T&T: Xantrex reply to customer service concerns

[Jeff Barfett]

List,
I wrote to Xantrex with concerns that that we have all read concerning the
Prosine inverter/chargers. Here is the Xantrex response: 
Comments?


Mr. Barfett,
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to respond to the concerns that you
have pointed out. In summary, Xantrex is very interested in ensuring that
its customers are happy, but unfortunately, we dropped the ball when it came
to our marine PROsine customers. These are the steps we have taken to
correct the issue:
 
1. In July of 2005, John Wallace joined the company as its new President &
CEO. His focus has been on quality, and his background at Ford gives him the
determination to make it stick here. John sits with the senior management
team and product managers every two weeks to review the quality of our
products. He holds us all accountable for ensuring that product quality is
constantly improving. The best example I have is the PROsine 2.0, where in
September of 2005, we released for manufacture an improved version,
addressing all of the issues discovered in the returns we received. We did
this because the marine community, particularly sailors, expressed a strong
desire for us to continue the PROsine due to its size and light weight. We
are confident that we have resolved all of the problems that were brought to
our attention and went beyond, looking at potential issues, even  where we
hadn't seen problems. The PROsine 2.0 will continue as a product
indefinitely.
 
2. We were not as confident that all of the issues with the PS 2.5 and 3.0
issues could be reasonably resolved, so we chose instead to replace them
with the MS3000, which will be available in Jan 2007. It is a true sine wave
inverter/charger which is highly reliable and has incredible performance
specifications: 3kW inverter with 150A charger, full power to 60 degrees C,
and 2.5 times surge for 5 minutes. This unit has been fully tested using our
state of the art Highly Accelerated Life Testing (HALT) facility (I have
attached a white paper on it for your interest). The MS3000 will replace the
PS 2.5 and PS3.0.
 
3. We hired a number of new Customer Service and Technical Support staff
earlier this year. We learned that the training and guidance we provided was
not sufficient, since we continued to received feedback that indicated some
support folks weren't providing the right answers to customers. Our had of
Customer Service & Technical Support, Lindsay Hardie, has undertaken to
provide additional training to al staff, as  well as specific product
scripting designed to help clarify the problem and provide our customers
consistent, accurate information.
 
4. It is a fact of our times and of our advancing technology that fewer and
fewer products are repairable: in this way Xantrex is no different than TV
or computer manufacturers. Based on feedback from you and other customers,
however, we are working on developing a policy whereby a customer who has an
out of warranty product will receive a replacement unit at a reduced cost
based on a scale related to what the cost of a repair would be if the unit
were repairable, based on our experience with repairable units, such as the
SW2512 and SW4024. The details of this are not fully worked out yet.
 
 
Kevin Binnie

Product Manager

Xantrex Technology Inc.

Website: www.xantrex.com

Phone: 604-422-2718

Mobile: 604-760-0294

Fax: 604-422-2591

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