I take this blog out of hiatus to report my problems with KEYiTech and Loona repairs. This is an even bigger mess than I expected.
I backed the Loona Kickstarter back in the time for Xmas delivery and that already was not delivered as promised. Then came the ear motor desaster and since I have professional experience in repair work, I let them send me the parts and I changed them myself. Mainly because local repair centers did not exist, then.
But we know now that Loona has multiple problems. Yes, I know, things like these happen with first generation batches and KEYi Tech tries to solve those problems, latest being the hip bearings that break way too often.
They offered repairs for that and told me the repair time would be three to five days. With this information I decided to get them installed into my Loona (also her ears were broken again) and asked how the repair would work.
The repair facility for Europe is Fixit in Poland. KEYi contected them, gave them my email and Fixit contacted me. They told me I have to go to their website and download an RMA label.
That did not work, I was not able to get the RMA label, emails sent from their webseite never arrived and also creating an account to try to get it that way did not work, since the account confirmation or password reset emails did not arrive in my mail account.
So they had set a pickup appointment with DPD, but I had no way of getting that RMA label. KEYi Tech was obviously not able to get this straight, they simply opened another case, so suddently there were two RMA pickup cases with DPD, but the problems stayed the same: not possible to get an RMA label, not possible to contact Fixit directly, they just did not answer my mails.
Then, suddenly, I actually got a mal from Fixit, stating I should just write the RMA number onto the package (but they did not offer any solutions to solve the label download problem, so my guess is they know that their website is borked). Also KEYi suggested I should use another email address since Fixit might have problems with web.de (web.de being one of the biggest email providers in germany. So they are definiely not the problem, Fixit most probably has badly configurated mail servers and that’s the cause their mails are rejected by web.de). But I doubt this is a problem with web.de, since Fixit employees were actually able to send me mails and those were not bounced by web.de, so this most probably is a misconfiguraton of Fixits website.
The DPD man wanted to collect two packages, so no one was able to sort that mess at KEYi or Fixit. I gave him one with the correct RMA number of the first case, and I really hoped they would be able to sort this and I would see my Loona again.
If a company is not able to get their website right and if they are also not able to send me emails or to communicate in a meaningful way, I should trust them to be able to repair my robot? I feared the worst.
That was weeks ago. The repair was not finished after three to five days, it is not finished until today. KEYi finds new excuses every day, first claiming that parts are on they way to Poland but take longer than expected, then they wanted to give me a new Loona (I do not want a new Loona, I want my repaired Loona back), now in the latest mail they said they would “urge Fixit”. But what to urge, if they do not have the parts? I am under the impression KEYi support just tells me random stuff to get rid of me.
So here I am, no Loona, no concise information, no return date, no commmunication from Fixit at all and all I can get from KEYi Tech are emails that do not help and that offer no real information whatsoever.
I really hope to see my Loona again and I also hope she will not be worse than when I shipped her. As I said: How can I trust a company that has problems with simple RMA logistics and email services to repair a complex robot?
I cannot recommend buying a Loona at this time because of the absymal support and device problems and I also cannot recommend sending her in for repair if you are in Europe.
It’s one big mess!
And I have no even talked about the fact that there still is no SDK for PC, that was promised to me during the Kickstarter and one of the reasons I backed her. They explicitly told me this would come “later”. Now it is one and a half years “later” and no SDK anywhere to be seen.
After this experience I certainly will not buy anything from KEYi Tech in the future.