Group,
As you may know my ipronto is in for repair with RMA service in Belgium.

Anyone had experience with them ? I have had no feedback since the unit was shipped to them on the 6th of June.

Just missing my remote :-)

And still I wait ! That will teach me for buying from the USA :-(

Warranty repairs on all Prontos seem to be a bit slow with the company that do Philips repairs (Solectron) at the moment - I believe they are going through a bit of a shakeup process to try to remove a few of the bottlenecks.

Phil

Thanks Phil, Im Still Waiting :-)(Diana Ross 1970) there are some good words in that song that relate to my ipronto situation :-)

Will let you all know when it returns.... if it does.

Finally got ahold of someone at Selectron, they confirmed they have my machine under the knife, but are awaiting spares...

any idea of time frame ? No idea..... :-(

Absolutely appalling. I feel for you. IT should make no difference where you purchased it from. It's still a Philips product at the end of the day. What a way to run a company.

With all due respect I agree that it is appauling with regard to turnaround time and that hits all of us at the moment - as you can probably remember we are a Philips dealer and we have the same problems - however Solectron are not "Philips" - they are a separate company who handle the repair of the philips Pronto line.

Philips are more than aware of the issue and have spent a lot of time and effort trying to get the repair of their units back on schedule ... it looks like their efforts are starting to bring results as we are now finding that their turnaround is getting better.

Phil

Phil

I understand what you are saying about Selectron not being Philips but at the end of the day that should make absolutely not a jot of difference to the end user. iPronto owners have bought a Philips product and therefore Philips should give a suitable level of service irrespective of who they decide to use to act as their service agents.

I'm afraid all to often I see retailers and manufacturers hiding behind excuses such as 'the repair agent are not under our direct control'. Why should the customer give a damn about who owns them, it's the manufacturers problem not the customers. Although all too often it becomes the customers problem.

Thing is - as a dealer - if the Philips agents aren't up to the job then we don't pass the problem on to the customer, if a customer has to wait for too long for a warranty repair then we bite the bullet and pull a new item from stock and send that out. Yes it hits our bottom line but surely as dealers that's what we should be doing?

(Currently I have four iPronto's, two RU980's and about 15 RU950's that are in "warranty" limbo ... and that's lost sales for us because we can't sell them as new of course when we do get them back.)

Phil

I will buy from Letsautomate next, honest !

joking aside I would say that my experience with Phil's company has been first rate and would reccomend them to anyone. (I have no connection with them.) I share wattsn's views here, there are certainly not enough "letsautomate" vendors out there.

I personally would not have bought an ipronto at the UK price, I think the price point is too high, maybe 600-700 UKP would be closer to value here.

I like the device despite my problems, and I think Philips are on to something, just need to sort out the firmware and reliability. Just my 2p

Erm - I've just had a look on our records - you wouldn't happen to be an Andrew Dade from Norfolk would you?

If so then I didn't realise you were actually a customer of ours. :-D

Phil

yes thats me... at least one of my RU-940's came from you guys... plus a load of X10 stuff that got me in big trouble with other 1/2 :-)

how much do I have to spend to be a "real" customer ? :-)

at least the 940 still works, no sign of my ipronto comming back :-(

LOL - That's what we like to see - a man more committed to his toys than his SWMBO.


Hmmm ... depends what you mean by a "real" customer - to be honest I don't work there for the pay packet alone, I work there because I enjoy being able to play and I also like my boss. Some customers you can really get along with and you can get a good relationship built up with (hell, I've just been invited down to a customers home in Devon this weekend with my family for a barbeque and we're crashing there overnight). :-D


Hmmm ... "at least it's not all bad" is a tad innapropriate there isn't it? :-(

Phil

I am a bit confused by your last comment, no negatives meant at all re the 940.... quite the opposite.

it was the second unit I bought after my daughter broke the first one. We could not live without one and while I tried to fix the original the second one was purchased. I eventually found a track going to the screen was broken and some careful soldering brought it back to life.

The reason I bought the ipronto really was the fact I was so pleased with the 940, it did everyting I expected and more. What could be better than a larger colour verson of same with a web browser and EPG.

I have had several universal remotes over the years and this one (940) was the one that finally replaced everything.

The 940 is stable, works every time, fast to program and I am generally delighted with it.

I see it to continue to be used even (if ?) when the ipronto comes back.

I was just meaning that your RU940 working fine is little consolation when your iPronto is still off having its innards fiddled with.


Had exactly the same thing happen with mine too - Edward (A.K.A. Demon Spawn) threw a paddy and decided to hurl everything on the coffee table across the room. I was not impressed when my RU940 was picked up off the floor lifeless!


This is one place where I think that Philips have been a victim of their own success - the RU890 and RU940 were so close to being the ideal solution that anything that followed would have a tough time. The 890/940 had decent battery life, didn't have to "wake up" to start to work and they fitted the hand nicely, in fact the only thing in my opinion that let them down was the screen itself ... if it could have been possible to have simply found a better screen (brighter backlight) then I would still be using the old units, even if it meant sacrificing some battery life. :-(


My wife still uses the RU940 at home ... I have had each model of Philips remote back at home to play with (except the RU980) and she hated the 970 and the 950 - I know she'll hate the 980 too as she doesn't like the design of the 950. She finds that hard to use without actually looking at the unit to find the hard buttons.

I was amazed when I took an iPronto home originally and after about ten minutes of using it she actually said "Yes ... I can see that being OK, I like it - doesn't mean I'm going to let you buy one though!"

So if you ever meet her - sshhhhhhh - the one I have at home isn't mine, "It's on loan from work." ;-)

Phil