customer support - my gripe of the day

I already posted about that Korg KAOSS and got no response. I called up Korg and you already know what I got. "We don't do telephone support anymore, but you can go to the website and write in your question." Sure, I'm going to spend the next month writing back and forth trying to learn how and what this thing does with the Korg products. And what about those who can't type!

I see this as just about complete deliberate alienation from the consumer for the sake of saving a buck. Someone said to me a while ago, before you make any major purchase of ANYTHING check out the manufacturers Customer Service, Warranty, track record, etc. I knew that already, but this episode reminds me of it again.

I'm going a step further. Do you realize we arranger players are at the mercy of big business (the Fab Four)? They could cut off ALL communication with the consumer for the sake of the bottom line, monopolize the industry and set prices, possibly cheapen the instrument and maintain that sky-high price tag (again for the bottom line), maybe even stop making TOTL arrangers and just feed us mini-versions of their instruments for home players since us pro's are fading out.

It's like the food industry. Have you noticed food prices are going up every day almost. My theory is they got wind of the fact that we have to EAT every day so they're having a field day with our money and we have no choice but to pay it.

Same with our arranger keyboards. Highly unlikely but they have us in the palm of their hand if they ever decide to set up a consortium like the airlines did.

Leading back to "why did they do away with customer support by telephone?" ANSWER: Because.......they could, that's why!

Meantime I'm hanging on to my past Roland arrangers with their simple but effective styles. I'd have to think twice now about back-up support from a major company....no local repair shops....box it up and "send it back to Korg in Long Island and hope it comes back before the next Super Bowl.

I still remember the great "old days" when I was buying strictly Roland. I could pick up the phone and call them in California anytime and have a 30 minute conversation with a rep about their products.

So.......I got carried away here but I see this as a harbinger of things to come. I have to laugh at the Dunkin' Donuts commercial....."the world runs on Dunkin." No, it runs on the "bottom line!." Doing away with telephone support just might be the first step in a campaign to save money on top of money at the consumer's expense!

How do the rest of you feel about this?

My first thought is that you had better have a good dealer to go to bat for you, hoping they might have more sway than an individual customer. However, with an attitude like that, I don't know.

I agree about Korg. I still don't have an answer for (2) questions from January (I gave them a pass for the NAMM show) and suspect I won't get one.

A large part of it may be because they're bombarded by questions that can be answered if people would just RTFM. I'm sure most don't even do that.

But then, who can understand the manuals?

It has been my experience that nearly every arranger keyboard manual is very poorly written and constructed. For a good part of my life, I was a freelance, outdoor writer and if I would have sent something that poorly constructed to one of my editors I would have been out of a job. Fortunately, we have some really good internet forums that are dedicated to solving user problems and answering most technical questions, often within minutes of them being posted.

I have, on rare occasions, contacted Yamaha's Customer Support team in California and my experiences have all been positive. I never had to contact Korg or Roland because I didn't own either keyboard for very long.

Good luck,

Gary

Ouch!

Forums answer better

Unfortunately it's true, Zuki. I know some learn by pressing buttons, messing about in general, etc., and that's fine, but even reading through a quick start guide for the first forty pages or so has its benefits.

Nobody is expected to wade through the thousand or so pages of a Korg manual, though there's always the masochists :), but you can find questions on any forum that you just know can be answered by spending a bit of time reading.

I blame the internet sales for this..

Normally the answers where generated by the local music store

Try asking your questions at Sweetwater....

There's always the big question "Did you buy it here?"...

I always bought from Sweetwater and their support is excellent.

+1

If you buy from Frank at Audioworks, I'll bet his support is even better.

You are spot on there. The internet sellers are box shifters with little regard to customer support. They work on just a few % profit. They have forced out the local music stores putting more and more pressure on the local distributor making their jobs near impossible. Cross border selling is compounding the problem in Europe with German companys undercutting everyone else. Distributors in other countries are forced to turn away those who have bought from another country leaving customers frustrated

....its a total mess, nobody in the music industry is making any money, customers are becoming angry because they dont recieve instant attention. Because there are no longer places to see products the manufacturers are suffering low sales....I fear its all going down the tube.

I've seen a couple of videos from a guy at Namm who was supposed be promoting Korg Arrangers he wasn't really pushing them and showing what they could do. I'm referring to the Pa700 and Pa1000. I'm sure if you was trying to promote your latest bit of kit at a trade show you would be really promoting it.

My ranking of support by national music-related businesses with which I've had dealings.
Bose, Logitech, Sweetwater, Audioworks CT, George Kaye and Yamaha. The first five slightly ahead of Yamaha.
All these folks were GREAT.
Of all these, Frank and George are the only ones who will read this, so that moves them up even further.
I've all of these places instantly respond to trouble and go out of their way to help!

Both George and Frank were fantastic to me....

Agree! When I mapped my 3X to the 1000, I read quite a bit of manual to do so. In fact, I'm reading a 4X manual and I don't have the keyboard yet

A big difference will be that there are no longer Performances; everything is Songbook based. Where the Performances were are now Keyset lists. Keysets were previously called STS. It's a better system, but you'll need to adjust.