Who am I?
Hello to all of you dedicated esk8ters! I am an engineering newbie who uses a longboard for fun and for commuting. It has been now nearly a year that I got interested in e-Longboards and have spent many hours surfing the internet for getting informations and the latest news about esk8s.
My first board was a Stary board but the battery broke after 2 weeks and I gave it back to the reseller. After that experience I decided to go DIY and thats the moment where I found this amazing forum. Thank you Onloop and thanks a lot community!
Now I am completely addicted from this forum and check regularly everyday the newest posts.
Why am I writing?
Actually I didn’t want this to be my first post. I was thinking of making my first build and put the results here like everyone else but unfortunately I wasn’t able to do so. The reason behind this is because enertion is completely messing around with me for than a month. So I am writing this post as a constructive feedback to enertion in order that they can improve their service.
This is my story
After all the posts that I read I started to buy the components for my first build. I figured the best and most reliable way to go for it would be with enertions products. I ordered the Vesc’s and the space cell pro 3. I was able to buy the rest (mounts, controller,…) from some amazing people from the forum. Now I used the words “I ordered” because after one and a half month I still didn’t get my space cell pro 3, even though I was reassured that it would arrive 4 days after the payment (09.09.2016).
Finally last week I was really happy when I got the message that my Space Cell Pro 3 was shipped. So the surprise was huge when I opened up the package and found a brand new raptor battery inside!
In addition to that even the receipt was wrong and I had to pay nearly 200% of the customs fees.
The headaches with enertion don’t stop
After getting sporadic replies from 4 different enertion coworkers there is still no solution to my problem. I even asked them if I could send everything back and they return me my money but by doing so they would keep 20%. **
In the end I will have to send the wrong battery back, pay the shipment cost, customs fees again and wait, who knows how long, for the space cell pro 3 to arrive.
** This whole deal with enertion costed me a huge load of time and patience. Still not giving up on my DIY build though.
I would love to start my DIY project and I really hope that I am the only one encountering this kind of problems.
Just thought I’d mention that if they’ve sent you the wrong product and you want to return it for a full refund, it looks like they’re required by Australian consumer law to comply.
isn’t a raptor battery basically a 10s3p battery pack (space cell pro 3) ? Can’t enertion simply send you the enclosure and have you keep the battery pack ? Just wondering if that might be a quicker solution for you.
Not quite. The raptor batteries don’t fit properly in the enclosures without completely tearing the thing apart and rewiring all the cells together.
Edit: I think technically they do fit, but only just, which means there’s likely very little tolerance for deck flexing. You’d also have the issue of working out where you’d make cutouts for accessing the power switch, charging port and LCD.
Well, many people there have terrible experience with enertion.
From what I’ve read there, on the endless-spehere forums and seen on YouTube, the quality of Enertion’s products is not that great, customer support is terrible and so on. I don’t think this is just “bad luck” as it’s happening more often than it should.
Sometimes @onloop can help, maybe try to contact him…
BTW, 200% tax? Geez, where do you live? That’s insane.
yikes ! That blows, good luck @dumpledore . I feel you man. Unfortuantely eSk8 doesn’t have the best vendor support. I’ve had issues with literally every major eSk8 vendor accept esk8.de, that dude sent me a Vesc from Germany within a week. Some are easier to work with than others. Best of luck and keep on keeping on.
I have a similar experience. I didnt get what I ordered. After 2 months my delivery date was delayed again, so I decided for a refund. Still waiting for my money. I had ordered a 12mm pulley kit before and they sent it to Europe from Australian warehouse, instead of a warehouse in Belgium, so I had to pay expensive customs…I will never ever buy anthing from Enertion again…(sry for my english…)
Similar experience here, I waited for the VESC for over 4 months and every time I called customer support, I was told that they will arrive within the next week. Sometimes I feel like the they just make shit up to their customers to get them to stop calling. Then when it finally arrived, I discovered that the vesc’s are NOT built to Vedder’s standards because they cut corners with 2 capacitors instead of the recommended 3. I tried contacting them and of course there was no response. So now I’ve got an unusable vesc lying around as paperweight because it isn’t safe to use.
But seems like your particular case is worse than mine. Hmm what you could do is send the battery back and call up your credit card company to reverse the charge. I find this to be the best way to handle things with unreasonable or unlawful vendors.
It’s hard to be a start up business, which I think we all recognize.
But it feels at times like Enertion is stretched thin to cover customer demand resulting in quality issues (customer service/etc). It might be to their advantage to do what Evolve does and suspend orders for a week or two until they catch up.
I think they should only sell what’s IN STOCK and conservatively estimate shipping times.
All of their shipping issues seem to be due to selling stuff they don’t have in stock…they sell a Raptor (collect payment) but haven’t received a critical part from one of their vendors. They approximate how long you should expect to receive your order based on what they’ve been told to expect from that vendor…
If they only sold what was physically in stock at their warehouse or whatever, the only uncontrollable variable at that point is the shipping companies, but at least then the customer can blame the shipping company assuming they receive a tracking number within a couple business days of placing their order.
I’ve emailed Enertion a couple times and gotten a response anywhere from an hour or so to the next day, which I think is great. I also know they’re a startup and expect kinks to happen.
They don’t abide by ACL. I’m an australian and requested a refund after the second time one of their products could have killed me and the best I can get is “send us your board and we’ll look at it for you”
Mind you since I’ve used a chaka vesc the only thing that broke was a belt (debris)
They’ll always try to put it on the customer. This kind of customer service can make or break a company, but when their owner/operator hides all the posts and closes all the topics that impact his business they’ll keep on doing what they’re doing until people finally wake up and stop buying from them.
With all that said they do seem to listen at times. I had a major issue with Couriers Please sending my parcels all over australia and stuffing me around for weeks I complained to enertion. They now have Aus post as a choice.
I agree, but it’s a companies choice. People need to stop buying so blindly and research more. It’s common knowledge that they do this and it usually results in long waits.
There’s one of these types of threads complaining about enertion pretty much every day. I don’t know what to tell you guys, other than you chose to buy products from someone with a track record of being late. Jason gets more orders per day than he can handle.
I (or anyone else on this forum) can’t tell him how to run a company, but I have learned a lot about building an eskate company from watching him. My goal with Rocket Boards is to avoid these types of issues by only selling what I have in stock (meaning no pre-orders unless absolutely necessary, which I might do for complete boards in the near future, but not for smaller items).
And if you become overloaded, I hate to say it, but you have to start turning customers away. I know, as the great business man he is, Jason has done a lot of work to get you as customers in the first place, and the last thing he wants is not be able to service you. But he loses a lot repeat customers because a lot of people aren’t happy after their first order due to the fact that he gets more orders than he can deal with.
He is trying. He doesn’t want these kinds of issues. But it doesn’t seem like turning away potential customers to catch up on orders is an option to him. It will likely catch up to him one day. But right now, the industry is so new, and every newbie seems to fall for enertions marketing gimmicks (I know I did when I was a newbie), and since people keep buying from him, he has no incentive now or anytime in the next few years to slow down and thoroughly fix (not slap bandaids like he is now on) his problems.
We are not perfect I admit this happily…98% of our customers never have an issue, the other 2% have some problems and we always work hard to resolve them.
I am sorry that you have a problem, but you need to work with us to help get a resolution - Posting negative comments like this on the forum is really not going to help you.
The problem is we are in Australia & you are in Europe, if you were close to us we can easily resolve this issue. No problems. If you were in driving distance i would personally deliver the correct product.
So firstly, let me explain to everyone what has happened
Our guy in EU sent the wrong battery. He still learning and mistakes happen. We have already apologized
these batteries are already having the import duties prepaid now for all our EU customers, they are all saving hundreds.
Unfortunately, your country Switzerland is not in the EU & they charge really high import duties on something coming from Belgium, we don’t control that.
We are happy to send the correct product & happy to cover the associated cost, even reimburse your fees, but you need to return the wrong product first. If you don’t co-operate nothing happens.
We also offered to sell you the incorrect battery at cost price then you can sell it on the forums & make a decent profit You have refused our offer.
You countered our offer of cost price saying you would not pay it. You offered a much lower price.
You also have decided to return all your other products for a full refund, this is ok. But once again we are not going to reimburse your for duties & taxes as they are your responsibility.
So Antony, you tell me, what can we do for you? email [email protected] with your advice
That’s an unreasonable expectation for you guys (to have all the products on hand all the time). Majority of online stores don’t have the products on hand all the time. I’d suggest though moving to another e-commerce other than what you’re currently using. Have it integrate with your current stock-taking system so that you can advertise you’re out of stock and that items will be on back order. You can also integrate how many people are currently waiting if you want full transparency, but this might scare potential customers off and just saying back-order should be enough imo.
We offered to fix your home made skateboard for you and replace any of the parts that failed for free, I also tried calling you and helping you on several occasions you refused our offer.
I really hope everyone reads this info provided from the Australian government as we are clearly abiding by all the guidelines.
In addition to that even the receipt was wrong and I had to pay nearly 200% of the customs fees.
