Getting Festool Parts

[Jesse Cloud]

Well, here I am late Friday afternoon wanting to order some parts.  Either the Festool office is closed or there's a skeleton crew - yes, I know, its the Friday before a holiday weekend.  But in any case, its been several minutes on hold and I don't have time to wait any longer.  So now I have to file away my list somewhere that I can find it Tuesday and start over.  Not the end of the world, and I certainly understand how the parts office can't be staffed 24/7.

My suggestion is why not allow us to place orders for parts online.  It seems like most of the infrastructure is there.  Your customer accessible database has parts diagrams, part numbers, and prices.  Seems like low hanging fruit, a way to improve convenience to the customer, save Festool some labor, and all that with little cost/effort...

 

[Christian93117]

Jesse,

First of all: Sorry that nobody picked up the phone. If you PM me your phone number, I'll make sure somebody calls you ASAP.

We used to sell parts online for a couple of months. I think it was in 2002/2003 or so. It was a disaster. A lot of product was ordered and came
back because it was ordered wrong or was not needed at all. Can you imagine how many parts were ordered, because "the saw makes a weird noise"?

The lower hanging fruit for us is to actually talk to the customer on the phone and help him figuring out what the problem is before we ship out parts.
You'd be surprised how many issues are resolved over the phone before parts are shipped out.

Having said that, this only works when somebody is actually picking up the phone. I will look into that and will make sure we will have better phone
availability in the future.

Thank you for bringing this to my attention!

Christian

 

[Michael Kellough]

Well, here I am late Friday afternoon wanting to order some parts.  Either the Festool office is closed or there's a skeleton crew - yes, I know, its the Friday before a holiday weekend.  But in any case, its been several minutes on hold and I don't have time to wait any longer.  So now I have to file away my list somewhere that I can find it Tuesday and start over.  Not the end of the world, and I certainly understand how the parts office can't be staffed 24/7.

My suggestion is why not allow us to place orders for parts online.  It seems like most of the infrastructure is there.  Your customer accessible database has parts diagrams, part numbers, and prices.  Seems like low hanging fruit, a way to improve convenience to the customer, save Festool some labor, and all that with little cost/effort...

Great idea!

As to filing away your list, just email it to yourself.

I've switched to gmail. You can store more than 6GB of stuff in your mail account and it is always there (even if your computer dies) accessible from any computer that is online. It has a great search feature so stuff you "filed always" years ago is quickly found. And it has an extremely effective spam filter. Only one piece of junk in my InBox in the past 6 months.

Didn't mean to turn this into a sales pitch (for a free service) but the more I use it the better it gets.

 

[Jerry Work]

Simply amazing.  Where else would you find a customer posting at 4:53pm that no one is answering the phone and a response at 5:04pm by the CEO!  If only more CEOs in this country knew how to use and demo their products and stayed close the pulse of the customers the way Christian does we would find far better products and customer service in all sectors of our economy.  There are pathetically only a few similar examples I can think of - Steve Jobs comes to mind.  Thanks for being there for all of us, Christian.

Jerry

 

[Michael Kellough]

Simply amazing.  Where else would you find a customer posting at 4:53pm that no one is answering the phone and a response at 5:04pm by the CEO!  If only more CEOs in this country knew how to use and demo their products and stayed close the pulse of the customers the way Christian does we would find far better products and customer service in all sectors of our economy.  There are pathetically only a few similar examples I can think of - Steve Jobs comes to mind.  Thanks for being there for all of us, Christian.

Jerry

Jobs replies to customer email?!

 

[Matthew Schenker]

Simply amazing.  Where else would you find a customer posting at 4:53pm that no one is answering the phone and a response at 5:04pm by the CEO!  If only more CEOs in this country knew how to use and demo their products and stayed close the pulse of the customers the way Christian does we would find far better products and customer service in all sectors of our economy.  There are pathetically only a few similar examples I can think of - Steve Jobs comes to mind.  Thanks for being there for all of us, Christian.

I agree about Festool, and that's one of the reasons we all like the company so much!

Sorry, but I totally disagree about Steve Jobs!  In my experience, Apple's customer service ranges from awful to nonexistent.  A little while back, I was making the switch to Apple computers.  This kind of gets into some detail, but there was a mix up in my order and the discounts I was supposed to receive.  Hours on the phone with Apple and the message I essentially got from them was "sorry pal."  Based on the company's public (marketing) image, I could not believe the lack of support I got.  I had also purchased an iPod, which had defects after just two weeks, and again the lack of service was infuriating.  The Apple Store where I purchased the iPod refused to take it back, and said I had to send it to Apple for service, and Apple said I had to work it out with the store or pay a fee to have it repaired.  When I posted about the situation on Apple's "support" forum, I got banned.  Needless to say, I do not own, nor plan to buy, Apple products anytime soon!

Comparing Mr. Oltzscher and Mr. Jobs is like comparing...uhm, Apples and Festools!

Matthew