More Evolve Bad Customer Service

Just thought I’d share my recent disappointing experience with Evolve UK’s customer service…

Think twice before being sucked in and conned guys…

http://kevindark.co.uk/Blog/Read/11

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Although it sounds bad but this is really the norm for big esk8 companies… I don’t think boosted or inboard would send u a separate bms.

The only difference is those companies actually have pretty good warranty and repair services

How is it that you have seven blown BMS Evolve boards? that seems like a high number of specific failure…I always thought their batteries were the weakest link, now it seems like their BMS a bigger issue.

Evolve’s replies doesn’t seem that much like a “con” as you put it. More like a privately held service to ensure proper repairs. It is odd that they pulled to Franch site’s BMS off the shop though.

Please educate me as to what’s so special about Evolve’s BMS that requires them to be proprietary or is it just a form factor? If so can their their heat sink area/opening be modified as a workaround?

Cheap components basically…

The only thing special about the BMS is that it talks to the evolve ESC through UART to give voltage level, individual cell level etc. to the controller, oh and it won’t turn on without it…

If people weren’t bothered about those features and it would actually turn on I could use any old 10s 60A BMS.

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The BMS unlocks the motor controller.

lets just trick the esc then… you’ll probably need a working one to sniff out the protocol. but really thats more work than its worth because you’re still giving people an excuse to buy an overpriced pos.

The only good thing they have is the trucks, the rest is pretty disappointing…

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That’s just evil

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Oh and surprise surprise! I’ve been banned from the Evolve Facebook group!! :rofl::joy:

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http://www.electric-skateboard.builders/t/im-an-outlaw-burn-noticed-a-fugitive-from-a-facebook-group/35452 @longhairedboy

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Honestly, I can see the both sides of this. On one hand, they suck donkey balls but on other, if you manage to make a mistake on wiring, soldering, something that might maker pack ignite or worse it comes down boiling on Evolve boards. But being a builder, I will stand on your side :slight_smile:

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But why if it’s been modified would it fall on Evolve?

You don’t stick a cosworth lump in a Cinquecento then moan at fiat when it didn’t stop on stock brakes and ploughs in to something… :confused:

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I didn’t mean it in a way that the customer would complain to Evolve. Just simple, because Evolve board caught fire is a better headline than Electric skateboard cought fire because of modified battery pack :slight_smile:

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Customer service has been solid here in the states.

Kinda understand where they’re coming from. If I designed something that could potentially burst into flames, causing serious injury, I’d probably do my best to discourage costomers from doing their own modifications as well.

stateside they’ll work with your customer prior to modding for a fee. Not through you. I did it oncem, they caught on to what i was doing, and then sort of cut me off.

what you have to do is make sure nothing is wrong prior to modding it. Get the customer to get evolve to fix anything before you go in there, and be dead precise in what you do in there.

so far so good. I’ve had a couple minor problems but i resolved them.

Esk8 companies should be held to higher standards than your average lame tech giant. That being said, I don’t know any company besides fairphone that really sells a range of original replacement parts at a reasonable price in order for customers to repair their out of warranty products. This is just something that doesn’t make sense for them from an economic standpoint apparently.

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I think it’s terrible that evolve threatened litigation…Iv’e known Evolve was a shitty company since the first contact I had with them. They will refuse to admit defects at all costs. Their ‘repair experts’ are a joke.

But, we are a DIY community. We need to ALL get together and work on creating some type of arduino unit to trick the evolve ESC so we can just skip dealing with evolve all together.

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What microcontroller do they use? Since UART is enabled it would likely be possible to grab the firmware and examine it to find the handshake with the BMS. Then one could modify the firmware to not require the handshake and reload it to the board. Could make a tool that does it automatically once it’s known, but you will lose the protection of checking that the BMS is there.

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I honestly don’t know :confused:

I’ve got someone I’m in contact with attempting to decode everything at the moment… Hopefully they’ll come up with something, but your idea of amending the firmware sounds promising! :thumbsup:

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Good luck with it, hopefully there is a simple solution. It’s possible that the BMS and ESC are paired by evolve so it won’t even run with a different official one, has anybody swapped one of these before?

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But if that’s the case there’s bin several threads about people replacing the lipos In the evolve and going 18650 cells in there soooo that would be confusing to that statement