[Elecraft] K3- support courtesy

[Don Wilhelm]

Bill,

While it has no excuse, let me share some possible facts that may have 
contributed to your lack of a timely response.

I suspect that there is a contributing factor - the repair person 
working on your K3 (or scheduled for the repair) did not receive your 
email that was directed to support at elecraft.com - because the support 
people usually do not know the person to whom that email should be 
forwarded.

If you included your call and the RSA number in the subject of the 
email, that should have been resolved - those two items of information 
are the quickest paths to getting a valid response.  Not all techs doing 
repairs monitor the traffic on the support at elecraft.com emails.  For 
instance, I do repairs on the Elecraft legacy gear, and I do not monitor 
emails to support at elecraft.com - that is just too much traffic for me to 
handle properly.  If those wanting status on gear I have here for repair 
do not send to don at elecraft.com, it may be a while before I get the 
information.  Your call and the RSA number in the subject of the email 
are important for it to get prompt attention.

What that means is - if a customer sends a query about the status of a 
repair I am handling to support at elecraft.com, it will be quite a while 
before someone figures out that I have been assigned to that repair and 
I finally get the email query.

Madelyn hands out the RSA work to the available techs, so an email to 
Madelyn at elecraft.com will usually obtain a timely response - she knows 
where to direct the question.

Sorry for your lack of response, and I hope my explanation will help you 
to understand why you did not receive a response.  I know that is an 
"excuse", but is really "the way it is".  Perhaps someone will come up 
with a solution, but for the real- time interval, support at elecraft.com 
is the place for questions until an RSA has been issued, and after that 
an email to madelyn at elecraft.com (or sales at elecraft.com) is the quickest 
way to route your question to the proper place.

Repairs are done all over the globe - yes, Watsonville, CA, but also 
Arizona and North Carolina as well as in Japan, and Germany and Italy.

Again, once an RSA has been issued, your short path to status 
information is to contact the person you shipped the transceiver to (if 
you know that), but lacking that information (because it was shipped to 
Watsonville), contact Madelyn at elecraft.com or sales at elecraft.com.

OK, I am not trying to make apologies or excuses, I am hopefully 
communicating the real world situation of what exists today and giving 
you some clues as to how to best work with the current conditions.

Elecraft is expanding - there are at least 2 additional people in the 
sales office that I have not yet been introduced to (I only see their 
names - I am in North Carolina and communicate mostly via email), and 
there have been additional people in the support organization that I 
have not yet had "encounters" with.  That may mean that it is time to 
review the old communication paths that worked well with a smaller 
staff, but those older paths may now have some failings and may be in 
need of updating or further coordination - I leave that question and 
answer to Wayne and Eric..

73,
Don W3FPR


73,
Don W3FPR
On 8/6/2012 9:19 PM, Bill wrote:
> My K3 has been at Elecraft for a week for warranty repairs (out of
> service for three weeks). So, I dropped an email early today asking what
> the status of repairs was. I never got a reply. So, after a few hours I
> sent the email again - after all, emails do sometimes fail to get
> through. Before the close of business, I sent yet another email asking
> the status of repairs on my K3 (time zones were taken into consideration).
>
> No response from Elecraft at all! In the past I have been pleased with
> support. And, I wouldn't question this oversight - except it amounts to
> three oversights (three separate emails).
>
> Courtesy is cheap and is what I expect when dealing with a warranty
> repair of an expensive piece of equipment. It only takes a moment to
> make a quick reply - even if only saying, "No change" or "I don't know."
>
> To ignore my emails either means they are swamped with warranty repairs
> or the really don't care about me - the paying customer.
>
> Is this just an anomaly or is this the norm I should learn to expect?
>
> Bill W2BLC