National Instruments customer service

We’re trying to get a RoboRIO RMA’d and national instruments has been giving us the run around for a month. Has anyone had a similar experience? Does anyone have advice for dealing with them?

I just got done doing this. Apparently this is how they do it. Our roboRIO died on us at an event recently. So I had to make a claim online about needing assistance with it. Then I had to create a post on a discussion forum about it. We went back and forth a bit about it and decided it needed to be replaced and they are shipping a new one. This is a very unorthodox way of supporting customers with problems with products in my opinion. But if you jump through their hoops they will eventually help you.

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I’ve called them and just recently created the post on their forum. At this point I’m just going to start calling them once a day. This customer service is appalling for a part that costs $1500. (not reflecting our FIRST discount)

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Yeah I just posted to that forum with our case IDs from when I directly contacted their support.

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My experience with them was very good once contacting them through the forum.

Agree with others here. Its a very strange (and not necessarily well documented) process, but posting on the official NI forums for FIRST and “asking for help” is pretty much the only way to receieve help. Once an NI employee is satisfied that your unit is indeed dead/bricked, they will then coordinate with you to send out a replacement unit.

NI only gives support to FIRST teams through the forums here. FIRST - NI Community As long as you make a post in the Troubleshooting Hardware section they should help you fairly quickly. It only took like 3 days to get a new roboRIO shipped to us. To my knowledge they don’t support FIRST teams over phone and if you try to contact them through they they will try to charge you for items as if you were a regular customer.

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Someone contacted me in the post pretty fast and we’re making progress.
My feedback to him was the main customer service line should know to direct folks there. Lesson learned.

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In my experience, they should direct you to a first specific phone line that when you call will play an automated message that will tell you to post on the forum.

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Or have that link on their web page. I only discovered the forum when I decided to check the Andymark page.

While I understand your frustration… But NI is selling the $1500 to First teams at a roughly 66% discount. While customer support via forum is unusual they are reportedly pretty responsive when the forum is used. Daily calling probably will not get you to the right people. Better than having to work through a phone tree that is typical. For a point of reference we are paying roughly $2000 for the convenience of having phone support for our PLCs and HMIs that cost considerably more the $1500.

For another POR. Most electronic suppliers with void the warranty if you put even one metal shaving in it. NI designed the RoboRio so that you just need to clean them out. Not to say filling the Rio with swarf was your problem. Just that NI historically has been very generous with their warranty.

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This won’t get you anywhere other than you and a CSR being frustrated. Don’t put that on yourself =(

It sounds like things are progressing. If they’re not, send me a message here and I’ll shoot my work email to make sure you get responses. The folks on the forums are generally pretty solid.

They’ll often ask for some troubleshooting steps (I’ve done it too) to make sure the device is bricked. The idea here is typically there’s something that can be done to get you up and running on the spot. In a season (not as applicable now), getting those few days is pretty critical so they want to make sure they give you what they can to get you up and running.

I think it’s great that they made the device available at a discount but it’s still AWFUL customer service. Every single customer service telephone call has a cost to it - both for the consumer and the company at hand. A simple redirect on their website and an FAQ for support staff would have gotten me to the right person quickly and cheaply - and I wouldn’t have lost a month of time.

The discount also doesn’t mean you give your customer bad/inaccurate information and string him/her along for a month. That’s bad policy at any price/discount.

It shows a profound lack of customer obsession and insisting on the highest standards.
From a processing standpoint this could be fixed with a 2 minute website edit and a small change to the SOPs for their support staff.

I agree on calling CS constantly - but sometimes the squeeky wheel gets the grease. (Its actually worked for me in the past)

The Forum got me to the right place and things are finally moving along to our satisfaction. In this case the USB port is broken (Internal plastic element) We were considering trying to solder on a new one, but I didn’t want to risk the device so the RMA made the most sense. (Especially since the circuit board has some type of retention compound on the connections) The initial conversations went well, then they went radio silent and strung me along for most of September.

Oh and I can confirm they were going to charge us. It was still less than the cost of buying a replacement. And Andymark doesn’t have any to sell anyway.

We had a similar experience with our recent dead RoboRIO. I created a support ticket that NI never responded to, and when I called I was put on hold repeatedly before eventually being told that I created the wrong type of support ticket. CSR cloned my ticket into a new one of the correct type, and then I waited on hold again while being transferred to this other department. Once I explained my problem to the next support rep, they told me that I needed to post on the forum instead.

Once the forum post was created, though, I received help fairly quickly from another NI representative who ultimately shipped us a replacement RIO free of charge. I’m happy with the result, though the process definitely has room for improvement (or at least clarification).

The general problem here is volume. With roboRIO being such low volume AND it being a different process, I’ve tried and failed many times and ways to get it to be clearer with the CSRs taking the calls.

USB port being broken is pretty easy and shouldn’t have any troubleshooting. I believe I found your thread and it looks like you’ve got someone pushing it straight to RMA. If that’s not what you’re seeing, let me know and I’ll make sure it gets fixed.

As a side note, there’s a name pending a RMA that aligns with your username here so I’m hoping that’s you and things are settled.

From a “going forward” bit, focus on those forums. The folks that know the FRC process hang out there and will get you on the right path. Sorry for the frustration =/

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Yup that was me - the RMA was pretty easy once I got to the right person. It’s one of those things where once you have the tribal knowledge you are good to go.

I agree that the issue is it’s a low volume product. And honestly I don’t mind delays - but I can’t abide by misleading/bad communication. If the answer is “we can’t get to you for 3 weeks”…that’s 100% fine. Just actually get back to me. But don’t keep saying - we’ll call you tomorrow and hope I go away, which was what happened here repeatedly.

For you and @spocktopus was the “we’ll get back to you” coming by way of a person or some automated email/reply?

It’ll help me to poke at people in another attempt.

My personal “read between the lines” on their support process.

Since the roboRIO is a specialty product and not really sold through their main line, they don’t want to deploy a full support strategy to their normal product support folks. Instead, the support script just points to a forum.

Internally, I’m assuming it’s just a handful of NI employees who actually support FIRST. And I’m guessing they’re all doing it part time, and they have normal “day” jobs. While they are authorized to tell Andymark to ship you a new one for free, they’re A) going to need time to handle this outside their day jobs, and B) going to put up a bit of a fight, since I’m sure someone will ask for the RMA numbers, or to justify each one going out the door.

Not perfect, but keeps cost low by avoiding training NI support staff on a product line that is horribly unique compared to the rest of their products.