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  1. #1
    Student pelgrim's Avatar
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    Thumbs up Robox (CEL) support total failure

    I'm a kickstarter backer of the first hour the robox printer was online (don't take that literal)

    After a lot of waiting and then another year of waiting until the software, called AutoMaker, matured, horray, I was finally making my first steps into the 3D printing world.

    The huge disappointment came 4 months ago.
    Read the story ...

    After only 500 hours of printing, the needle valve was stuck.
    A thing I predicted on the CEL forum, the more parts something has, the more things can go wrong. It all complicates things.
    Well, needed to send it back for repair, and after politely asking the unsuspecting client, being me, if I wanted a repair, they did so.
    Why would I not want it to be repaired, CEL support asked me to send the part over for repair in the first place.

    Well, I got it back after 2 months (!!!)
    The print head failed after a few prints, some pre-print checks didn't work.
    CEL support, well, just told me: send the printer, we will just replace the guts of your printer to a new update ?
    WHAT ?
    No thank you, it's just the print head that has something wrong, something you just repaired by the way.

    After a lot of arguments and investigation from my part (certainly they were not helpfull there), I found out: the head seal was blown.
    O no, that happened a lot, just read the CEL forum about it.
    So, support, what now ?
    O sorry, poor customer, but did you really expect a 3 year old print head would last for much longer ?
    Excuse me, Mr. CEL support, you DID ask me to let you repair a print head that is end of life ?
    To me, and end user that has no clue about that ?
    No advice given that I should replace the print head ?

    Now comes the clue: CEL is out of stock for the last half year or so of fresh print heads.

    CEL support taking responsibility for their mistake (repairing a print head that is end of life): well, not in this lifetime it seems.
    CEL support reacting when I go to their forum about it: they ban me, left me in the dark why I would be banned, they claimed it was a "mystery".
    Now they cut off all connection, I can't even read in the forum anymore, my account is deactivated, can't log in to support, nothing.

    This is what CEL is doing to me today.
    Contacting someone on CEL ?
    I have no idea how i could do that, even their general contact form bounces.
    OK, contacting Chris Elsworthy, after all, he's the one running the show, and the only one at CEL I never spoke to in any way.
    All great, but I could not find an email address, and I'm not into all this social media madness, you won't find me there.

    So, here I am.
    "advertising" about CEL.

    It would have been so great to tell you all how CEL took responsibility and took great care of one of their original backers of their kickstarter campaign,
    certainly after all the mistakes they piled up until today.
    It has become a totally different message.

    Well, Chris Elsworthy, it would be wonderfull to hear a reaction from you,
    one which has a great and fair solution, not one with the boring excuses I get from Pete (who banned my account by the way)

  2. #2
    Super Moderator curious aardvark's Avatar
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    You'd think they'd have sent you a new printhead in the first place.
    Wow - replacement printheads START at £149 !

  3. #3
    Student pelgrim's Avatar
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    indeed.
    All this trouble and now bad publicity (as a last resort) just to make a 60£ on repair fees.
    In fact all they had to do at start was saying:
    "sorry, your print head is at end of life and we're out of stock, wait until we have fresh print heads"
    and I would have considered this as acceptable.

  4. #4
    The information that was left out of this statement is that the print head in question was at least one year out of warranty when it had a problem. As a Robox user I know that the failure that this user states caused the print head's second failure happens without warning, so even though the technician worked on the print head, there was no way to predict that this failure would occur. The majority of my print heads have lasted hundreds of hours past their "end of life", so there was no reason for the technician to predict the failure and offer a replacement instead of a repair, especially considering a repair was a little less than 1/3 the price of a replacement. It is unfortunate that the second failure happened so soon after the repair, but as the technician offered a repair of the printer itself instead of immediately looking to the print head as the source of the issue, there was no suspicion that the print head would fail again.

    Yes, the Robox print head is complex. The complexity brings a functionality to the printer that the KickStarter supporters and the manufacturer felt was worth exploring. Having compared the Robox to a printer without this technology, I prefer my Robox printer because of its simplicity of operation and the fact that I calibrate it once and then don't have to worry about it unless the head needs to be replaced. There are no adjustments needed for flow rates for different materials, I have two nozzles available on the head, and I can switch between them on consecutive prints or even in the same print to get the benefits of both a detail nozzle and a fill nozzle. For me and the way I use my printer, this is worth the cost of the print head. The last E3D I looked at was half the price of the Robox print head and was just a hot end with a single nozzle.

    It is interesting to note that this user is the only one I have ever heard of being banned from the Robox forum, and I am fairly active in that forum. It makes me wonder what caused the moderator of the forum to change three years of precedent for this user.

  5. #5
    Student pelgrim's Avatar
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    AZGTi

    you defend CEL without valid arguments, and without reading my message completely.

    Who speaks about warranty ? Certainly not me, that is not the issue here.
    Did you see what all happened in the support ticket communication ?
    I really don't think so. Support stated THEMSELF that this print head should NOT have been replaced, that it was END OF LIFE, statement of CEL, not mine.

    And to make matters a lot worse, they were not able to diagnose the second problem (blown seal), although for a trained CEL technician this should have been obvious.

    To conclude: keep wandering: WHAT caused them to ban me ?
    Please ask on the CEL forum, investigate, please ...
    I'm very curious what that could be, they also deleted or deactivated my account on their ticket service.
    I would really like to know.

    You claim to be very active on this forum (so am I), but I can't remember you at first glance.
    I could investigate, but, o no, I'm even prevented from READING the forum now, that's how bad CEL reacted.
    In effect: they refuse me as a client, despite the fact I have their product and every right to have it fixed.

    I'm not the only one with problems regarding service to my robox unit.
    Go ahead and investigate a lot more.
    Someone mailed me yesterday what happened with that most recent topic, complaining about CEL support.
    Vanished ...
    So I published it here.

    I communicate with CEL clients outside the forum, where I see 2 things:
    - lot's of complaints about CEL support and CEL not taking responsibility for their mistakes
    - lot's of customers simply being afraid to speak out their mind in public, because they fear loosing hardware support or worse, getting their forum messages deleted.

  6. #6
    Student pelgrim's Avatar
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    AZGTi
    what a joke ...

    Do you have the courage to reveal you identity ?
    I give you the chance, if you don't t ake it I'll do it in your place.

    But a spoiler: very well connected with ... CEL

  7. #7
    Super Moderator curious aardvark's Avatar
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    to keep this on a fair basis - if you reveal his identity - the you should reveal yours as well.

  8. #8
    Student pelgrim's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by curious aardvark View Post
    to keep this on a fair basis - if you reveal his identity - the you should reveal yours as well.
    But of course.
    I'm @pelgrim on the CEL forum.
    http://www.cel-robox.com/members/pelgrim/

    Same as I use here.
    Can't be said about AZGTi.

  9. #9
    I am confused - there is no warranty coverage on your print head, so all options are at cost to you. You were offered a repair, which you accepted and paid for, and the print head worked for a while after you received it. What is your complaint? If I had been offered a 60.00 repair instead of a 159.00 replacement, I would have gone with the repair. And you state that support told you the head should not have been replaced, or repaired. I am confused, because you state both, and I have been offered the option on my failed print heads. I would think they would treat everyone about the same and offer both options if they are available. In your case, they offered a repair because it seems they were out of stock on replacement and that was the only option available. I am extrapolating what may have happened based on the information you present in this thread.
    In my experience, having seen my share of failed print heads, that the o-ring failure that claimed your head can cause symptoms also caused by another failure and often can't be identified until the print head is tested either on a different printer, which is how I identify it, or by disassembling the print head. As I have never been instructed to disassemble the print head and have actually been told repeatedly not to disassemble the print head, how else was the tech to identify the failure? If yours was obvious, perhaps you should have brought it up before returning the printer? There was no sign of it on the original service for the print head, again extrapolating from what I know about CEL support. It seems to me that the tech was going with the most likely solution for the behavior you reported.

    Technicians are human and make mistakes, but I don't see a mistake in this situation. The tech was working with the best knowledge available. I am basing this off what you have reported and what I know about CEL support from my personal interactions with them.

    Are you referring to the other post on here about the technician "stealing" the printer? I read that post too and it seems like the user who posted it may be overreacting. If this user sent in their printer for repair, threatening a police report seems like a poor way to address the issue. Wasn't this user pretty abusive on the CEL forum to one of their techs several months ago? Maybe I have the wrong user, but the names seem similar, and I think I remember that user being admonished for personal attacks on the forum. If he is abusive on the CEL forum, perhaps he is abusive on his support tickets also and there is more to that story than was in his post?

  10. #10
    Student pelgrim's Avatar
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    Common Ben, don't play stupid.

    I explained it very clearly in my first message, now you choose to ignore that.
    How poor of you.

    1. my print head was end of life because it was 3 years old
    2. me, the customer with no knowledge of this, was asked if the print head should be repaired, without any kind of warning
    3. so of course a normal customer thinks: sure, make the repair !
    4. the seals blew after a few prints, seals, my dear friend, that CEL just had replaced !

    Whatever you come up with, you just can't defend such an action from support.
    So yes, they are fully responsible.

    And Ben, since you're not a representative in Europe for CEL, please don't act like you are or you know the case.
    And I ask you politely: stick to the topic.

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