More cranky tech stories

[g1]

Too funny! Maybe they should just label the bottles to Canada "Laphroaig A". They used to joke all our cigarettes had to end with "eh" sound... Export A, Craven A, Dumaurier, etc.

[bob p]

JC, any tips on how I can get my tones a bit more peaty and smokier?

6v6

[Enzo]

Oh geez.

Maybe this belongs in the critical thinking thread. This is a correlation is not causality story. In the not too distant past I purchased some parts from Samson, a board, some speakers, a tweeter. Invoiced at about $260. Most of the parts went into warranty repairs. Filed claims. Got credit memos for some $310-315.

A lady from Samson credit calls me to remind me I had not paid the invoice, and that I had these credits. A brief discussion, yes the parts were ordered for warranty repairs and were left unpaid intending the resulting credits cover them. All common procedure. So, yes, please apply my credits to invoices. blah blah blah, I have credits left over, yes, please issue a check for the credit balance.

SO not long after, I get a check in the mail for $52.56. The payoff from the bottom line, with parts invoices covered. OK. SO I compare to my warranty claims to get the paper trail together. Now on the Samson claim form, at the very bottom is a box for shipping expense - I often have repairs shipped to me and I ship them back on Samson's dime. The amounts in those boxes catch the eye sorta alone at the bottom of the page. Two claims, shipping was $21.53, and $31.03 on the other. Uh oh. SO I thought, "Hey wait a minute, these guys just took the number at the bottom of the page by mistake and only paid me my shipping costs. Grrr."

SO I went through all the papers, and I finally discovered that the total paid me for labor, parts reimbursement and shipping reimbursement, less the amount of invoices for warranty parts plus some parts for stock, added up to the same amount as the shipping costs alone. In other words the labor paid coincidently was the same value as the non warranty purchased parts.

SO no one had screwed up after all, just a coincidental number. All of which serves to reinforce the lesson that just because two things correlate, doesn;t mean they have a causal relationship.

[Ronsonic]

I'm just impressed that you got the parts. There was a time ....

[jrfrond]

Hey Doug, remember when Samson didn't even HAVE a claim form??? Yeah, so do I. I couldn't believe that when I worked there, and that claim form was one of my first projects. And I still have my old service center database with your name in it.

[Enzo]

Oh just make us up an invoice and make sure it includes...


Now that sounds very familiar as I file warranty claims with Behringer. Just write us up an invoice and include...


I remember a while back, Fender had such a convoluted and clumsy claim form, I tossed a couple SLM claim forms in an envelope and mailed them to Don W. out there, and suggested that the SLM forms worked pretty well, and couldn;t Fender make a form that made more sense? Not long after, we got "new" Fender claim forms, and darn if they weren;t mainly a cut and paste of the SLM form. I like to think I had a part in that change.

I am much happier with the companies that have left the stone age and have online claim forms.

I have a stack still of NARDA forms for TEAC/TASCAM

[jrfrond]

When I did the artwork for the Samson form, it was basically an amalgam of every other warranty claim form, and I just reproduced what I thought made sense and didn't, plus added some "Office Use Only" stuff at the bottom. There was one company in FL that did so many wireless systems that I had the forms made up as pin-feed for them (same company that now makes our pin-feed forms at dBm). Yeah, I still have NARDA forms, and JBL still takes only hard copy forms.

What pisses me off about the Pro Audio industry is that EVERY company wants the same information, with a different format. The consumer industry got it straight with the NARDA form and EIA Repair Codes years ago, but in Pro Audio, it's all cottage-industry attitude. No unification, and really no group equivalent to NESDA or TESA. MITA is a joke unless you are into keyboards.

There are about a half-dozen or so Pro Audio/MI servicers across the USA with which we have formed a loosely-organized group to hash-out issues with manufacturers, service, etc. Ronsonic's old cohort Rich Bruyn of the now-defunct EPR Electronics was one of them. We have no name or charter, but we have often thought of formally organizing it. Even though there has been a paradigm shift in the industry, it is not going to go away, but the service policies, practices and documentation are all over the map. For those who do warranty work for multiple companies, it can eat you up and spit you out just filling out all of the different claim forms, both hard-copy and online. Fender has a decent online warranty claim system, but you need to navigate through 13 screens! Korg's system has been buggy from the start. Then there are the third-part servicer contract providers sold in the stores. You can almost create an entirely new position just for filing warranties (don't get me started on parts too!).

OK, off of my soapbox now.....

[Enzo]

Oh, geez, the Korg pages. At this point you'd think they would set down some high school web design class to make them a new web page for us. Can't file a claim without entering a part. Wire off the power switch? Still gotta enter a part. And that better be an official part NUMBER. SO you are half way through the claim entry, parts list? Not now brudder. Abort, get the numbers and try later. Oops, sorry, thus model only lists a few parts. Need a part number for a TL072? GO look through some other products to find it. And don;'t even get NEAR that back up button.

The Fender claims work, but woe be to you who guesses wrong on the hyphen in the serial numbers. Some use it and some don;t - I asked, and it all boils down to whoever was entering serial numnbers that day.

The PV claim form basically asks who owns it, and what did you do to it. I can literally file a claim while holding my breath.

[bkahuna]

Fender online claims work pretty well, but if the unit was purchased from Guitar Center and you don't know which store number...good luck. Hopefully you can decipher the store's phone number from the washed out purchase receipt and call them to get it.

I vote for PV's online claim forms: Simple, and straight to the point. No fuss, no muss.

[J M Fahey]

Interesting.
Can't somebody post a screen capture or scan of one of what you call "working ones"?
I guess that would be PV but no preferences here.
Obviously brushing out any name or company information, phones, Logos, everything, just to see the structure .
Worst case, a short list of the main data fields.
Thanks anyway.

[Enzo]

That would pretty well violate any proprietary information agreements. But really, what they look like is irrelevant.

Some of the stuff stays in the fields, like my business name and my name and address and account number, but that is the case for many places we do business. In fact I wish Amazon.com would forget who I am.

Fender, go to support portal site, log in, then click on claim form.
I don;t want to open one at the moment, so from memory
1. verify business name and adress with a click
2. verify my own name and tech number with a click (Fender issues each tech his own rating and number, which would follow me if I went to some other company)
3. find dealer. For example if I just enter Guitar Center it will return the whole darn list of them, then I can click on the one for the city as needed. Or if it is a single store dealer, enter it and it will return with the listing. Click on the store listing
4. enter serial number and click It has a serial number database and knows what the item is by its serial, and it will enter the model name for me.
5. special labor authorization? click
6. repair date? click
7. consumer or dealer owned? click
8. (if consumer) enter name/address/phone click
9. Fender parts used? part numbers
10. Non-Fender parts used - cost (they don;t expect us to buy resistors and transistors and such from them, just OEM parts like transformers, pots, speakers)
11. complaint
12. action to resolve complaint
13. labor time in 1/4hr increments, in my case up to 2 hrs. click
Did I forget anything?

Each of those numbers is a page. It moves right along, only time it bogs down is when you leave out a hyphen when it wants one or you include one when it doesn't expect it. It takes a few moments as it goes through its entire data base to find it doesn;t know what you are talking about and returns an error. But I know all I have to do is re-enter the serial the other way and it will come up. Then click on submit and it assigns a claim number to you like W123456.

The next day I will get an email telling me the claim was accepted. And a week later they mail me a check for all claims processed the previous week. It works smoothly. and 15 screens sounds like more hassle than it really is.

Peavey is amazing. Log onto the b2b dealer support site and click warranty claim report. Up comes the entire form on one screen page. At the top is used parts or didn;t use parts, click on one. If you did use parts, it shows lines for you to enter them. Then fill in the boxes all still on the one page:
Claim number (make up your own or they will generate one for you)
Model and serial
Date of purchase
Date of repair
Labor time
A box where I describe what I did "replace output transformer" or "rebuilt blown powr amp stage as needed."

Then boxes for my business name/address/phone/email (it retains those)
And boxes for customer name/address/phone

CLick submit.

Now I fall for this every time. The fields with my name address and phone are all retained, but it doesn;t remember email addresses, I assume because they change so often for many people, so it always kicks the form back to me and says "must enter email address." So I add that and click submit again.

That's it. Just a couple minutes. They email acknowledgement and a credit memo is in the mail soon after.

I am to keep parts used on hand for 60 days in case they want to see them, and I keep copies of proof of purchase in case they want to see them. But unlike the old days, no one with online claims wants me to send those things except very rare occasions.

The forms at Loud are not hard to use either.

JM, is there somethhing in particular about the entry process that you are interested in?

[jrfrond]

One difference with what I do here, and I don't know if anyone else does, but as part of our invoicing system, to track when and how much we are getting paid (after all, warranty work only SEEMS free!) by the manufacturers. This requires a bit of dual entry on our part, BUT it remains with the invoice in the computer and is totally searchable. With the amount of warranties we file, this is unavoidable, and I had to build it into the database. Thank God for Filemaker Pro!

Back in the 80's, when I worked for Crazy Eddie Service, our main center in Edison, NJ had a staff of three people who did nothing but file and unscrew warranty claims every day. It can overwhelm you, even with the six techs I have here vs. the forty we had at CES. And THEY were filling out ALL NARDA forms at the time, so the process was repetitive, hence easier. They were ALSO entering the claims into a database.

Anyone else here do JBL Professional?

[J M Fahey]

Thanks Enzo.

Many many thanks.
I never thought you would provide *such* a detailed and well explained out answer.
It's a glimpse on "the other side" of which most people isn't aware of.
It all sounds logical ... after reading it, but to put up a working system must have taken a *lot* of thinking, or an even longer time being polished.
I was not asking about any particular point but to have an idea of how the whole system works.
I see there is a great potential for snafu there .
For the under-50's: a Vietnam Era keyword: SNAFU : Situation Normal, All F_ck_d Up.
Thanks a lot, it was explained clearly and logically.
Based on that, I guess many small details can be added, not affecting the core.

[Enzo]

I am just a small shop. When a repair is done, the work order, proof of purchase, maybe a UPS ticket, whatever, is all stapled together and put in the orange to-be-filed folder. Then, when I either enter an online claim or fill out and mail a paper form, the papers get moved to the red filed-awaiting-payment folder. When I get the check/credit memo, then that joins the paperwork and from the red folder it goes into the book keeping pile.

SO for me, if it is in the orange folder, the claim has not been filed/submitted. If it is in the red folder, it HAS been submitted and not yet been paid.

No, I do not have a relationship with any of the Harman OEMs.