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Terrible customer service from Robinair!

chris142 on Wed July 16, 2008 10:16 PM User is offline

Country of Origin: United States

Last June we bought a new Robinair 34700Z. It has a 1-yr warranty.

I posted here about the problem we were having with the vacuum pump overheating and melting the plastic oil fill plug.

Robinair's answer was "Go buy a metal plug".

Well winter was slow so we stole another plastic plug from an old dead unit.

Last May things warmed up and we began to use the machine more.

One day I was charging a car and when I pushed the charge button refrigerant came out from inside the machine!

We promptly called Robinair and the said they would call within 24 hrs.

Never called.

In the mean time it melted another plug. I stole another from another dead unit. ............And when I tried to charge a car refrigerant blew that plug out of the pump and covered a customers car with oil!

Another call was made and they were to show up the following Monday. No show.

Made another call that Friday and was informed that the machine was now out of Warranty! Ya no kidding! It's been acting up for 2 months and still nobody has come out to check it out!

My boss called Robinair and talked to a supervisor.

I found a metal plug and put that in.

It stays in now but the plastic window where you check the oil has gotten so hot that it turned white and you can't check the oil level anymore.

Today a guy showed up! He looked it over and I told him what was happening. He told us that "This solonoid must be sticking ocasionally" as he was pointing to it.

So my boss says "So your going to replace it?"

Guy says he cant unless it acts up when he's there. Of course it doesn't. It works fine while he's there.

I ask about the melted plugs. His answer..."Oh It must be getting pretty hot".

Me "Ya why?"

Him. "I dunno".

With that he packed his stuff and left!

Whats up with these boneheads? We have decided to never buy another Robinair product due to their customer service over this.


webbch on Thu July 17, 2008 12:15 AM User is offlineView users profile

Sorry about the poor CS. From the sounds of it, they'll be losing a fair amount of business, given the number of spare units you had on hand. Not trying to take off in another direction, but does anyone other than Robinair make a micron gauge that has a display that can be placed separate from the sensor. A feature I quite like on my 14777.

Chad

HECAT on Fri July 18, 2008 9:38 AM User is offline

Just had a local avaition shop call me to purchase an A/C adapter kit to go with their new Robinair flusher (IMHO a POS).

I asked if he could obtain any numbers off the terminating quick couplers so I could try and assist with supplying matching nipples for the adapter kit to work with this flusher. Customer indicated that there were no identifying numbers or marking on the female quick coupler bodies on the ends of the hoses. Apparently cheap offshore stuff.

I called the Robinair tech line and got the "I dunno" answer from the person (based on the answer, I cannot call him a tech) I spoke with.

I used to make product for Robinair, but no longer do. Today I still get tech calls referred to me for units I do not produce. Even though I don't make them, the customers are usually surprised when I can offer more assistance than Robinair, for an item I don't even make.

Seems that a lot of the big players in this industry have forgotten about good customer service.

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HECAT: www.hecatinc.com You support the Forum when you consider www.ackits.com for your a/c parts.

FLUSHING TECHNICAL PAPER vs2.pdf 

GM Tech on Fri July 18, 2008 10:00 AM User is offline

Probably what has happened is the good guys who knew their stuff have all retired and the young bucks are all that is left- like any other industry- inexperience is a killer- they don't know how to troubleshoot or anything else-- I always have to argue with any Tech assist I deal with- most of their hairbrained off-the wall ideas are completely offbase for the given failure mode--You can tell they have no hands on experience and don't know their stuff--- Just me venting again.

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The number one A/C diagnostic tool there is- is to know how much refrigerant is in the system- this can only be done by recovering and weighing the refrigerant!!
Just a thought.... 65% of A/C failures in my 3200 car diagnostic database (GM vehicles) are due to loss of refrigerant due to a leak......

NickD on Fri July 18, 2008 10:09 AM User is offline

Just the current trend, companies are canning good engineers, they normally get a couple of bucks more, dumping all production, and going to China. Is that pump made in China now? Robinair used to be a good company, have some of their stuff still using made 30-40 years ago. When I look around today, regardless of what it is, see nothing but crap.

Country is also going broke with all these imports, they haven't figured that out yet, whenever the buck changes hands here, IRS gets a big bite out of it, but once it leaves the country, it's gone forever, taxes go up and people lose their jobs. At this rate, there won't be a country here, whole world runs on money. Ha, and it all starts with a vacuum pump, think they call that the butterfly effect.

Edited: Fri July 18, 2008 at 10:18 AM by NickD

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