Ethics, Karma and Grasshopper Warranty Discussion

[moondog]

Not many posters here on the Hopper warranty thread, maybe there are just no issues to report (?).
I doubt that.

Now Monday, Ti hopper replacement body arrived in bubble envelope, period. No wrapper, box, baggie, just floatin' in there. No problem. 5 business days from my claim, plus 2 weekends and a holiday...
Four cycles on high for burn off. Very slight new car odor from chamber I didn't notice with two other hopper bodies when new, but really minor, now gone.
Thing works great. Same excellent fit and finish as the body it is replacing. Threads all nice and smooth, etc.
It's nice to have a hopper back up and running.

Seems like there's an awful lot of warranty-related discussion over on the main hopper thread.

 

[vapviking]

Seems like there's an awful lot of warranty-related discussion over on the main hopper thread.

So maybe over here we should just talk about ethics and karma?

 

[hillbill]

Practicing proper ethics in warranty issue ensures good customer karma.

 

[Icon13]

you do what you want. all i'm saying is that warranty is transferable. and if i will sell my Hopper at some point i will give a password of that Hopper account with it. why would i need it to keep that account in my possession if Hopper is sold? it is not cheating, just commonsense.

No, it's not transferable. What you are doing is a workaround in order to keep the warranty active because it is non-transferable. If the warranty is transferable you wouldn't have to do any of that.

i really don't read your point. what is a difference for Hopper Labs to provide a lifetime warranty for original buyer John, or doing so for a David who bought that device from John?

The difference is the cost of continuing the warranty for David, when they have a perfectly valid loophole not to do so and save that money. Obviously you don't have a business degree.

 

[syrupy]

I'm considering buying a hopper and registering it to Guy Fawks. Any of us could be him.

 

[vapviking]

"Sept. 10, 2016, 11:24 a.m. Unit At Warranty Department
Your Grasshopper is currently with the warranty service department. Please allow 4-5 business days for warranty service to be completed.

Sept. 10, 2016, 11:25 a.m. Repaired Unit Shipped
We've repaired your Grasshopper and it's now on its way back to you."

The 4-5 days was really slashed in this case. One minute turnaround!

Some further details are:
HL actually received the unit the day before this quick turnaround.
Sept. 10 is the day warranty service was completed and "it's now on it's way back to you." USPS tracking says this is indeed the date the address label was created, but then the package was not picked up by USPS until afternoon of the 13th. (?) 10th was a Saturday, 11th Sunday. Why not pickup Monday? Nope, late Tues. (?)
A similar thing happened this past week when they shipped a new Body for another unit. Label created, notice on website interface that it was being sent, then 2 day lag before it's actually picked up by USPS.

I do believe HL peeps are following the boards closely, so I'm trying to post things I feel they could work on just a bit.

I am definitely happy with the service regardless of this minor anomaly in shipping.
I had worried that I'd be paying shipping in all post-purchase mailings, both directions, like I thought I'd get a paypal invoice prior to shipping of repaired items (and that would clog the process even more), but so far HL has paid shipping for things they mail to me on warranty.

 

[moondog]

"Sept. 10, 2016, 11:24 a.m. Unit At Warranty Department
Your Grasshopper is currently with the warranty service department. Please allow 4-5 business days for warranty service to be completed.

Sept. 10, 2016, 11:25 a.m. Repaired Unit Shipped
We've repaired your Grasshopper and it's now on its way back to you."

The 4-5 days was really slashed in this case. One minute turnaround!

Some further details are:
HL actually received the unit the day before this quick turnaround.
Sept. 10 is the day warranty service was completed and "it's now on it's way back to you." USPS tracking says this is indeed the date the address label was created, but then the package was not picked up by USPS until afternoon of the 13th. (?) 10th was a Saturday, 11th Sunday. Why not pickup Monday? Nope, late Tues. (?)
A similar thing happened this past week when they shipped a new Body for another unit. Label created, notice on website interface that it was being sent, then 2 day lag before it's actually picked up by USPS.

I do believe HL peeps are following the boards closely, so I'm trying to post things I feel they could work on just a bit.

I am definitely happy with the service regardless of this minor anomaly in shipping.
I had worried that I'd be paying shipping in all post-purchase mailings, both directions, like I thought I'd get a paypal invoice prior to shipping of repaired items (and that would clog the process even more), but so far HL has paid shipping for things they mail to me on warranty.

Not sure you can pin the pickup anomaly on GHL. I've seen a LOT of weird behavior from USPS. Anyway, hope your 1-minute hopper functions perfectly when you get it.

 

[vapviking]

Not sure you can pin the pickup anomaly on GHL. I've seen a LOT of weird behavior from USPS. Anyway, hope your 1-minute hopper functions perfectly when you get it.

And, after all, this is USPS in Colorado, where Mountain Time is becoming more like Island Time!

 

[hillbill]

It seems that a lot of vendors view "shipped"= "label created" and we think of something shipped as being a real truck driven by a human being picking it up. Actually it will then go to a facility to actually be processed and shipped. Once the shipping label is created with chosen carrier that baby is on it's way.

 

[vapviking]

It seems that a lot of vendors view "shipped"= "label created" and we think of something shipped as being a real truck driven by a human being picking it up. Actually it will then go to a facility to actually be processed and shipped. Once the shipping label is created with chosen carrier that baby is on it's way.

I agree except for your last sentence. These days the vendor prints its' own shipping label, which is clear in the USPS record; in this case the vendor (likely) did that, then was not ready to ship it for one reason or another, like still actually processing. But, yes, once the chosen vendor (USPS) had it in hand, it was three days to me.
Of course, some of these expectations are created by the 'updates'!

 

[hillbill]

We are getting spoiled with closer tracking and the imediate now.

 

[vapviking]

The replacement Ti Body I received early last week failed after 4 days, this time going straight to a solid red light, some clicking and no heat at all. I filled out warranty form on Sunday, heard back from Trevor yesterday with apology for second malfunction, sending new Body. I was able to isolate it to at least the Body by using parts from another working Hopper.
Today, just got shipping conf., s/b here by Friday.
I am delighted with the service response I've had so far.

 

[vapviking]

I have now had 9 hoppers stop working since April 2016. can anybody beat that? lol..

A contest begins...

Yes, but I'll have to give details later.
Does it matter how many we originally purchased, like, for purposes of winning the contest?

Has anyone gotten one that worked, and kept working?

Of course they have!
And I'm actually fairly certain that there are many hundreds out there who are non-stop Hopping happy . . . and will never ever post about it.

All the quotes above are from Grasshopper thread. (yes, quoting myself ,too).
I thought maybe addressing the topic might be done over here in the languishing Hopper Warranty discussion thread?

The topic being, How many Grasshoppers have "stopped working" for you?

A couple of parameters might be set and I can suggest one or two but I'm an admittedly poor statistician, so I encourage other input.
I hope this doesn't devolve into negativity or complaint department-level stuff; that really is not my interest. I have a much more detached-observer, academic perspective. Just looking for some data and/or some anecdotes to go along with it.

@Al.. has had an impressive number of broken Hoppers and we know others have, while we also recognize the limitations of our data, so we can't say that there are not hundreds or thousands of trouble-free units in use. I think there are! Further, I emphasize that the improvements to design/dependability are ongoing, so this is constantly shifting ground anyway. 'Reliability' of a Hopper made today will not be the same as one made 6, 12 or 18 months ago.

Back to some guidelines.
We can count, as @Al.. puts it, number of Hoppers that stop working; I like the phrase, but might refine it as, 'the number of hoppers that have required replacement or factory repair of either the Back End or the Body. Leave batteries, external charge cables and front end mouthpieces out of this picture.
A codicil to that would be if a Hopper had both Back End and Body replaced at the same time, this could count as two repairs. I justify this because it happened to me, of course!...and they were separate issues.

The count should not include the last one in hand, the presumably now-working Hopper; only the number that have required repair/replacement. For me this is a matter of counting the number of separate warranty claims I've created, plus one because of the double repair I mentioned above.

My last thought on metric is that the count should then be divided by the number of Hoppers one purchased for the counting instance in study.

I purchased and will account here for 4 Grasshoppers. (received early Aug. '16).My warranty list has 8 distinct claims, but one is that double whammy, so I count 9 'broken hoppers'. These are from two of the Hoppers that I kept. The two that I gave to family 'broke' very early on, will need Body's, just have not been returned yet. Because the family will be leaving it to me to do their returns for them, their Hoppers are counting as mine for this purpose. This make 9 + 2 = 11.
Now I divide the 11 'broken' by the 4 purchased and come up with a rating of 2.75 breaks per hopper (bph).
If I don't count the two I gave away, my bph is 9/2, or 4.5.

Someone please tell me you have a bph equal to or higher than mine so I don't feel lonely here in the stratosphere of numbers! Oh, wait, I said I wasn't attached...

We would also surely like to hear from those folk's who have longer term success stories! but then again, why would they even be aware of the Ethics, Karma and Grasshopper Warranty Discussion?

 

[Mr. Me2]

All the quotes above are from Grasshopper thread. (yes, quoting myself ,too).
I thought maybe addressing the topic might be done over here in the languishing Hopper Warranty discussion thread?

The topic being, How many Grasshoppers have "stopped working" for you?

A couple of parameters might be set and I can suggest one or two but I'm an admittedly poor statistician, so I encourage other input.
I hope this doesn't devolve into negativity or complaint department-level stuff; that really is not my interest. I have a much more detached-observer, academic perspective. Just looking for some data and/or some anecdotes to go along with it.

@Al.. has had an impressive number of broken Hoppers and we know others have, while we also recognize the limitations of our data, so we can't say that there are not hundreds or thousands of trouble-free units in use. I think there are! Further, I emphasize that the improvements to design/dependability are ongoing, so this is constantly shifting ground anyway. 'Reliability' of a Hopper made today will not be the same as one made 6, 12 or 18 months ago.

Back to some guidelines.
We can count, as @Al.. puts it, number of Hoppers that stop working; I like the phrase, but might refine it as, 'the number of hoppers that have required replacement or factory repair of either the Back End or the Body. Leave batteries, external charge cables and front end mouthpieces out of this picture.
A codicil to that would be if a Hopper had both Back End and Body replaced at the same time, this could count as two repairs. I justify this because it happened to me, of course!...and they were separate issues.

The count should not include the last one in hand, the presumably now-working Hopper; only the number that have required repair/replacement. For me this is a matter of counting the number of separate warranty claims I've created, plus one because of the double repair I mentioned above.

My last thought on metric is that the count should then be divided by the number of Hoppers one purchased for the counting instance in study.

I purchased and will account here for 4 Grasshoppers. (received early Aug. '16).My warranty list has 8 distinct claims, but one is that double whammy, so I count 9 'broken hoppers'. These are from two of the Hoppers that I kept. The two that I gave to family 'broke' very early on, will need Body's, just have not been returned yet. Because the family will be leaving it to me to do their returns for them, their Hoppers are counting as mine for this purpose. This make 9 + 2 = 11.
Now I divide the 11 'broken' by the 4 purchased and come up with a rating of 2.75 breaks per hopper (bph).
If I don't count the two I gave away, my bph is 9/2, or 4.5.

Someone please tell me you have a bph equal to or higher than mine so I don't feel lonely here in the stratosphere of numbers! Oh, wait, I said I wasn't attached...

We would also surely like to hear from those folk's who have longer term success stories! but then again, why would they even be aware of the Ethics, Karma and Grasshopper Warranty Discussion?

I don't have the skills for it, but can it be set up as a checkbox questionnaire to make it easy for fc'ers?

 

[moondog]

All the quotes above are from Grasshopper thread. (yes, quoting myself ,too).
I thought maybe addressing the topic might be done over here in the languishing Hopper Warranty discussion thread?

The topic being, How many Grasshoppers have "stopped working" for you?

A couple of parameters might be set and I can suggest one or two but I'm an admittedly poor statistician, so I encourage other input.
I hope this doesn't devolve into negativity or complaint department-level stuff; that really is not my interest. I have a much more detached-observer, academic perspective. Just looking for some data and/or some anecdotes to go along with it.

@Al.. has had an impressive number of broken Hoppers and we know others have, while we also recognize the limitations of our data, so we can't say that there are not hundreds or thousands of trouble-free units in use. I think there are! Further, I emphasize that the improvements to design/dependability are ongoing, so this is constantly shifting ground anyway. 'Reliability' of a Hopper made today will not be the same as one made 6, 12 or 18 months ago.

Back to some guidelines.
We can count, as @Al.. puts it, number of Hoppers that stop working; I like the phrase, but might refine it as, 'the number of hoppers that have required replacement or factory repair of either the Back End or the Body. Leave batteries, external charge cables and front end mouthpieces out of this picture.
A codicil to that would be if a Hopper had both Back End and Body replaced at the same time, this could count as two repairs. I justify this because it happened to me, of course!...and they were separate issues.

The count should not include the last one in hand, the presumably now-working Hopper; only the number that have required repair/replacement. For me this is a matter of counting the number of separate warranty claims I've created, plus one because of the double repair I mentioned above.

My last thought on metric is that the count should then be divided by the number of Hoppers one purchased for the counting instance in study.

I purchased and will account here for 4 Grasshoppers. (received early Aug. '16).My warranty list has 8 distinct claims, but one is that double whammy, so I count 9 'broken hoppers'. These are from two of the Hoppers that I kept. The two that I gave to family 'broke' very early on, will need Body's, just have not been returned yet. Because the family will be leaving it to me to do their returns for them, their Hoppers are counting as mine for this purpose. This make 9 + 2 = 11.
Now I divide the 11 'broken' by the 4 purchased and come up with a rating of 2.75 breaks per hopper (bph).
If I don't count the two I gave away, my bph is 9/2, or 4.5.

Someone please tell me you have a bph equal to or higher than mine so I don't feel lonely here in the stratosphere of numbers! Oh, wait, I said I wasn't attached...

We would also surely like to hear from those folk's who have longer term success stories! but then again, why would they even be aware of the Ethics, Karma and Grasshopper Warranty Discussion?

This is great, VV, but male hopperists of a certain age may find "bph" to have certain wince-inducing connotations.

 

[vapviking]

This is great, VV, but male hopperists of a certain age may find "bph" to have certain wince-inducing connotations.

HA!
Can't be worse than the rectal vaping discussion over in Hopper thread!

 

[moondog]

The topic being, How many Grasshoppers have "stopped working" for you?

I'm a babe in the woods with my first and only failure so far taking place last week after 2 months of daily use.

 

[vapviking]

I'm a babe in the woods with my first and only failure so far taking place last week after 2 months of daily use.

your current bph= .5 (you bought two, eh?)

 

[Mr. Me2]

2 gh's. 1 failure (mine; body replaced). The other was a gift, gets daily use, and no failures

 

[VegNVape]

HA!
Can't be worse than the rectal vaping discussion over in Hopper thread!

Ahem . . . . er, I believe I may have been involved in that . . . . but just to be clear, when I used the word 'anally' it was meant in the context of 'anally retentive'. Obviously!

But as for everyone else involved, well . . . I'm saying nothing

And if you think I'm gonna start discussing my BPH count then you can stroll on!



H&S first!

BeKind.

 

[vapviking]

Ahem . . . . er, I believe I may have been involved in that . . . . but just to be clear, when I used the word 'anally' it was meant in the context of 'anally retentive'. Obviously!

But as for everyone else involved, well . . . I'm saying nothing

And if you think I'm gonna start discussing my BPH count then you can stroll on!



H&S first!

BeKind.

This is funny!

Ah, but you had already alluded to what might be a really low bph ("check my post history", etc.)! Okay, none of my bidness...

Maybe a different term would be more acceptable, so let's change "breaks per hopper" (bph) to ____________?

 

[moondog]

Maybe a different term would be more acceptable, so let's change "breaks per hopper" (bph) to ____________?

Failures per hopper (FPH)?

 

[voodoo_vape]

First of all, Happy New Year guys and gals!! All the best for you and your families! This is my 1st post for 2017 and it'll be in this thread!
What a lovely thread that is... which I must admit that I hadn't really read before since I was hopeless waiting for my precious GHs.. Now that I've put hands on them and opened a claim for mine, I can definitely be part of this conversation and put my penny in it.

I'm a babe in the woods with my first and only failure so far taking place last week after 2 months of daily use.

I hear ya dude.. another little one just got lost out in this Grasshopper Warranty Forest! We'll be wondering around for some time I hope, NOT!
I must admit though that HL have really impressed me on their response and action with my 1st ever warranty claim on my Purple Ti unit. They reviewed the video that I sent them same day and Caroline told me to open a warranty for it and so I did. That was almost an hour after my original e-mail was sent. After opening the claim, it took them less than two-three hours to let me know that the replacement would be send to me in few days. This was day before NYE. They sent me a link yesterday with the Order No. which was delivered to the post the 30st and was dispatched next day. That was really fast...!! I was expecting them to ship it out this week Tuesday/ Wednesday or so. It's like I'm dealing with another company now. No delays @ all...
From my last experience with USPS, I should be having the packege in around 10 days. Funny thing is that USPS on that service for International shipment, it turns to normal post at local post office. The missing note that I received did not have a tracking number on it. It arrived as a plain registered package. This is probably the reason that I didn't have to pay anything for customs. Since this seems to be working, fine with me.
Nevertheless, Caroline got back to my question, of what could have gone wrong with my hopper since it was working just fine, these where her exact words from her e-mail:

Sometimes things in the Hopper can get shifted around during transit. Especially overseas transit, jostles the package around a bunch.

I hope that this is not the case and it was just a faulty unit. Although the slight movement and jostling of the click button makes the unit go blue some time more. I will get back on that to the main GH thread.

Like @vapviking, postage to me has been complimentary so far. I've cost them three international shipping cost for an international letter so far. As soon as I receive the Body replacement part, I will then have to ship them back the original part. I will let you know how much it will cost from Athens to US for a letter less than 0.5g weight.

 

[voodoo_vape]

Failures per hopper (FPH)?

warranties per hopper (wph)?
Or this could just be decided over a poll for a name for it...

 

[vapviking]

First of all, Happy New Year guys and gals!! All the best for you and your families! This is my 1st post for 2017 and it'll be in this thread!
What a lovely thread that is... which I must admit that I hadn't really read before since I was hopeless waiting for my precious GHs.. Now that I've put hands on them and opened a claim for mine, I can definitely be part of this conversation and put my penny in it.



I hear ya dude.. another little one just got lost out in this Grasshopper Warranty Forest! We'll be wondering around for some time I hope, NOT!
I must admit though that HL have really impressed me on their response and action with my 1st ever warranty claim on my Purple Ti unit. They reviewed the video that I sent them same day and Caroline told me to open a warranty for it and so I did. That was almost an hour after my original e-mail was sent. After opening the claim, it took them less than two-three hours to let me know that the replacement would be send to me in few days. This was day before NYE. They sent me a link yesterday with the Order No. which was delivered to the post the 30st and was dispatched next day. That was really fast...!! I was expecting them to ship it out this week Tuesday/ Wednesday or so. It's like I'm dealing with another company now. No delays @ all...
From my last experience with USPS, I should be having the packege in around 10 days. Funny thing is that USPS on that service for International shipment, it turns to normal post at local post office. The missing note that I received did not have a tracking number on it. It arrived as a plain registered package. This is probably the reason that I didn't have to pay anything for customs. Since this seems to be working, fine with me.
Nevertheless, Caroline got back to my question, of what could have gone wrong with my hopper since it was working just fine, these where her exact words from her e-mail:

I hope that this is not the case and it was just a faulty unit. Although the slight movement and jostling of the click button makes the unit go blue some time more. I will get back on that to the main GH thread.

Like @vapviking, postage to me has been complimentary so far. I've cost them three international shipping cost for an international letter so far. As soon as I receive the Body replacement part, I will then have to ship them back the original part. I will let you know how much it will cost from Athens to US for a letter less than 0.5g weight.

Hi, and welcome to the discussion.
As US Hopper owner I can't speak at all about international customer service, but the domestic treatment is excellent, in my experience. My several warranty claims have all be addressed and handled quickly and professionally.

A lot of us are nevertheless impressed by the number of times our Hoppers have failed to function. So we tend to study it, parse it and talk a lot about that. My opinion and perception is that quality and reliability continue to improve.
I'm equally interested in hearing about folks who've never had an issue!

But even as Hopper is 'perfected' I'll be keeping a spare on hand...for all the talk and some negativity, I agree with the increasing numbers of folks who just love these Grasshoppers!