NI, Bad Customer Service. Just be honest.

Which moderator posted? I've just looked through and couldn't even see one... Though the moderators don't work for NI. It would have been nice for one of the NI staff that occasionally post on here to post a response on this thread.

 

there's a similar post in the Traktor forum and a few mods have chimed in and contacted NI (although NI hasn't resolved any of the problems.

Where's EW? I haven't seen him in awhile.

 

Not quite sure who they imagine is benefiting from their laughable and woeful after sales service ...

Instead of enthusiastically buying more of their products, I intentionally keep my NI purchases to the bare minimum now ... maybe I'll upgrade to TP2 after they sort out the bugs ...

If they had decent service, I'd have spent a thousand or two more with NI this year ... they way it is now, I'm loathed to spend another 10 cents with them ...

.... I'm sure the crap service is costing NI much more than they imagine ...

 

At this stage in the game, I honestly think they are about to go out of business.... Friday, while i was on the phone with them (on hold, transfered, on hold again, transfered again, you know the routine by now...), guys says to me "a lot of our repair guys are in limbo right now, so we are really backed up."

so either,

A) They are restructuring, (fingers have been crossed, doubt it.)
B) Bye bye Native Instruments

Which one is more likely?

I just want my money back, or the controller (a working controller, btw). But please give me something.

Here is the link for the BBB for everyone who is having such a hard time with NI

 

I don't think these are the only two options... It partly depends on what they meant by "limbo". Maybe they hire their repair people from a third party and that third party is struggling. Or maybe they are just so swamped that they don't know what to do so feel like they're in limbo.

Although I try to never say never (apart from when I'm saying that phrase), I think it's pretty unlikely that NI are just going out of business. I hope not anyway!

Bad customer service for what may be the minority of users is never (darn! I said it again) good but in my experience, there are actually very few companies who offer good customer service on a regular basis. It's a shame but it's the way it seems to be of late. That being said, these companies with poor customer service don't necessarily go out of business.

Who knows? But I hope for all the people who are suffering from this consumer ailment that NI bucks their ideas up soon.

 

fwiw:

i have emailed some of the important people to do with Maschine and forwarded a couple of the choice posts from 2 of the users here.

those emails are spread over quite a few weeks. i make no promises to whether my emails will make any difference to this situation

to clarify, i don't work for NI, so i have no idea how Customer Support works.

i would also suspect that the people who are behind the development of Maschine also have very little regular contact with the Customer side of things.

and please no more rubbish conspiracy theories about NI going belly up.

ar9287, i am kind of disappointed in you after sending you a PM saying i forwarded your email to NI people you are now going a little OTT, with your posts.

my 2 cents:


imho, NI Customer support need to show some honesty here... if they don't have any replacement Maschine Controllers they need to admit to that fact. maybe it is hard to admit to a shortage of replacements, but for me admitting to it is better than saying they will be sent next week, when that is not going to happen.

to clarify, i don't work for NI and i have absolutely no clue about whether there are spare Maschine Controllers or not, all i am saying is that some honesty is needed here.

sowari

 

Its not getting nasty, if you buy something and it takes over 3 months to get a replacement i think that is completely unacceptable. There are no excuses. Imagine it was lcd tv, or a macbook pro or any other electrical appliance. You would be furious if you had to wait so long for a replacement and not be offered at the very least a full refund or a credit note up to the same value. Its not like this is a cheap product, its around £500... i think better customer service is to be expected when paying that kind of cash. Not to mention all the other NI products most people that maschine already have.

I do agree venting and getting nasty is going to get you nowhere, however from the jist of this whole thread some maschine owners have been waiting a long time for replacements and speaking direct with NI has got them nowhere. Some simple honesty on NI part would have diffused the situation for many... if they were so out of stock a refund should have been offered and the affected person would easily be able to buy a new one which there seems to be an abundance of in all the local music shops and online.

Just think, you pay £500 for something, have it for a few months- send it away to get fixed and 3 months later your still waiting on a replacement. i think i would be a wee bit annoyed! to say the least!

 

As someone who owns most of Native Instruments stuff this is disappointing. I would definitely seek out the better business bureau in California in your case. And then if they still give you the run around I would get an attoney involved and have them call NI. Im sorry about your situation.... Sowari, and EW can only do so much. They are not getting paid to be mods. They don't work for NI.

 

Mr 36 its all well and good saying that hopefully its only a small minority which have had to deal with this, but the fact is not one customer should deal with it to this extent. The fact of the matter is
NI lie to their customers.

If i go by the emails and telephone calls i have had with NI, i should have at least 3 maschines sent to me by now. Im still yet to recieve one!
iv had a member of staff tell me that they will email me withing 48 hours after esculating my issue, 5 days later i get an email that didnt even regard what i am asking for.

The disbatch manager tells me he will call me back within an hour, a week later nothing, i ring him back a week later and im told he will ring me back in an hour again. 2 hours later nothing so i rang him.

They say that they do not have a company regulator or a complaints department, they dont even know what they are apparently?
I rang last thursday asking to speak with a supervisor/manager/shift manager to which i was told that there isnt one on that day. I dont know about germany but in england its a legal requirement to have some sort of shift manger in at all times.

NI kept telling me that they were sending me a new unit, after waiting weeks i would then get told they were out of stock.

Mid feb i spoke to a guy and he told me that the actual reason i never recieved one was because i hadnt given them payment details for the repairs.
As soon as i sent them my unit i asked them how do i make a payment, but they dont reply to emails!

They leave you on hold for hours. their office is only open during working hours.

Now im being told that apperently the reason is that ups have lost my maschine. and i might get two in the post so i have to make sure i send one back.
To be fair i should sell the other one to pay some of my phone bill of that i have clocked up ringing germany from my mobile.

Why do i have to ring from my mobile? because their office is only open for about a 6 hour window during weekdays. So for anyone else that actually has to work for a living it looks like your calling from your mobile.

iv not even touched on a percentage of issues that i have had with NI theres to much to say, but i have it all on record in emails.

Which is another funny thing, when i did actually get a reply from NI the email they sent me had all of their replys to some of my emails, some at the very start of the conversation and some right at the end, but it didnt show all of the emails in the middle of me asking what was going on, why arnt you replying to my emails, have you got my maschine yet? so if you were to look at the whole email with replies it would appear that they have actually replied to all of my emails, because all of the replyless ones from me are missing....... how strange!

Good job i dont delete emails and still have the originalls to prove this.

NI really really need to stop being dishonest with their customers.

They need to employ more then two people on the phones.

they need to teach their employees how to connect to a call after someone has been on hold instead of disconnecting it.

They need to teach their staff some manners.

They need to live up to their promises and actually call back customers when they say they will.

They need to teach staff to reply to emails.

There needs to be an NI customer service improvment thread like there is for product improvment.

and they need to get some stock. How is it that they cant NI are out of stock but you can still order a maschine from any shop/online service.

someone with enough power in NI that is intelligent enough to see the effect this is having needs to see these post's if not for our sake, for the companys.

Im going to keep posting all of the problems i run into untill i actually get my maschine back.

If NI persist on ****ing me about and costing me money then every artist, producer, music forum, social network, that i am affiliated with will know exactly what weve been through with NI.

SORT YOUR COMPANY OUT!

 

I own bunch of NI gear but I will definately not buy anything from them again.

Anyway: HERE IS THE SOLUTION TO ALL OF YOUR PROBLEMS:
READ
If you purchased it using VISA MC AMEX etc call them up to send you a copy of the additional benefits (or simply ask them) that come with credit card.
Many of the Credit Cards offer free warranties etc if you purchase it with their Credit Card.
If that does not help, simply put a claim on your credit card saying that you have never received the item and they will give you the money back. make sure you document it and give all the details.
Seeing the mess that its in NI customer service, they will simply charge back the native instruments account and credit yours.

Dont deal with companies likes that. Simply deal with your credit card. First, see if you have extended warranty. If not put a claim/fraud on it that your item was not received.
If all of you start doing that you will see how fast NI will fix their customer service once the accounting department starts seeing these charge backs

BUT WHEN YOU DO IT, EXPLAIN REALLY CLEARLY WHAT HAPPEN TO THE CREDIT CARD THATS THE KEY TO GETTING THE MONEY BACK

 

sorry

hey, i am sorry to hear what you are going trough.

i hope for you that you get new maschine, not fixed one!

 

I know. And I believe I even said that myself. I was in no way trying to belittle your or anyone else's plight, just trying to give some perspective for the people and comments that have taken the part to be the whole.

NI do need to sort this out. Because if too many people do start to feel this way about buying from them, they're going to have "customer service" issues themselves.

 

Hey all, I have to say that this thread is really shameful for us. I only came across this today, and checked back with our sales support team right away.

Supposedly Maschine has been completely sold out for quite a while which is why they weren't able to send replacements yet. That doesn't justify the lack of communication though. The sales support team is really overloaded right now also due to the release of the new Traktor products, but nonetheless everyone who is affected by the out-of-stock situation should obviously have been informed right away.

So everyone who posted here with their issues should hear from our support very soon now. If you haven't heard back until tomorrow, please send me a PM with your ticket number.

Regards, Thomas

 

Good to see some NI people making a comment. Interesting why this thread has been moved from the maschine forum though. It is very relevant, and from the amount of people following this thread i find it a little odd to have moved this to a forum most dont even know exists! Maybe im cynical but i think this thread is relevant to any potential maschine buyer and owner alike. Whatever, as long as service improves thats the main thing.

 

Thank you Ceasdamonsta.

I am not coming out of the peanut gallery, or whatever the other posters post said.

No, I do not own any NI products (Who would after reading this thread?) -- I was LOOKING to purchase some NI products -- Tried to contact one of their sales people that worked for NI in their SALES department -- Never heard back from them. That made me chuckle since I work in sales, and I found it pretty sad that their own sales team would not return a call to a potential prospect.... So my next step was to come to this website, and check out the forums. That is pretty much all I needed to do, to assure myself not to deal with a company like NI.

I was really angry when the sales person did not get back to me. Disgusted is a better word, not angry. Then when I read about NI and their practices in this thread, I knew FOR SURE I was never going to be purchasing their products. I was just one lousy customer though, right? I just wanted one little Maschine, right? I just wasn't worth their time, I guess.

NI wouldn't get back to me and I WANTED to purchase their product and give them my money... and they wouldn't get back to me. To those waiting to hear back from NI, and you've already given them your money... I wouldn't hold your breath!

Wonder if NI would treat those "superstar producers" the same way .. I'm talking about those producers that were paid by NI to create marketing videos about how great the Maschine is. If those guys started having problems, would they also be given the horrible service you guys are getting?
---
And yeah, LOL at NI trying to hide this thread.

 

I just ordered my Maschine last week, if NI are out of Maschine stock does that mean I won't receive mine until after everyone else gets their replacement? If so I think that should have been clearly stated somewhere along the purchasing process. If I have to wait months for my Maschine while under the impression (stated in their shipping info) that it would only take 4 or so weeks then I'll be pissed. But if I receive my Maschine before some of the people on this thread then obviously NI are just beating around the bush with sending out replacements for faulty units to the people who requested it. Either way, its not looking good for NI.

I wish I saw this thread BEFORE I purchased a Maschine from their site. I would much rather drop an extra few hundred and buy from a local retailer and have a peace of mind that if something does wrong I can take it to the retailer and have them handle the problem.

 

Totally ... What a cynical response .... simply hiding this thread out of public view...

Could someone please explain how to navigate to the 'various topics>sales questions' part of the forum? There don't appear to any links to it from the NI forums front page ...

 

I wouldn't be surprised if they deleted it.

 

OK everyone let's put this into perspective here.

Maschine was sold out over the last five weeks, which is why our team was not able to send out replacements. It is now in stock again as of this week.

Our sales team has had to deal with an unexpected deluge of customer requests recently, also stemming from some technical problems with the upgrade downloads for Traktor Pro 2 (which some of you who also browse around the Traktor area might be aware of). So the team was unfortunately not able to inform everyone in time about the stock situation.

All people who chimed in here with replacement issues have been taken care of yesterday and should have their unit very soon.

@J_cee - there is also no problem in honoring recent orders because, as mentioned, Maschine is back in stock. If you have your shipping notice, the unit is on its way anyway.

Also, this thread has not been "hidden". It was moved to the Sales Questions forum because this is where it belonged all along. That forum is the only one that is monitored by our sales team, so they could have caught the issue right away instead of me coming across it much later.

The problem however was that both the links to the "Sales Questions" and the "Product Activation" forums were missing in this forum because I simply forgot to add them when I set up the dedicated Maschine area a few weeks back. This is now fixed as well.

 

Sorry Thomas 5 weeks? Again IV been waiting over 3 months and a week! There is NO EXCUSE! NI don't reply to emails! You are forced to ring them. And if you do manage to get through to them they are rude to you and they lie to you down the phone. IV rang NI about 20 times and everytime its the same 2 people i get on the phone, which tells me they only have 2 people on the phones. I actually bought a new maschine about a month ago because i had half finished projects that artists were waiting on, and there was no chance in hell i was gonna tell NI that because they would drag there feet even more. And its nice that someone from NI finally responds to this thread now that there are maschines in stock and NI now has a comeback, where was this support when there were no maschines and everyone wanted an answer. Your arrival is very very well timed. NI has a history of disgusting service, instead of making excuses (which clearly are not good enough) admit that NI ****ed up and needs to massively improve its service. Are NI going to pay for my phone bill or potential loss of earnings. No. the company is a joke.
Good luck to all the people here having problems, hopefully one of us makes it some day, I can promise you that if I do the whole world will know how bad this company is.... Call it karma!