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Bad, SilentMaxx, Bad!!!

Posted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 9:46 am
by Edwood
Well, it's been over a month and half since SilentMaxx received my RMA'd ProSilence 350.

I have heard nothing from them, and they are ignoring all of my emails.

I think it's safe to say that I will be staying far away from anything associated with SilentMaxx, unless they do something to make me happy soon.

-Ed

Posted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 1:19 pm
by shathal
Complaints / demanding to have a manager sort the mess out get you anywhere?

Talking to people and thorwing a (quite justified) hissy fit tends to help.

Posted: Sat Jul 31, 2004 10:54 am
by Edwood
Wow, they don't answer their phone. And no voice mail?

Stay far far away from Silentmaxx and their products, folks.

:mad:

-Ed

Posted: Sat Jul 31, 2004 6:26 pm
by Pgh
I too have just had a similar experience with SilentMaxx.

- All calls to all extensions go to voicemail and are never returned.
- All email to the US address goes unanswered.
- All email to the company officers listed on the German site go unanswered.

I suspect they've gone bankrupt, or are on the verge of it.

So I would second the call to avoid buying anything from them. There isn't much need to now - their main product was a fanless PSU and there are plenty of alternatives now.

Posted: Sat Jul 31, 2004 7:13 pm
by Edwood
I want to have them send me their water cooled version. Their convection cooled PSU's are crap.

-Ed

Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2004 12:50 pm
by hvengel
Has anyone here used the water cooled version? Are there any other water cooled PSUs?

Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2004 2:01 pm
by Edwood
My next tactic is to try to bug the crap oiut of Silentmaxx's German couterpart.

-Ed

Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2004 2:34 pm
by Pgh
Edwood wrote:My next tactic is to try to bug the crap oiut of Silentmaxx's German couterpart.

-Ed

Good luck, all my emails sent there went unanswered. I drew the line at international phone calls.

Let me/us know if you find a way to get them to respond.

Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2004 3:16 pm
by Edwood
Make sure to file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.

-Ed

Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2004 3:45 pm
by Straker
that sucks, if it's not ancient history just charge it back and let them deal with it :P

Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2004 6:19 pm
by Edwood
I bought it from Siliconacoustics.com originally. And it's too long ago to deal with them, but still within the warranty period for the manufacturer who is not honoring it.

So, in a nutshell, they stole my power supply. I'm pretty mad that they had me pay to hip the damn thing to them, for them to just keep it. @ssholes. :mad:

-Ed

Posted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 12:04 am
by Joeice
Greeting,

As I know, they remarked their rating label on PSU. Please think about how can they get safety approval sheet if the primary and secondary heat-sink is the same one. ..... :?:

Posted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 7:16 am
by Edwood
All I'm thinking about is how they ripped me off.

I will never buy another SilentMaxx product again.

Posted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 7:34 am
by POLIST8
Maybe they don't speak Engrish.

Yeah, I had a problem with Terratec's support (through Fostex) a while back, but when I finally got a real human, I ripped their support a new one and actually got what I wanted instead of scripted response.

Good luck! :roll:

Posted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 8:38 am
by Edwood
They're actually a German company.

And they do have a US headquarters, but either company did not respond to any of my calls or emails.

-Ed

Posted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 9:58 am
by mg1394
Might I suggest you have a heart-to-heart talk with Silicon Acoustics, since you purchased from them, they continue to carry SilentMaxx products, are a sponsor here, don't want to get a reputation of selling products from bad companies, etc., etc. I would consider it their responsibility to ensure their suppliers respond to honor warranties, since they (SA) are the ones who took your money (and part of that payment was for the value of the warranty.)

Posted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 10:18 am
by Edwood
Good idea, thanks.

And Siliconacoustics no longer carries that PSU for obvious reasons.

-Ed

Posted: Fri Aug 13, 2004 11:59 am
by Edwood
Looks like Siliconacoustics is going to bat for me.

Hopefully they have better luck then I did.

-Ed

Posted: Fri Aug 13, 2004 6:10 pm
by larrymoencurly
Don't complain only to the Better Business Bureau. Also file a complaint with the attorney general of the state where SilentMaxx is based in the U.S. And just because it's been a long time since the purchase, don't assume that the dealer doesn't have any obligation -- file a WRITTEN complaint with the credit card company and mail it to the special address for billing problems. Tell them that you bought a product with a warranty but that the warranty isn't being honored, something that you couldn't have known about at the time of purchase.

Do you really want a water cooled PSU from a company that's treated you so badly? And do you want a water cooled PSU that is NOT UL approved?

silentmaxx

Posted: Fri Aug 13, 2004 7:24 pm
by peacefulpc
i have one of their 350's still in service and working great, but one has been on the RMA block going on 3 months, ugh.

they did send an email about 6 weeks ago that a new, improved revision would be sent to me soon, but my last two messages have gone unanswered :(

too bad, their stuff had great potential.

Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 4:02 pm
by Edwood
I almost forgot about this thread, but just to update, nothing ever got resolved.

Even with SiliconAcoustics looking into it, SilentMaxx never ever contacted me again.

They never returned the proSilence 350 I sent to them.

I will never ever touch a SilentMaxx product ever again.

I currently have an Antec Phantom, and it is still alive and kicking, I've had zero problems with it to date (knock on wood).

And it's powering an Athlon 64 3500+ system to boot.

-Ed

Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 4:19 pm
by Tibors
Edwood,
I know you are pretty frustrated about this. But try to look at it from a distance. It looks like their old US importer went out of business (for whatever reason). The new importer nor the manufacturer in europe have any reason to honor a warranty from the old US importer. That is simply the law. There is nothing fraudulous about that.

You can of course continue your crusade against this brand, but IMHO it says more about you than about them.

Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 5:36 pm
by mattthemuppet
so by that measure you should really only by products from distributors that are guaranteed not to go out of business within the warranty period of the product? That requires far more crystalball gazing than I'm capable of. What's to say the next Silentmaxx distributor won't go out of business (etc ad infinitum)? Sure, it's not legally Silentmaxx's problem, but that doesn't engender a great deal of confidence in a company's products. Which gets back to Edwood's issue of warning people not to buy Silentmaxx's products or to do so bearing in mind past warranty issues.

I think your post says more about you than about Edwood - think on that.

Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 7:01 pm
by Edwood
Tibors wrote:Edwood,
I know you are pretty frustrated about this. But try to look at it from a distance. It looks like their old US importer went out of business (for whatever reason). The new importer nor the manufacturer in europe have any reason to honor a warranty from the old US importer. That is simply the law. There is nothing fraudulous about that.

You can of course continue your crusade against this brand, but IMHO it says more about you than about them.
Nothing fraudulant? I got an RMA from them, shipped it to them, and then they "suddenly" go out of business and I never hear from them? :rolleyes:

SilentMax is still a company that does business here. Regardless of whether they try to pass off different importers, they need to still honor their warranties when they still export to the US.

If I sell a defective product to other companies to resell, and they are defective, and fall under a warranty guarantee, I will still be liable if I decide to go with a different company to resell my defective goods. At least that is how it works in the US. And I'm pretty sure there is a similar international trade agreement with Germany.

It's just a tremendous PITA to get results from an uncooperative overseas company.

So, in the end, they lose my business. Period.

SilentMaxx may have saved some money by f#cking me over, but in the end, they lose any potential income from me and others that have been screwed for life.

Nice move, SilentMaxx.
-Ed

Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 7:55 pm
by Devonavar
I think you're missing Tibors' point. Yes, they do need to honour their warranties when they export to the US. However, Tibors is pointing out that you didn't RMA under their warranty, you RMA'ed it under the warranty you got from their distributor. Silentmaxx is not the one set up to honour that warranty. Yes, it would have been nice if they had covered the warranty that their old distributor had been offering on their products, but it's not their warrany. Chances are they aren't even equipped to deal with English speaking customers, let alone international RMAs. Their web site is German only, I see nothing to indicate that they have an English customer service department; that is generally left to the distributor.

Neither of us is saying you weren't a victim, but you're blaming the wrong entity here. It's not Silentmaxx' fault that their distributor went belly-up. It's the distributor's fault that you never got your PSU back.

Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 8:06 pm
by Edwood
Still no excuse.

They still do business in the US.

Antec is not a US company either, but they have a US headquarters, not just a two bit distributor.

I won't touch SilentMaxx products. Not only did it not work, they don't back up their shoddy work.


-Ed

Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 8:19 pm
by Devonavar
Perhaps they did business in the US in the past, but that is no longer true. If can show me a US web site (or even one in English) for Silentmaxx I will be very impressed. Doing business in the US is not the same as someone importing their products and selling them in the US. Antec does do business in the US. They do their own distribution and have an office in the States. This is not true of Silentmaxx. In fact, the only source for Silentmaxx products that I was able to find in the US was SilentPC USA, which is a branch of an international company.

Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 8:24 pm
by Edwood
Devonavar wrote:Perhaps they did business in the US in the past, but that is no longer true. If can show me a US web site (or even one in English) for Silentmaxx I will be very impressed. Doing business in the US is not the same as someone importing their products and selling them in the US. Antec does do business in the US. They do their own distribution and have an office in the States. This is not true of Silentmaxx. In fact, the only source for Silentmaxx products that I was able to find in the US was SilentPC USA, which is a branch of an international company.
Well, it's buyer beware then.

Looks like Antec Phantom is not 100% reliable (not by a long shot by the poll), but at least they have a US Headquarters that DOES honor their warranty.

-Ed

Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 8:31 pm
by Devonavar
AFAIK, the problems were all concentrated in the first revision of the Phantom. I haven't heard of any problems since early 2005. You should be good to go.

Posted: Fri Apr 07, 2006 3:28 am
by Tibors
mattthemuppet wrote:so by that measure you should really only by products from distributors that are guaranteed not to go out of business within the warranty period of the product? That requires far more crystalball gazing than I'm capable of.
You always run that risk with smaller companies/brands. If you really think that is a problem and you want to minimise the risk, then you should only buy products from large global brands. They usually sell their products through fully owned subsidiaries in stead of small independend importers. The chance that they go out of business is much lower (but still not zero).

Compare Edwoods case to people who bought an extended three year warranty from ARM systems. Then ARM went out of business, so it doesn't honour the warranties anymore. Is that fraud? No.

Now take a fictional ARM customer who had just sent his system back to ARM in the week they went out of business. That's tough luck, because he looses his system. (Yes, that is how a chapter 7 bankruptcy works.) Now try to imagine how much success that fictional customer will have complaining to Evercase (the manufacturer of the cases ARM used), that he wants his system back. At best he will get a polite reply that it is not their problem, but more likely his e-mail will just be deleted.