Eventide Germany – soundservice.de – WTF? No service at all!

[peter_heijnen]

Hi, i’m finding myself in a totally crazy kafkaesk situation with Soundservice, the german distributor for Eventide.

 

In december (!) the left footswitch of my H9 broke. The H9’s waranty period was over so i just needed an authorised repair station, but the shop where i purchased the H9 doesn’t deal with Eventide anymore. So i mailed Eventide asking what to do. Eventide replied i should contact Soundservice Germany, and so i did. They asked me to send the H9 via any Eventide dealer, so i did. After weeks i got a mail that the H9 was impossible to repair anymore. If i wanted the H9 back i had to pay 50 euros research costs. WTF???

So i contacted Soundservice again, the dutch representative would look into it and contact the tech that had looked at my H9. After contacting the tech he came back to me with the message that the main PCB was torn and asked me what had happened to it. I responded that nothing had happened, it didn’t even have a scratch. So now this guy went on me like, well maybe some heavy flightcase fell on it, or maybe…. etc. I said no, nothing like that ever happened!

So i decided to pay 50  euros to ‘buy’ my apparently total loss H9 back. I needed to see this for myself. After i received the H9 back i opened it for the first time ever and i was completely stunned, the main PCB was perfect, not ripped at all, WTF?

So i contacted the representative again and sent him pictures. I asked him how the german tech had concluded that the pcb was torn at all? The rep now answered that the pcb being torn was a personal assumption of his. O really, that’s how business is done these days? Consulting the tech first, but then reporting to the customer with personal assumptions? What is the picture i’m supposed to get here?

Up to that moment i hadn’t powered up the H9 since i got it back, thinking all that time that the pcb was all gone, but now i decided to power it up anyway and that’s where i really got pissed off! The H9 powers up, goes into self check and then ‘blocks’ when it get’s to the broken footswitch. It is working just bloody perfect, how on earth is this H9 declared total loss?

So again i contacted the dutch rep, sent him the vid i made of the working H9, and demanded the H9 being repaired, just the broken footswitch. But now this guy came back to me with some story that my H9 had to be sent to the US so that an Eventide CEO could personaly do a second opinion on it. A CEO, Really, WTF? What clusterfuck have i gotten into here??

The dutch rep then came with a ‘deal’ that Soundservice would do the repair, they would charge me but deduct the 50 euros i had already paid. Also i had to pay for the shipping to america and back to Europe, since the pcb was definetely broken anyway and had to be fixed. Yeah right, first it was unfixable, but now not only does it seems fixable but also they even determine a pretty exact fee for the repair, and why all the way in America? And what’s up with all these new developments without the good people at SS not even seeing the H9 again since the first time they had written it 100% off. And why is the video of my working H9 ignored or even explained?

This a real clusterfuck and during the whole process, while Soundservice made several detectable mistakes, Soundservice has not even made a single decision that would be in favor of my interest! The one and only thing Soundservice has done so far is trying to avoid to provide any service at all. The last moment of contact i made was my simple request for the original report of the tech that declared my H9 a total loss. It seems a simple request but that was two weeks ago and i didn’t hear from the guy eversince.

Being totally fed up with this now, i decided to open the H9 again to see how difficult it would be to solder the footswitch myself. It seems not difficult at all, the difficult part is getting the right footswitch. My question: what kind of footswitch is the left/active/bypass is footswitch and where can i buy it? Please anyone help me out here!

But most of all, Eventide, did you know how bad customers in Germany/Europe are ‘serviced’ by Soundservice and does Eventide approve this kind of management? I just can’t believe how bad this is, forcing me to hang out the dirty laundry here at the forum. I think it’s bad to go public but i haven’t been able to use my H9 for half a year now, i think that lasted long enough. How long should it take to replace a broken footswitch?

 

I really hope to hear from anyone who can help me out here.

[benriddell]

That’s terrible customer service. Eventide should definitely look to swap their approved distributors & after support when things like this happen.

Here’s a thread from a bit ago on where to get replacement footswitches, Eventide sell them direct: https://www.eventideaudio.com/community/forum/stompboxes/h9-replacement-switches

[peter_heijnen]

benriddell wrote:

 https://www.eventideaudio.com/community/forum/stompboxes/h9-replacement-switches

Thx for the link Ben. My god they are just 2 dollar switches and easy to replace. Wow that makes the whole situation even more ridiculous in hindsight.

Meanwhile Brian Haberman contacted me and apologised for the whole situation and offered to send me some switches for free. He is going to contact the germans to find out what happened.

[mattwalter]

My Mixing Link was sent to Sound Service, Germany, through Thomann. The DI output has a hum. 6 weeks later there is no Mixing Link, no information, nothing. Seems the customer service works like “And it’s gone…”
The manufacturer Eventide apparently doesn’t have anything to do with the matter anymore. They sent me an email address of the German company. I should contact them. So the warranty passes to Sound Service or what?
Thomann says they don’t get any answer from Sound Service either. How bad can it get?
In comparison: I had a problem with a Electro Harmonix device: 10 days later solved.

[mattwalter]

Well, Sound Service found my Mixing Link. They haven’t done anything so far with it. Sounds like a “sound” service.
How long will it take to repair it? Nobody knows.
I will buy a Radial Vocoloco.

[Author]

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