Unacceptable handling of cracked buttons caps Podium Button Module Endurance
Fanatec is really sliding down with their bad customer support. What a really bad company without service to help their customers. I have 2 BME's and both show cracked buttons since a few weeks. One still under warranty and the other not. But even out of warranty this should be something that should not break. It's clearly a design/production flaw. But no without any info they just send me a quotation and expect me to pay a whole 30 euro to buy new caps. It took also way to many mails to get something useful out of them and then they do not even handle it under warranty.
This is really unacceptable for a company that wants to show they deliver quality with their so called Podium line. But if even the button caps already break on their own showing how bad the quality is.
This was really the drop in the bucket. Time to sell and buy some better gear. Just be aware what you buy at Fanatec and hope you will get something fixed under warranty. But I would not gamble on it... such a shame.
Comments
My buttons also cracked five months from the date of use. Fortunately, I quickly received a new one by mail. That was a year ago.
For some reason they didn't do it on my side, but also received no mail why they would decline warranty.
Even well out of warranty you would not expect these button caps to crack. Also the cost for them is 10 cents to make them. But for some reason they like to frustrate the customer ask 10 euro for the caps, 10 euro handling and 10 euro shipping. All the time they spend on the emails could have been saved and cheaper to just send some new ones right away. All information was there with serie numbers and buy dates.
For something this small they now lost another customer for something this small...
If you opened the ticket for the BME that is out of warranty, then you don't need much of explanation on why they don't replace/ship for free.
Also the 10 euro euro shipping is the minimum, I think, the curriers are charging.
Ticket was opened with both linked to the ticket and sn-numbers where mentioned multiple times.. So at least for the one under warranty you would expect a bit more. But looks like they just don't read the request. Got a reply again and they only looked at the one out of warranty while it was clear both are there. I even send in a photo at their request with both BME on one photo high lighting all the caps that are already showing cracks next to the close ups I also already supplied.
But also in my opinion these caps should have never cracked in the first place. It's clearly an issue with these buttons. The so called Clubsport buttons with the stickers don't show this issue. But on a Podium product the quality is worse. I would have not expected that. As Fanatec you can also be not so difficult and show a bit more leniency and help your customer. Especially if we are talking about a wel know issue of these BME buttons cracking plus it's very cheap for them to solve it even out of warranty. All the mails that they now send have cost more in terms of labor etc...
Even at other companies you see better support on cheaper products. I broke a spring and put too much tention on it. Send a mail to support if I could buy a new one, but without asking they directly send we a new spring free of charge. Day later the package arrived and they even send 5 extra springs. One happy customer.
In this case it's just a product issue where the customer is not to blame and its even difficult to get a set of new ones for the one with warranty.
Mine cracked, Fanatec replaced them under warranty but insisted I return the broken ones! The replacements also cracked and are now long gone - vacuumed up never to be seen again. IMO the PBME looks better without them anyway.
I asked Fanatec when they were initially doing the warranty replacement if I could upgrade to the new button cap set with stickers - I'd pay for the product - they post them out at their cost instead of the standard replacements and they refused to do so. They charge €17.49 for postage of the button caps to the UK!