It looks like Edgestar is a company that makes a pretty wide variety of HVAC equipment and prioritizes support. That makes a lot of sense for larger orders, especially for a design/build company. I love finding these kinds of companies, that focus on customer service. It's what made Amazon so special, at least back in the day.
A few that I go out of my way to recommend: Logitech, Fellows, Dyson and Breville.
Each has just straight up sent me a new unit or full replacement part when the previous one failed with no rma or warranty check - none of that nonsense just great service. Dyson support even sent me full factory service manual for the unit 5 years after it was discontinued (and 7+ out of warranty) since I wanted to troubleshoot a power supply issue which ended up working fine after resoldering the main power cord to the power board.
I had the opposite experience with Dyson. A $350 Dyson vacuum I bought stopped working a month after I bought it. I determined that a faulty battery was to blame. When I called customer support, they tried to sell me a new battery (I forget the price they quoted me, I think it was at least $50). It was only after I protested that they agree to send me a new battery for free. I got the strong impression that their company policy was to first try to sell a replacement part to take advantage of rubes; only if the customer refused to pay would they offer a new battery for free. Really disappointing quality and service from such an intensively marketed brand. It was especially annoying since the vacuum came with this pompous little booklet about "the Dyson story", how Dyson represents British engineering at it's finest, etc.
That's really too bad - my own experience was with a dyson DC21 canister that I bought in 2008 - after 6 years the power head started intermittently turning off while cleaning. They sent an entirely new power head no questions asked. It kept working for another 6 years without any other issues, then it just refused to turn on one day. I called and asked if they could service it and they said sadly the unit was discontinued several years ago but that they could send me the factory service manual and that the issue was likely with the connection between the reeling cord assembly and the main board. Sure enough, I guess reefing on that cord for 12 years caused it to come loose - 30 minutes later it was back up and running and I still use it to this day. Worth noting that this thing still cleans as strong today as it did back then. Perhaps Dyson Canada is different than US - I've seen a LOT of refurbished dysons on various marketplaces so I'm guessing they are not flawless - the fact there are so many refurbs however leads me to believe they are exchanging them without asking questions and that they are quite serviceable.
Even more so as the existing one are moving away from it, the logitech of today seem significantly worse than the logitech of 10-15 years ago for instance.
Interesting! My AM11 fan started screeching and making a strange noise so I called in and my warranty had expired just a month ago and all they could do is replace my unit with a refurbished one.
Sounded fine to me, especially because it was out of warranty, officially, but the unit that came was a different color and cosmetically in horrible condition, much worse than the one I sent in.
At least it didn't squeak or screech and I suppose the fact they even helped out outside of the warranty period is nice.
I had a similar experience with a SunSaver solar charge controller. I was out in the field trying to fix a problem with a solar power supply and I called into their support line to ask about the error lights we were seeing. Within a few minutes, I was talking to an engineer and he spent 15-20 minutes helping us diagnose the problem. It turned out to be something dumb we had done triggering a fault mode in the controller. The controller itself cost less than $100, so we were definitely not worth his time.
> The controller itself cost less than $100, so we were definitely not worth his time.
That's not really true from a design perspective. You really want to know what sort of problems your customers are having in the field. And you don't know really unless you talk to them.
Unless you have VC's breathing down your neck to spy on your users so you can sell their data. Or you have VC's trying to force your users into a reoccurring revenue model. You don't want to deal with that for hardware.
You want people to install the stuff and have it just work. 'connected to the internet' is something that fails all the time.
Connect to the internet is another point of fail that's likely to increase your support calls.
One you leave software as an exploitative service or the customer is the product, which most of the stuff people here work on. And enter the world of hardware that solves peoples real problems you want the customer to install the stuff, have it do what they expected and thus NEVER CALL YOU.
Anyone else know of other companies in this vein?