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Very bad customer service from Tricaster (Newtek)
We bought a tricaster 300 for almost $18,000 with an additional switch board. We were very excited to finally get this piece of equipment, after seeing what Newtek said it could do for us.
Well, it mall-functioned right out the box. The three video input lagged almost a second, and it couldn’t keep up with the 30 frames per second.
We contacted Newtek, and we needed to send our unit in first, before they would send out a new one. Two weeks of lost productions time later we received the new unit, which appeared to work fine.
But, after four weeks of use, all of a sudden we had an audio buzz that overrides almost all audio (there is a faint hint of the actual audio in the background). The internet stream and recordings have no audio problem, but all the audio outs in the front are unusable.
I called customer service again. They told me to open up the unit, take out the HD Video card and put it back in. This did not change anything.
Now I need to send this unit back, and have to wait for them to fix this one and send it back!!!!
For $18,000 I really expect this merchandise to work, and if it doesn’t work I should definitely not have to be out of production! I have to pay for shipping this thing back as well. I am definitely thinking about reporting them to the BBB.
Anybody else have issues with their customer service? -
2 Replies
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My experience has been with Toasters, and from what I have seen of them, it really boils down to the vendor you get the unit from: cheap vendors don’t assemble the thing right and use substandard but in-spec parts in the PC tower, and it never lives up to the promise. Ours is constantly needing service for one thing or another. It spends 80 percent of the time as a doorstop, which breaks my heart, since I was the guy that asked the bosses to buy it. We threw in the towel this year and we’re replacing it with a dedicated hardware switcher and CG. I can’t say anything about the reliability of systems shipped direct from Newtek, nor can I speak to the erliability of tricasters. A shop across the street from us uses a Tricaster with great success. I *can* say, the cheapest source isn’t always the most economical one in the long run.
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We had a coouple of tricasters for many years, they all worked as advertised for us. We don’t use it very heavily though, currently it main use is for students in the Communications department to produce a weekly news show. Students are nortious for “making tweaks” but still its a rock soild device for us.
I’m guessing that you just got the lucky end of the stick sorry to hear your troubles though
p.s. I have learned that in the broadcast world the more expensive a item the more you have to jimmy rig it to do what you want. Nothing like hearing “Of course your $100,000 dollar piece of hardware can do what you want but you just have to do this workaround.” it just a cruel joke from the broadcast Gods 🙂
Mike Jeffs
Video Coordinator
BYU-Idaho
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