Smart\Steljes Terrible Customer Service *Rant*

[jertsy]

Hi

 

Has anyone else noticed a decline in the service recieved from Smart & their distributer Steljes. I have a batch of SB680's that the cursor keeps sticking in the corner (all sequential serial numbers). All I get from Steljes is 'can you take a working controller off a good board and swap it with the bad one to test'! I dont expect to be asked things like this from a large company it seems very amateurish. Steljes have replaced a few controllers and boards which has fixed the issue on those boards but it will happen again on the others and each time it inconveniences the teacher as I have to go through this rigmarole of can you swap this controller with a working one, it takes about a month to sort each board out with Steljes. They are not interested in the possibility of a fault in this batch of boards.

So I contacted Smart directly and their customer service is worse, they got me to send a video of the issue and agreed that they would swap the controllers on 7 boards (each time taking 3 days to reply to each of my emails) they asked for my shipping address and sent nothing.... Each time I email the guy back he ignores me, so I logged another call and was told that the previous guy advised me to ontact Steljes for the controllers which is not true as I have all the emails, when I responded pointing this out, no reply again.

I have about had it with Smart as a company and I am investigating alternatives but the problem is that the teachers like the Smart software, maybe this is why they can behave the way they do and get away with it.

 

I feel much better now, rant over

[dry]

Have had similar experiences with Steljes, "Swap the pen tray with a known working pen tray from another board" etc etc. To be fair it's fairly basic diagnostics and I'd rather have to swap a pen tray over for a day or so instead of getting a bill for an engineer visit with 'No fault found'.

 

When we did get an engineer out, he managed to slice a PSU cable in half as he was putting the pen tray back. He got me to sign for the call on a Windows Mobile 5-based PDA. He told me that when the PDAs break the company buy second hand replacements from ebay as it's cheaper to do that than re-write the application for an up to date OS.

[jertsy]

Have had similar experiences with Steljes, "Swap the pen tray with a known working pen tray from another board" etc etc. To be fair it's fairly basic diagnostics and I'd rather have to swap a pen tray over for a day or so instead of getting a bill for an engineer visit with 'No fault found'.

 

When we did get an engineer out, he managed to slice a PSU cable in half as he was putting the pen tray back. He got me to sign for the call on a Windows Mobile 5-based PDA. He told me that when the PDAs break the company buy second hand replacements from ebay as it's cheaper to do that than re-write the application for an up to date OS.

 

Yeah the pen tray isnt too bad, the controllers a bit more fiddly as its on the back and you have to take it down off the wall. I do get the vibe that Steljes tech support are a couple of guys sitting in an office somewhere dealing with all of these support calls, and its a fairly low budget operation.

 

The last board they replaced, they sent the wrong board so they rebooked it but sent a damaged board and it was third time lucky.

[dry]

Yeah the pen tray isnt too bad, the controllers a bit more fiddly as its on the back and you have to take it down off the wall.

Ah yes, the only boards I've had to raise a service request for have been where the controller is built into the pen tray. Maybe they adapted the design after they realised they could get customers to do half the diagnostics for them if they built it into the pen tray!

[localzuk]

I have only ever had to have one board fixed under warranty - and that had to be shipped back to, IIRC, Canada!

 

We've stopped buying their hardware now - it just wasn't worth it. We bought a SMART Notebook site license and Advantage subscription for 4 years and now use Epson and NEC interactive projectors instead.

[hallb15]

I don't think their service has declined - its always been terrible!

We are planning to replace all our Smartboards next financial year with touchscreen devices like the Vividtouch. As has been mentioned above, the teaching staff do seem to like Smart notebook so we'll be sticking with that initially.

[jertsy]

Ah yes, the only boards I've had to raise a service request for have been where the controller is built into the pen tray. Maybe they adapted the design after they realised they could get customers to do half the diagnostics for them if they built it into the pen tray!

 

Another cost saving measure

[jertsy]

I have only ever had to have one board fixed under warranty - and that had to be shipped back to, IIRC, Canada!

 

We've stopped buying their hardware now - it just wasn't worth it. We bought a SMART Notebook site license and Advantage subscription for 4 years and now use Epson and NEC interactive projectors instead.

 

How much did that cost if you dont mind me asking, just weighing up if there are viable alternatives to the smart software, therefore allowing me to dump their hardware and software. Or just their hardware with the advantage.

[localzuk]

How much did that cost if you dont mind me asking, just weighing up if there are viable alternatives to the smart software, therefore allowing me to dump their hardware and software. Or just their hardware with the advantage.

 

The SMART Notebook price was about £250 per room (includes 1 year advantage), then £35 ish per room for a 3 year Advantage subscription on top.

[sonofsanta]

Tribble Customer Service:

 

EDIT: this joke already makes no sense now the thread title has been corrected. Bah!

Edited January 28, 2016 by sonofsanta

[jertsy]

The SMART Notebook price was about £250 per room (includes 1 year advantage), then £35 ish per room for a 3 year Advantage subscription on top.[/quote

 

Cheers, I dont think our budget will stretch to that this year.

[natalieharrisbriggs]

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you for bringingthis to my attention. As a company we endeavour to bring our customers thebest, most appropriate technology solutions that are supported by excellentservice, whether that’s directly from ourselves, or through our resellers anddistributors. A crucial part of this is taking in feedback, listening to ourcustomers and continuously improving the service we provide. Please could youcontact me directly and provide full details of your complaint so that I can lookinto it and offer up a prompt resolution.

[MartinRouterKing]

I asked for a quote for smart notebook in November they asked how many smart boards I have so I told them and they asked about promethean so I told them. The sales man then turned round and said I wish you didn't tell me that when I asked why he said it is more expensive if you don't just have smart boards I couldn't believe it they penalise you for not having a school full of their products!!!!

[jertsy]

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you for bringingthis to my attention. As a company we endeavour to bring our customers thebest, most appropriate technology solutions that are supported by excellentservice, whether that’s directly from ourselves, or through our resellers anddistributors. A crucial part of this is taking in feedback, listening to ourcustomers and continuously improving the service we provide. Please could youcontact me directly and provide full details of your complaint so that I can lookinto it and offer up a prompt resolution.

 

Do you work for Smart or Steljes?

[VeryPC_Anthony_L]

Hi all,

 

As a Smart reseller if anyone is having any issue with Smart products then do feel free to give us a call and we are more than happy to see of we can help out.

If anyone is interested in purchasing Smart products (software and hardware) we can again help with this. In regards to the price of Smart software, Smart are releasing a new pricing structure, not sure on pricing yet so cannot help at the moment.

[drsox]

I have to say that Steljes and Equinox (the guys that get sent out) have been incredibly good over warranty repairs of our (*many!) broken LightRaise 60wi projectors.

 

[*I might even go as far as to say that I believe there may be a widespread fault with these model projectors causing early lamp failure].

 

Getting hold of Steljes on the phone has always been easy and the person on the end of the phone has been efficient and polite. The Equinox engineer who has been sent out to swap out projectors, up to now (he has retired), has been brilliant.

 

(If we are talking about bad customer services... ParentMail!)

[jertsy]

I have to say that Steljes and Equinox (the guys that get sent out) have been incredibly good over warranty repairs of our (*many!) broken LightRaise 60wi projectors.

 

[*I might even go as far as to say that I believe there may be a widespread fault with these model projectors causing early lamp failure].

 

Getting hold of Steljes on the phone has always been easy and the person on the end of the phone has been efficient and polite. The Equinox engineer who has been sent out to swap out projectors, up to now (he has retired), has been brilliant.

 

(If we are talking about bad customer services... ParentMail!)

 

I have no issues with the guys that come out to site, they have always been great, if a little overworked!

[PaulHughes]

@drsox ... I'm sorry you are not happy with service provided by ParentMail. I'm the MD and I'd very much like to help if I can. Please email me using [email protected]

[jertsy]

Do you work for Smart or Steljes?

 

Well no response to my question, says it all really!

[markofealing]

We have also noticed that the LightRaise projectors are terribly unreliable, currently we have two which are awaiting an engineer to come to site to replace, both are just over a year old. It has taken Steljes two weeks to source a replacement spare, by which time another had died!

 

As for the onsite support, that's not great either you can not book a time slot for the engineer to visit unless you want to pay a fee of £100 per visit which means that you then have to make a classroom unavailable during the school day. Not many schools have the luxury of spare classrooms so totally unpractical.

 

We have decided not to buy any more LightRaise projectors from SMART as there is nothing great about them at all i.e. too expensive, unreliable, replacement pens are very expensive (£90 each), they offer poor warranty 1500hrs on the lamp and 3yrs on the projector, provide useless warranty after sales service and are very difficult to support and complicated to setup.

 

We will be moving to Epson EB-595wi touchscreen projectors ) EB-595Wi - Epson, which are available with SMART Notebook and tick all the boxes including a 3yr lamp and projector warranty.

 

For anyone interested, SMART Notebook Advantage will no longer be available after 28th Feb, once again the goalposts have moved and you will now have to license SmartNotebook as part of the SMART Learning Suite, a change which SMART have kept very quiet about probably because they knew that if they announced it there would have been a riot at their BETT stand.

[Gers]

We have had terrible service for the last year from their so called "Engineers" Not turning up, Items not received from courier, Engineer off sick and second man delayed.

The engineer that attended finally on one occasion asked if anyone could help to lift the board down as it is a 2 man job , but it's very rare someone else gets sent to help.

Another Engineer on another occasion broke the board by dropping it off the back of the van. The next day the same Engineer turned up to repair a Toshiba laptop.

Quizzing him it turns out they cover a multitude of jobs from one extreme spectrum to another. Steljes and their Engineers are a joke.

We looked into getting all smart products slowly removed and to go down the Vivid route, I found out from another forum that it is the same Engineers from Steljes that repair Vivid products.

We are now looking into Starboards, which hopefully Steljes and their Engineers have nothing to do with.