Issues with Hercules Support

[oscarmayer]

Here is a letter i wrote to their corpoorate staff about the issue describing the problems and my concerns. It is really sad that a company that produced such good quality products has a horrible support staff, policies and procedures. Please chime in your expirneces on this, and with them. I think it needs to be known the good and/or the bad about this subject. After all WE pay for a product that is suppsoed to be covered and THEY are playing games with backing up their word in my opinion.


To whom this may concern.

Please let me start off by staying I have always thoroughly enjoyed the “Quality” of your products and performance of them. I would take them any day over any other maker or brand until something recently changed my mind.



I have a Hercules sound card. Fortissimo III 7.1 card that I purchased new at Christmas time in 2003. I at the time was not able to locate my receipt nor knew who I purchased the card from (later discovered I got it form newegg when I was searching for a different receipt on their site). The think that completely struck me by total surprise was when a tech supervisor named Tudor Costine (sp?) told me that there is NO database with serial numbers to match the production dates of the cards to confirm warranty. He then went on to argue that w/o a receipt he would not warranty the card that one of his techs had previously stated was under warranty. He then refused to allow me to talk to a “Manager” about the situation and kept reciting that I was the only one who had ever called w/o a receipt and every one of the other clients you have keeps it (which I am willing to bet that’s not a true statement). Your paperwork with the card does not state I must have a receipt, it just goes on to discuss that it has a 3 year warranty. Your website does not discuss that I must have a receipt either, and actually the support section is very limited and the forums section where one could get some assistance is disabled.



How am I supposed to want to purchase your products if your company is the only one I have ever had to deal with who cannot track anything by a serial number? The only company where people refuse to help you and where you are lied too? This is not good.



Here’s the problem, why should a customer have to be given a hard time about a product you sell and are supposed to be warranting out? Why should a customer be lied too and then told they were not able to talk to a manager? The biggest question I have is, (and I’m surprised management has not asked this before) Why is it you cannot track you products to production dates and confirm warranty status if a client does not have a receipt? You are the “ONLY” company I have ever dealt with in the last 10 years that cannot do this.



In short, I’m extremely disappointed in your company’s support or lack there of. I found my receipt and will be getting the card replaced, but I will be selling it of on eBay when it is returned because I am no longer comfortable with how your company treats its clients and customers. That’s sad because as stated above, I was a dedicated customer of yours. Now I’m going to have to hope that other manufacturers can provide as well of a product as you have once done.



I wanted you to know, I’m going to be looking at posting this up on some forums of some very large hardware sites for everyone to read. I’m sure the readers will be interested in the outcome of this issue.



Signed:

A disappointed customer

 

[oscarmayer]

One of their upper staff over support just called me directly to discuss my replacement card. She admitted there is a hole in their support capabilities and they are going to be reviewing possible ways to improve this for the future (I'll take it with a grain of salt as in I'll believe it when I see it)

I'll state this, IF and this is a big "IF", they do get a decent program implemented to track products via SN in order to warranty the times for clients w/o a receipt, “AND" add the capability to have an "advanced" replacement program, I'm willing to continue to support them and their products. They are a top notch product, but in my book it takes more than just making a good product, it takes being able to provide good support for it as well. Right now there is "nearly" no support for their products, and if you lost your receipt and cannot get a copy of it from the place you got it from, your plain Jane screwed. Also if your like me and cannot afford to be down for 2 weeks wile the card ships to them, they test it and then decided "IF" they are going to replace it or not, then you’ll end up having to do what I'm doing; buying another card and when it gets returned, selling it off in order to help offset the cost of purchasing a new card.

As it stand at this very moment, I still am not convenience they will spend the $ to follow through they claims of working to get a better solution for tracking SN to manufactured dates for warranty purposes, But We’ll see as time rolls on and lets hope it’s not a yr later before they do this. The longer it takes them to actually do this, the further I grow from trusting them.

 

[Menelmarar]

Problem is, Hercules hasn't been doing much.

What have they made since the Fortissimo III?

They used to make great videocards, not anymore. Then they had a run of some good soundscards, but nothing recently....