Hi Wolfgang, I don't exactly remember the conversation we had, and I don't have a record of you ordering a case from us, so I can't comment on it directly. I will try to find the conversation and see what happened. As far as the shipping rate, we don't make any money on the Fedex shipping, so you are welcome to use your own shipping carrier if the shipping rate is not to your liking. I'm not sure how we can complain about this, since this is more of a Fedex pricing problem. Their service tends to be more reliable and faster than other methods, so that's why we continue to ship with Fedex all these years. For most people, after they look up the shipping rate from their own shipping company (UPS, DHL, USPS), they will still pay us to ship with Fedex, even though the cost is more than what they want to pay.
Jason, nevermind - just be as polite in your mails as you are in the forum posts, that would be perfect. I can´t talk for others, but for me it does make a big difference if I get the feeling my counterpart answers my questions in complete sentences etc.. Maybe that´s usual though - probably not. If you are not a regular user of fedex, etc. it´s not wise to book their service for parcels you want to receive from my experience. I wouldn´t worry having a longer delivery time, but paying 397US$ for shipping is just too much, thinking that this is more than a years sallary for many, many people in the world. I understand that that´s not your problem nor fault, but e.g. shipping the interior of the case (even for a higher price so that you can make up your loss for what you´d make when selling it with the pelican case) would give me the feeling that you care for your customers.
I am pretty much the same guy on this forum as I am off the forum. We ship with Fedex because it seems that when we ship with other companies, customers end up running right back to Fedex. While sometimes Fedex has hiccups, for the most part they are probably one of the best international carriers. As far as having our customers play piece-meal with our products by paying for the case shell and the foam separately, we value quality and consistency in our products above everything, so that's not really the best solution. We want to deliver the highest quality and honor our outstanding warranty. So in order to do that we need to maintain some standards. Also, we wouldn't want to make our customers do extra work of having to source components in other countries. We prefer the idea of offering a TURN-KEY solution. Another idea, and Probably the best solution would be to have more distributors in Europe and in other countries. This would reduce the shipping cost to you. The trouble is that distributors want huge discounts in order to carry the product in their stores, and that means that we would have to charge more for our cases to offset the losses. We want to be able to offer our cases at a price that is reasonable for everyone to afford, so we'd rather not have to increase the price at this point. And as you can see by some of the posts on this thread, *alot* of people really do value a fast shipping company. It seems that when the packages take a few extra days to clear customs, it can feel like an eternity for some people. Fedex has an interesting system where they load the customs data before the package arrives, which expedites their delivery times.
I am going to jump in here and add my experience with Jason or Cinemaoxide. I bought a case from him and he is polite to you before the sale but rather detached afterwards. It was a nightmare getting this case from him. I ended up having to drive 60 miles round trip to pick up this case due to the way Jason ships it. I spend $15,000 with Freefly and had zero issues. I spend $700 or whatever the cost was on this case and had more issues getting it. Now for the quality of it for what you pay, it's not as great as he advertises. I can take pictures and show people so they can see first hand before they decide to buy. Jason cuts several layers and then glues the layers like a stack of pancakes. The cut outs don't completely align. It does the job but it's not the quality you would think for the price. Let me know if anyone would like to see pictures of what I am talking about. Maybe I just got the bad case, but anyways..Jason you should listen to your customers and not try to discredit them. You've gained a lot of business off this forum and not sure if you contributed anything back but that's not my business. Focus on the customer experience rather than just promoting your case. Just my two cents.
Hi Adam, I am a bit surprised that you responded on here, since we tried to reach you multiple times by email and also by phone to try to help you. You never responded to our emails or phone call. It seemed you didn't even want to be contacted by us, so that's why I'm surprised that you are also saying that we should listen to our customers. In other words, it would be difficult to "listen" to you if you refuse to speak with us. We actually do listen to our customers and if we haven't heard from you, we even send out follow up emails asking for feedback from each of our customers. Alot of our new products and improvements come from feedback we hear from our customers too, so its not really fair to say that about us. You'll also see that all the points made on this thread have been responded to by me, sometimes at great length. Regarding the difficultly in getting the case-- We shipped your case out as soon as your order came through. Then You were unable to sign for the package at your residence. We ship out all of our products with "Direct Signature Confirmation", to reduce the risk of the products gone missing. When this presented a problem for you, we tried to have Fedex arrange an evening delivery but its difficult for Fedex to time it perfectly. We were happy to issue you a refund and take the case back, but you preferred to drive to Fedex and do it that way. That's completely up to you, its your decision. You also made claims that you were making a case that was dramatically better and priced more competitively, and I was looking forward to seeing that for quite some time. Again, I am surprised that you would again come on this thread considering the history you've had on this issue. At this point, I am happy to hear that you are still using our case and are still interested in speaking about it. I am glad you have opened up the lines of communication so that we can continue to develop great products for this community with your help in mind. I will continue to try to reach out to you in the future, and hopefully you will respond to some of my emails next time
Jason, you seem to have a reactive type customer approach on the experience. Maybe think 2-3 steps further than what the customer is expecting. It might serve you well rather than trying to justify every situation that comes across. When I first started asking questions you sent me a private message asking me to remove my question. It was an honest question about size. As far as me making a better case, I have resources to do so, but I am not in the case making business. If I did get into it, I definitely would focus on quality and value while taking proactive steps in making sure my customers were happy the first time rather than chasing them down afterwards and seeing how I can correct a situation that could have been prevented. Just some feed back. Take it for what it's worth.
If you are serious about improving your cases, I can post some detail pictures of my case if you think that will help you improve your cases.
Thanks Adam. I think you are on the right track now, and I value this kind of feedback. However, I have to admit considering how many cases we ship out every day, we have a pretty good record right now. There are a few instances where we could have done better, but those are few and far between. If you are serious about helping us to improve our cases and the overall customer experience, pick up the phone. Thank you.
Sure, I would love to help you with your research. Maybe I got one of your "few instances" cases and you could start off replacing that one with one where the foam matches up? Just food for thought, I did pay full retail and would expect to get a quality product like all your other customers. I'm game and be more than happy to post my experience on here so people see the pro activeness behind the scenes you are committed to.
Thanks Adam, we've already tried to help you and have offered a direct path to how to resolve issues with us in the fastest and move timely manner. We've already offered by email and by phone. We've found that the best way to explore the ways to resolve this issue is by phone, considering you are in the same time zone as us. The second option, which is a bit less efficient is by email. Reach me at jason@CinemaOxide.com if you prefer that option If you are seriously considering helping us with design characteristics of our products, you will almost certainly need to discuss this over the phone as its very much a back-and-forth thinking process. Trying to resolve a problem through an internet thread posting is not the way we do it, and frankly, is not very proactive at all.
I don't remember you offering to fix your case until I made it public. If you want to reach out, fine with me. The forum is a great way for people to communicate and make decisions based on information posted. Will I be compensated for helping with your research? Maybe wishful thinking on my part! Maybe I should just ask for a case that has quality workmanship instead?
It depends on what your goals are. If you want a case that never gets made because it takes 3-4 months of internet polling, then the internet postings are fine. If you want a case that has vision, you may need to limit it to a small number of people with input. The way you repeatably insult our product without offering much to improve upon it, pretty much makes it impossible to work together though. So its up to you where your goals really are. I am reminded instantly about our last interaction, as if it was only yesterday. I hope the best for you Adam in getting whatever you want to get out of this.
Jason, it's pretty simple what I want. Let me see if I can keep it simple for you. Put the chasing around I had to do to get your case and the communication challenges you have aside. I just want the quality in workmanship you advertised. I paid full price for it and ended up with something not so quality in workmanship. I don't want to redesign your case for you..just get what I paid for without attitude.
Ok Adam. That's helps us a bit, but not much. see below: -- Regarding the "Signature Confirmation" issue, you've been the only one that has had a big problem with that. The vast majority of our customers either appreciate it for security reasons, or don't care. So I'm not sure how much leverage I would have over re-designing our shipping protocols to accomodate one single order. -- As far as the quality workmanship, again, the vast majority of the reviews posted here have indicated that the case is excellent and in some instances we receive the highest praises. Please review the last 7 pages of this thread to see what I'm talking about. If we change things unnecessarily, it would seem a poor use of resources when we could be devoting further resources to, for example, supporting the developing product line for Movi products, in particular -- developing a new case for the M15. The only thing I could offer based on these issues, is to please return the case for a refund. I already offered this to you several times in the past, and every time you either refused or didn't respond. I assumed that in some way, you were quite satisfied by the case. Although at this point, its has been over 4 months since you owned the case, and it would be somewhat unethical to request a refund at this point.
Not asking for a full refund, how about just taking care of your workmanship instead of this back and forth trying to prove the customer is wrong? You spend more time justifying issues than taking care of them.
Its interesting that you mention that Adam, since I proactively mentioned that by trying to do resolutions this way, you invite back-and-forth conversation. We've now spent over 3 hours talking about something that would be a 1-2 minute conversation over the phone. As far as the quality of the workmanship, its already a very high standard and that is seen throughout this thread for 7 pages and over 130 postings. I can't really change the entire production process for one customer, where you repeatably refer to issues that only you are having. I can continue to try to help you in other ways, but as our conversation from 4 months ago, it seems you are either uninterested or unresponsive in my efforts.
Reach out to me jason. More than happy to chat like I said earlier. I will post some pictures up later so you can see what I am talking about. Sound fair? I am done going back and forth on this thread and will just show you what I am talking about.
I am confused at this moment -- I have already reached out to you multiple times by multiples methods (email and phone) and not gotten any response. Obviously, that isn't working. Also, your assertion that I didn't try to help you until after you posted publicly is also false. I tried to email and call you several times until you no longer communicated. This was back in March only days after you received your case from us I have posted my email address on this thread and will also include my phone number now. jason@CinemaOxide.com . phone number: is (two one two) 786-2288