We sometimes talk about setting expectations. When I talk about Wattboxes or Eero Wi-Fi that can be rebooted from afar, I always say that things will fail and the Internet is never going to work 100% of the time. The benefit of these smart boxes as I can get closer to 100% with less downtime. But I always let them know that there is downtime.

I don’t say it verbatim, but I do let them know I’m more frustrated then they are.

+1

We basically have to suck it up, keep our mouth shut and fix it and hope that the good outweighs the bad the next time the customer wants to spend some money.

My point is the same - they really don't care. And your trying to "make it about you", regardless of how you say it, is how it will be interpreted. That will do more to irritate them than calm them down.

Even your attempt at further explanation shows you don't get the point; "I do let them know I'm more frustrated than they are". That's the wrong approach. They don't give a shit about you being more ANYTHING than they are. THEY are the client, and their experience is what's most important to them - and it should be to you too, if you want to keep their business.

I'm not trying to bash you, but simply sharing some valuable insight.

I have a client that loves to say, “I don’t care about anyone else”. She does it jokingly and politely, but at the end of the day, she means the message.

I know they had bad product 3-4 years ago, and we had some fail 2000 miles away. Not good. However, we now have hundreds of the newer product in the field with very good results.

Having them on OvrC has been invaluable for troubleshooting and remote support.

We also have a lot of the competitive IP product in the field. Very low hardware failure rate, but the cloud management and support couldn't be much worse.

We always try to the use the best of the product brands available. Today, I believe this is still the top of the list.

A local distributor held a Sonos event last evening and I overheard the Sonos trainer tell someone that they have had about .1% failure rate, which is pretty amazing, IMO. He went on to say that the industry is having 7-10% failure rate which, to me, is insanely high. Is it really that bad? I remember the rate in the late-'70s being in the 1% area. I can't imagine having such a high failure rate and thinking it's close to 'acceptable'.

Sounds low to me actually.  Everything is built now on price and with the network as the backbone.  If you go cheap, things break, and often.  The amount of calls for stupid network based crap I have taken this week further proves this. 

Is this to be believed? After all, it comes from a company paid trainer/rep.

Well, at least it's not like the 100% failure rate I suffered through with Denon.

Although I will say, those Denon pieces still worked really well as two channel stereo receivers. Maybe that could have been a selling point?

"Even when it fails to work properly, it still somewhat works!".

You will never get an accurate failure rate from a manufacturer. We know how many fail in the field. They get a good percentage of those back that have intermittent issues and only fail at the most inopportune times. Their two minute testing tells them that it was the dealers fault so even though it got returned it will not be counted as a failed unit.

Yikes, I just pulled a newer (WB-700- IPV12) out of an install that's just over a year old. I know "all" the problems were supposed to be with the 600 series from my experience.
The 600's that went bad on us were the controlled outlets only on the units. The 700 model has only 12 controlled.
All the odd ones were power cycling about every 5-10 minutes, FOR ABOUT A WEEK!! The owner didn't tell me until he got back from vacation. I'm sure the electronics that were connected now have a shortened life. I actually wish they had just died and not have kept power cycling.
I'll see what Snap tech support has to say tomorrow (actually later today).

Why do so many of you have asshole clients? Lol. I had my share of failures on the old wattboxes. EVERY single one of the customers was appreciative and thankful for fixing it. Many were YEARS old. They got a new 12 outlet instead of 4 and a new warranty and at no charge. VERY appreciative they were.

Most don't need told that its also a PITA for us as well, they bring it up and get it. Maybe its just the attitude of rural folks. Or where I live. I dont know. Im just glad I don't have pricks for customers.