All this stuff is WAY over my head of understanding, but I love these kind of tech discussions.

Unfortunately, for me at my level of understanding, this just reminds me of the shaver razor blade industry. I grew up shaving with a single blade razor, costing 25 cents each. They worked great and did the job. Then "dual" blades became the next fad, then the lubricated/moisturizing strips. More recently we're at the "Quatro" and whatever marketing name they're giving the 5 blade razors. Now we're taking all that and adding "titanium" blades and "swivel head action". When I look back at it, I say to myself.....do I really need to be spending $5 per razor blade to shave my facial hair? Then being an engineer I also put some of that calculus education thinking into it and say, don't they know if you add an "infinite" amount of blades and as the distance between them start to approach zero, the answer becomes "1 blade"?

 

But what if that blade is prone to falling out. . .

HAHA

We actually put a video together on it some time back but the quality is a little low. If you search around you can likely find it.

RK

 

I don't mean to be facetious , but you as a representative of your company you are not sure where your video is located?
I would like to see it but I would not have a clue on how to find it. Nor would I spent more than a couple of attempts looking for it.

 

I'll retract the climate statement. The data I have just shows a history of seized joints. You may expand on the causes.

Honestly, much of the product out today is pretty good. For 95% of people, the fine line between great and outstanding is not relevant. So then the criteria falls to ease of service on parts and customer service. I can't think of a time that I emailed or called Metalcloak and didn't get a response in a couple hours (and there's a lot of emails and calls). Of the times I've reached out to Rock Krawler (without physically counting in my email, I'd say between 5-7 times), I've had one response. Maybe you're just selective in terms of customers? Preference to people who drink the kool aid and are more likely to flex your systems at the mall than a legit trail. I presume a company dependent on the marketing of their products and backing up claims doesn't want someone running their parts when they know it is imminent that they will fail at some point.

As for the love fest, I'll give you credit where it's due. Someone there deeply understands business and consumer products. The marketing, constant revisions and update of parts, and repackaging of the same stuff with a minor tweak then marketing as a not seen before system, is how you print money.

 

Don't be hard on him. Like all industries, just because you do work for a particular company that does not make you an expert on every aspect of the company's operations or responsible for the company's every choice. You may be aware of some of the other operations, but by no means have that information readily available at your finger tips.

That's a problem I often see on discussion forums and I highly respect anyone that is willing to wear a badge showing the company they work for and participate in discussions, because the truth of the matter is that when you say you work for a particular company, many want to then hold you personally responsible for anything and everything they have personally determined they don't particularly like about that company.

I've witnessed it quite a few times on this forum myself when I had a private discussion with others and informed them about the company I worked for and the type of work I do. Many are respectable, but I've also had people take personal jabs at me as well and trust me, If I was responsible for every decision direction and knowing every aspect of everything my company did, I would be a very busy person and would be getting paid a lot more than I do.

We need to encourage more vendors to open up and share this kind of information with us and participate in some debated discussions and not try to knit pick at what we determine to be flaws. Going beyond that by trying to point out your personal viewpoint of everything you consider you don't like and taking personal jabs at an individual does not encourage them to participate and providing us to access to a closer relationship with vendors, which is what many of us seek.

We need to seek to understand before seeking to be understood. For example, instead of saying "I feel your company X does this and that, and I feel your products are overpriced for what they are and that's why I don't like your products" can be phrased, "I've experienced this particular problem in the past with one of your products, in your viewpoint why do think that happened?" Now which response would likely provide you with more insightful information? In the 1st instance you are seeking to be understood by telling them YOUR personal viewpoint based upon YOUR experience and you likely won't get a response or the one you do get, you won't like very much. In the 2nd instance you are seeking to acquire information by sharing your experience, while doing so in a polite manner. You are seeking to understand. The problem you experienced was communicated in both instances.

If I were to take a guess, I would say Rock Crawler Suspension may be more of a tech savvy employee into some of the engineering and sales support role of their products. He may not be entrenched in the marketing aspect who manage the promotional video stuff, thus doesn't have that information right at hand and I wouldn't expect him to go digging for it, when we're having a casual joking conversation.

Cheers

 

What ever, he represents his product. He brought it up, obviously the video is not that important. I would never tell my customers to Google, to find information on my product.

 

Nope, you're getting one of the real guys there. Jeremy or a couple others. That's the point. They look at the P&L and see service as a cost center. They can't handle the volume of service requests they receive. It's obvious they need more people in service, but it won't happen as it is viewed as op ex. One new tech employee is a lot of money out of their pocket. Does that work? Sure, you can get away with it for a while. Eventually it blows up. Wouldn't be hard to find 50 Harvard Business School cases on that exact topic where companies eventually failed.

 

Ok then do it your way, let me know how far that gets you with all the nonconstructive criticism and thinking you know it all already while having no real insight and jumping to conclusions based upon your assumptions. I'm just providing some advise on ways to have a more mutually beneficial and constructive conversation and obtain real insight in the process, instead of just convincing yourself that the assumptions you're jumping to are truths.

 

I'm actually happy this was brought up. We did have a large problem with customer service, but it wasn't call or request volume. Instead it was a staffing issue and that person is no longer with the company. I can tell you anyone who has dealt with our customer service in the past couple weeks has received a prompt response and resolution to issues.

 

OP, here's a pretty cool article about choosing a system.

http://www.rubicon4wheeler.com/2012/...ystem.html?m=1