On January 6, 2009 at 15:03, xpat said...
To me, this reads: "As more and more people choose Logitech
Harmony, we find that we are having trouble keeping up
with offering quality phone support. As such, we are limiting
phone support and asking you to send us emails so that
in the event we are flooded with support requests, we
will have less angry customers yelling at us over the
phone due to the one hour wait times. It's easier to read
a customer's complaint and frustration via email and then
reply to it with a canned email response than to have
a live person express empathy."
Don't get me wrong, I'm not picking on Logitech; it's
probably a great business decision for them. Here's hoping
that we will continue to see the same level of support
via email that we've come to expect via phone.
Oh but its not the same level of support. I recently had a problem with a 720 and emailed support after searching through all the forums and trying all the recommended suggestions for the problem. After waiting 5 days for a response, I called support just to see if they would be nice and help. After being on hold for an hour I got ahold of Indian Betty who took all of my information, asked me what the problem was that I was experiencing and what remedies I've tried, she told me that she would not help me since my account was more than 60 days old. Although this wasn't unexpected, it would have been nice if she would have told me this before we talked about the problem for five minutes. I asked how long I can expect to wait for a response by email. She said she does see my support request and it will be handled as soon as possible.
So I wait a couple more days, and finally get a response. The response tells me to do what is suggested on the Logitech Support forum and which I already attempted several times. This wouldn't be so bad if I didn't include in my email specifically what I had already done to resolve the problem, but I did this for this specific reason, so I wouldn't be told to do what I've already done. I responded and told them again all the things I had already done to resolve the problem which didn't work. Logitech responded a couple of days later that if none of these suggestions worked, there is something wrong with the remote and needs to be replaced. They said my information is being forwarded to the warranty department and they will contact me.
Two more days go by and I received an email from Logitech's warranty department asking for my Harmony account user name, model number and PID of the remote. I send this and the next day receive an email, again from the warranty department, asking for my mailing address and phone number. At this point, it sounded to me like they planned to replace the remote, even though I've had it for a couple of weeks over a year. I thought since it was so close, they were going to replace it anyway. The two times in the past I've had problems with other Logitech products (not Harmony) that were under warranty, they were very helpful and quickly replaced the itmes with almost no questions asked. So, I get the final response today, that they will not replace the remote since I've had it for more than a year. This wouldn't be so bad if it wouldn't have gone on back-and-forth for two weeks.
Just based on this one occurrence, I would say their email support is not good. In the past, I had nothing but good experiences, both for Harmony support as well as other products, all by phone. Trying to get support by email when it takes several days just to get a response back when all you want to do is get your remote working or determine if it can be made to work or not is terrible. At least live chat would be better. Now, its not all bad. They did also send me a code for 50% off any Harmony product from their store which they didn't have to do. I'm not sure I'm going to do that or not, I might consider other options for a replacement remote.
