Decimator MD-Quad - HORRIBLE customer service

[Flaca Productions]

UPDATED: Decimator MD-Quad - HORRIBLE customer service

Hello All,
Just wanted to pass on my experience - your mileage may vary...

I bought the Decimator MD-QUAD October 2012. Great little box - 4 SDI in and a quad split out - among other things. Producers love it and it makes it very easy to match cameras on multi-cam shoots.

Too bad it died exactly a year to the day that I bought it.

OK - It's warranted for 3 years, so I made contact with the company - represented through Symbiosis in England. Seems the only way to get these fixed is by sending them back to the mother ship in Australia via Symbiosis in London. Ugh...

Short story - it's been 2 months with no ETA after various promises of them being "99.9% sure it's on the shipment arriving tomorrow"....

Mike Wattley at Symbiosis has been very available - too bad a repaired MD-QUAD hasn't been. He was helpful in completing the customs forms since I had to ship it to London and then they forward it to Australia for repair.

Seems a messed up way to distribute and repair items, but maybe it's just me.

 

[Tv Shooter]

And that's the way it is….many of the products built in the world wide economy are required to be returned to the home base for repair. They like to sell worldwide, service at home….even if home is a small island in the middle of the ocean and it takes 14 forms, and months to get it back.

I assume you've sent him a link to this post? Cause it's funny, I was looking online the other day for a quad split box. I was looking at this:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/597886-REG/Gefen_EXT_3GSDI_441_4x1_3G_SDI_Switcher.html

But I'll certainly avoid any of the Decimator products.

(edited to remove incorrect product bashing).

 

[Flaca Productions]

I understand the worldwide economy and that they have the facilities to repair it where it was originally produced - it's the fact that it's taking SO LONG.

I have that switcher - it's a great little unit and very very handy. use it on nearly every mulit cam shoot in some fashion.

even if they did offer good service, that Decimator you show from markertek isn't the one you want anyway - it's only SD SDI out....that's why is about half the cost of the MD-Quad. the MD is HD in/HD out.

Look - I LOVE that MD-QUAD, and maybe I just got a bad one...but OVER TWO MONTHS to get something fixed. please.

 

[Tv Shooter]

That's the issue…..I don't have 2 months to wait on repairs for stuff I use on a regular basis. Service after the sale is as important to me….I need the thing fixed faster than yesterday. I understand some delays….but 2 months? Even giving the shipping time, that's still at least 6 weeks overdue. That just cannot be THAT complicated of a device to repair.
And if it is, then yea, I'm avoiding it. Yea you probably either got a bad one or something happened….but that's just way to long to not have it fixed or a definitive timeline.

 

[Flaca Productions]

I think Symbiosis and Decimator may now have this process fixed. I'm hopeful as I just got a call from Mike Wattley. He was - again - very apologetic and sympathetic with the delay in repairs and said that Decimator is shipping a new MD-QUAD to me on Monday. Additionally, he said they were deploying a new approach to dealing with repairs that would involve an equipment swap instead of waiting for the specific unit to be repaired.

The bottom line is that they have realized that there is a hitch in the repair process that is sometimes aggravated by the international market and they're making changes.

It's good to hear because the MD-QUAD truly *IS* a great little unit and I've missed having it - so have many producers that I work with that have come to expect it on my shoots. I look forward to having it back and hopefully my repair challenges and frustrations have resulted in the system getting fixed so that others won't have a problem.

 

[Necktie Boy]

Sorry to hear about your problem. I remember always to check out their booth at NAB. Awhile back, you said that it was a great piece of equipment to have. I put it on my list to have, but the customer service is a bummer. Hope they solve it.