires exposed.

As you can imagine, first there was silence, then all hell broke loose and then the realization that we were standing in the middle of a very expensive disaster.

I called my bomb squad rep and they said to bring it to RED and they would see what they could do to relieve the pain.

After a quick ride from Carlsbad to Anaheim, I was greeted by a most extraordinary team of caring and brilliant techs, who took the camera from my hands and returned it in less than 30 minutes...fixed...perfect.

To say that they saved my life would be overly dramatic, but the fact remains that RED provided unmatched service and support when my team and I needed them most and THAT is priceless.

If you are working in production with ANYONE'S cameras, there's bound to a horror story or two....but, this is one that has a very happy ending,thanks to the commitment of RED to our community.

Thank you!
 
Fantastic story Brandon. It is great to know RED is that committed. My question is, how did it turn out for the assistant? :ohmy:

BRANDON JAMESON said:
We were on-set on a celebrity-driven commercial and an assistant took off the entire PL mount, leaving the area around the sensor of our camera covered in oil and its fragile wires exposed.

As you can imagine, first there was silence, then all hell broke loose and then the realization that we were standing in the middle of a very expensive disaster.

I called my bomb squad rep and they said to bring it to RED and they would see what they could do to relieve the pain.

After a quick ride from Carlsbad to Anaheim, I was greeted by a most extraordinary team of caring and brilliant techs, who took the camera from my hands and returned it in less than 30 minutes...fixed...perfect.

To say that they saved my life would be overly dramatic, but the fact remains that RED provided unmatched service and support when my team and I needed them most and THAT is priceless.

If you are working in production with ANYONE'S cameras, there's bound to a horror story or two....but, this is one that has a very happy ending,thanks to the commitment of RED to our community.

Thank you!
Click to expand...
 
BRANDON JAMESON said:
I'm sure she is doing very well..on someone else's crew!!! :)
Click to expand...

A young man working at a high end restaurant dropped a very expensive bottle of wine ($10,000!) and the kid thought his life was over, and was for sure losing his job. The restaurant owner however said he would not fire the kid. He figured that kid will never drop another bottle and will take even greater care with everything going forward. I don't know if that kid ever dropped another bottle but the point is interesting... Maybe you want her on your crew going forward...
 
what does celebrity driven event mean ? like the gumball 3000 ? or the canonball run ?

i agree that this fella was impatient , i was alarmed at the title of his post ..however ,it sounds like he regrets going off the handle .
and would take it back if he could .

not sure why some on here cannot wait to insult people , especially when they have already begun to eat crow .

oh well , some folks enjoy self esteem by lower companionship .
 
John Sovie II said:
VERY dissatisfied in RED customer service thus far........ I'm at the end of the 3-5 day turnaround and the camera hasn't been shipped back to me yet. I cancelled a shoot over the weekend because of it and postponed it for Tomorrow (Wednesday) which I now have to cancel. I had the camera for less than two weeks, turned it on ~5 times, put 2.8 hours on it in total and it failed. RED doesn't seem to care that I have now cancelled two gigs because of this. Poor customer support for a professional tool. Everyone I contact just pushes me off to another department who then gives me an automated, cookie cutter response. No one seems to care that I am losing money because of a non working tool they sold me.

Argghhhhhh sorry to everyone just venting.....Figured maybe someone on here would care. Should have stuck with Sony and bought an F5.

P.S. Years ago Canon took care of me quicker and with more respect with a T2i that had failed. Yes, better customer support with a T2i!

Disgusted.....

Camera issue discussed here: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?97940-What-s-wrong-with-my-Scarlet-Help
Click to expand...

hehe with that attitude you'll have phun dealing with raw-work flow. RED is a rollercoaster. If you deal with the lows you will experience the highs too.
 
One more peace offering...... Screen grab from the shoot that RED got my camera back in time for.......:blushing:
 

Attachments

  • mich_test_3.jpg
    mich_test_3.jpg
    80.6 KB · Views: 0
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top