Festool USA not answering the phone. At all.

[TylerC]

Well I never heard back from anyone at Festool, but it appears there is still a glitch in the system. My wife just asked me what I had bought from Festool recently . . . I told her I hadn't bought anything since the whole Kapex incident because of the bad taste left in my mouth about the whole thing. She then brings two Festool boxes in from the garage. Turns out the service department shipped me a Carvex and a T18 someone sent in for service. . . I'd like to think it's them making up for the terrible service regarding my Kapex, but more likely it's just another glitch in the system. The best part is that I tried to call them to sort it out and SHOCKINGLY no one answered the phone . Guess I've got some new tools to play with for the weekend

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Although I don't know anything about the Carvex and T18, our service team says that they spoke with you few weeks ago about the Kapex situation.

I will let them know about the Carvex and T 18 shipment.

 

[Goneshootin88]

Well I never heard back from anyone at Festool, but it appears there is still a glitch in the system. My wife just asked me what I had bought from Festool recently . . . I told her I hadn't bought anything since the whole Kapex incident because of the bad taste left in my mouth about the whole thing. She then brings two Festool boxes in from the garage. Turns out the service department shipped me a Carvex and a T18 someone sent in for service. . . I'd like to think it's them making up for the terrible service regarding my Kapex, but more likely it's just another glitch in the system. The best part is that I tried to call them to sort it out and SHOCKINGLY no one answered the phone . Guess I've got some new tools to play with for the weekend

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Although I don't know anything about the Carvex and T18, our service team says that they spoke with you few weeks ago about the Kapex situation.

I will let them know about the Carvex and T 18 shipment.

Not sure who they think they spoke to, but it definitely wasn't me.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[mcooley]

Poor communication seems to be a big issue for sure. Reminds me of the refurbished tool sale and the recent limited edition sander fiasco. I guess what those and this most recent problem have in common is lack of foresight and organization. The explanation I usually here in these situations is they were caught off guard or didn't anticipate the way the "event" rolled out. In this case, the issue is internal and so it's funny that despite it not being a sale or new item issue people still figure out there is a problem. I wonder then since these issues don't seem to be going away anytime soon if it's not more a symptom of the corporate culture there? I am not pretending to know whether it is or not, so, my criticism is purely speculative. 

I still believe they make good products (despite some of the quirky design omissions they sometimes make) so for me I worry more that it is management and possibly how the corporation is structured. Let's hope they never go down the rabbit hole of Volkswagen where the only explanation there was a corrupt corporate culture dead set on gaming the system for profit etc. 

 

[younger]

I sent my ETS150 in for repair last week.  It arrived on Tuesday and I received no status updates. So I called and wasn't able to reach anyone except the voicemail.  I left a two messages and one of the Festool techs called me back today to let me know that the sander was repaired and shipped back to me the day after they received it.

Thank you Festool service!

 

[Bob D.]

I want to shine a bit of light on what's going on. Nearly everyone in our office is absolutely swamped right now for a few reasons. For me, the last two weeks have been among the most stressful and exhausting of my professional life. I can 100% gaurantee you that if your calls aren't being answered/returned quickly, it isn't out of indifference or laziness. Nobody in our service team is slacking off.

There are two big things happening simultaneously:
1. The service team has to shut down for a week(ish?) at the end of the year for inventory and operational reasons. This creates a backlog in the first week or so of the year.
2. (And this is the big one) We are overhauling all of our technology systems right now.  Most departments (including service) are starting all new systems this week and last. As there always is with something like this, there's both a learning curve and various issues/bugs to work through.

I understand that -- if you need your tool repaired quickly -- you don't care about what's happening behind the scenes. Fair enough. But that's the reality. Those dudes are working as hard as they can.

Well the first one is something you do every year so by now you ought to have the hang of it and know its coming and be prepared.

On the second yes that can really bring production to a halt. Where I work we switched to SAP about 16 years ago and had some growing pains, but we never stopped or ground to a halt, couldn't if everyone wants to have their lights turn on.
We just planned ahead and made the switch over from one system to the other after we had been running parallel for about 2 weeks AND everyone had been through training related using SAP to do their particular job function. SAP is into everything now. It doesn't happen in our organization without it being tracked in SAP somewhere.