LH Labs Geek Out GO2A, V2, V2+, Infinity and SE Impressions and Reviews

Well, okay... then... in which case:

1. Ticket situation is clear now. I'll summarize it as thus: you would like to help, but you are not privy to any small detail regarding that system, and you have to be the middle guy between multiple things. Being that this is supposed to be something that customer service (CS) should work out, I don't think it was wise of you to say "if you have any ticket trouble, I'll take care of it" because that ambiguously makes people think you can directly access the tickets and do things with them. Just for future reference, I think you should have said "I'm working closely with people from within the company to review the ticket system and make necessary changes, may I please have some samples of the kind of troubles that people are seeing with their support tickets?"

2. I know some people want refunds for their IGG campaign. I'll just write that out clearly and plainly then. Again, PEOPLE WANT FULL AND COMPLETE REFUNDS FOR THEIR IGG CAMPAIGN. This is because they were promised products for backing LH Labs, but those products never materialized. I'm not one of these people so you won't have to worry about me, but I think this needs to be spelled out very clearly and plainly so that you, Larry, or anyone else from LH Labs can go back and read it in non-ambiguous terms. Now, whatever solution (or non-solution due to policy stuffs) Larry or anyone comes up with, you have stated very clearly that it's not something you will come up with, so this is not on you. But just to say, again, THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO WANT FULL AND COMPLETE REFUNDS FOR THEIR IGG CAMPAIGN PRODUCTS THAT NEVER HAPPENED, OTHERWISE THEY WILL NOT BE HAPPY. So... there it is. I just wrote that three times just to make it clear because you mentioned other types of refunds that may or may not be related to that. Please don't take this as me pressuring you to work on that, I just wanted it to be clear in case you will bring this up to Larry at some point. Honestly, I think you should first worry about those support tickets about repairs and such before you tackle this, since you are already on the tickets. But that's me.

3. Again, you are still thinking about winning or losing... as if this is a battle. This really isn't a battle. We are not trying to single you out. I think it's that "pressure to respond" thing again, hence why I had to mention above that I'm not pressuring you. Please take a deep breath, relax, and from this point on, be very careful of your wording to avoid having people dog-pile on you like before. Honestly, I find it quite plain to see: they are just not happy if you don't give them their solutions. So... my suggestion from this point on is that you should only address certain folks when you have actual responses from Larry regarding the aforementioned things (namely, "ticket" and "refunds"). Don't turn yourself into a CS person now. I don't think that's your role. If someone wants you to be a CS guy, just tell them "it's not my place to say", and that's that.

 

Right, and that certainly wasn't my intention to say "I'll take care of it." I let everyone know (as far as I know) whose tickets I grabbed that I am not the main ticket guy and that I would be working with others to see what the situation was and maybe to fix it. I offered no exact timeline and I think I made it pretty clear that nothing may even happen --- just that I would certainly try.

Any refund policy being examined at this point would just be the overcharges and things of that nature. NOT the IGG campaign refunds. I want to make that very clear to everyone. And we are literally in just the talking stages of looking at those tickets and policies. We haven't even discussed the policy, per se. Just the possibility of looking at the policy. Larry hasn't even seen the tickets yet, and I don't know when we will get to them. Right now, the focus is on IGG and the campaign updates. If and when I can get in touch with Matt, hopefully we can sort some things out. No guarantee, no promises, no exact timeline on ticket investigation.

Definitely not trying to be a CS. Simply reaching out, letting people know that at least someone in the organization is trying to address their concerns and issues.

 

Still remember how toxic it was when I worked as a social media specialist of Lehman Brothers. Too bad I did not have the liberty to just "focus my effort in other places"...

 

@LHCommSquad - Glad you took a breather and I am glad that LH Labs is doing whatever it is that they are doing to (maybe) turn the company around. I am thinking something is better than nothing. Time will tell.

I have read and re-read this part of the thread and am still not clear what this is about. It seems like you have a rather ambiguous task. It sounds like (maybe) you are supposed to collect limited, specific personal experiences and report your findings on those. They will be looked at and LH Labs will decide if they want to change some of their ways of doing business. Do I have that part right? (I am not trying to make you mad. This is a serious question.)

I can't imagine what you expected when you started this. You have posted 90 some percent of the time in this thread (as synthwavefan) so I would think that you would have an idea of the level of frustration many have with this company. Like it or not, you are the only ears to LH Labs that exists given the companies policy of silence. I would have expected a lot of venting.

I would be nervous on my first (public) day on a job like this. Maybe that is why you took such offense at @Garns post. You didn't recognize "his" second paragraph as quoting your own words. And how much more carefully could he have worded it to point out that you might have more success if you chose your words more carefully and that it was not an attack?:

I think everyone here would like to see LH Labs become a company that they could purchase from with some confidence.

 

Jeez, that must have been a hell of a ride.

@LHCommSquad, just have to put this out - I think you're awfully brave to have taken on the challenge of tackling LHL's issues, when there was no good reason for you to do so, and when a vast majority of us would never even have considered it. As a backer, for that alone I'm thankful and appreciative.

One of the largest issues I'd imagine is how messy it must be to consolidate pledges and orders. There must have been a reason why so many surveys / forms were sent out, and my guess is that in spite of everything, LHL still does not have a complete grasp of things. Some Pulse units were being sold during the Wave campaign. Additional perks were offered sporadically at different points in time. The Source underwent a complete revamp in configurations -- all surely a nightmare to deal with.

My advice would be to solve this issue first.

IMO it has to be the root cause for why orders are slipping through the cracks (have Pulse orders even been completely fulfilled by now?), why 'tagging' tickets to owners and their specific pledges must be very difficult to process, and how tickets are getting automatically closed without response or resolution. Also, down the road when (if?) the Waves begin to ship, backers are going to scrutinize if they have received the exact configuration which they pledged for. The best way to avoid a huge mess is to make sure that units shipped in the first place have completely been checked through and tallied.

Go through orders, one individual after the next. It'll be a painstaking undertaking going through the entire database (emails, tickets, IGG platform), but online conversations and payment records are set in stone and will always remain traceable. Instead of pushing out yet another round of surveys / forms, get everything compiled and drop an email to every backer with a complete log of 'events' in chronological order, and what is being owed to them. For every ticket that was closed prematurely and/or with loose ends -- actively seek out every individual and re-engage them. Without even going into expected delivery dates, and ignoring the level of vitriol you are bound to receive in return, at minimum people will take heart that some semblance of proactivness and order exists -- that LHL still cares.

Pour as much time and resources into this as necessary; in the long run I believe it'll pay dividends. I know it's idealistic as f**k, but also that it's definitely doable with brute force.

Attempting to wow backers with updates showing fancy hardware and measurements won't count for anything at this stage. For all intents and purposes it will be perceived negatively as smoke and mirrors / delaying tactics rather than a positive sign of progress. Engage actively.

All of the above is just my two cents. Feeling shitty about unfulfilled pledges does me no good and I shall check out from this thread henceforth.

I sincerely hope you'll be able to make a difference and wish you all the best.

 

Yeah. The funny thing is I knew what I signed up for but then complained about it. Just show what kind of company Lehman Brothers was, in employing someone as incompetent and unprepared as me...

 

On a personal note @LHCommSquad, I have no idea how you find yourself in this role, but if you are trying fix the comms mess and have to get bottlenecked through the old guard (Larry et al) who are the source of the problem, you might want to consider that you may be being set up to fail.

 

At this point LHL needs an army of CS reps, who actually can resolve issues, and probably needs a PR firm to help rehabilitate their image. My experience with them hasn't been negative, but reading the endless stories of woe from jilted customers means that even those of us who didn't have explicitly bad experiences will think twice before buying another LHL product, and certainly won't donate to any crowdfunding campaigns.

 

This is veering off topic I suppose, but I want to offer a bit of encouragement to synthwavefan: I got stuck doing online CS for a... less-than-beloved brand. Imagine one of your first jobs fresh out of college involved taking the brunt of shit on behalf of a company offering satellite TV. Satellite TV in the bloody Philippines, a country where tropical storms are so commonplace that many of us live in perpetual fear of being swept away by the next Haiyan or Milenyo or what-have-you. Suffice to say, there was a lot of flying feces. Not quite the same shady-ish situation LHL finds itself in, granted, but similar enough for all it matters to the front-liners.

It's absurdly easy, once you're invested enough to have something approaching genuine like of the brand, to take valid critiques as personal affronts, never mind that you should have a clear conscience since you aren't at fault to begin with and are (presumably) doing your job to the best of your ability— heck, you'll run into loads of people who don't even care that most of the problems are the direct fault of people far above your rank-and-file position and beyond your reproach, these people will just be happy to have someone to shit on, and will gladly resort to personal attacks just to help spread the misery around. It's these cases in particular that you should learn to brush off.

@insidious meme gave excellent advice, of a similar vein to what I received when I came close to breaking the hell down from stress a few years back: nose to the grindstone until people run out of stuff to whine about. You did come across as a bit self-congratulatory in your introductory post as LH-Whatever (not unreasonable in the slightest given the monumental task you're taking on, mind!); I can understand how this twists some people's nipples the wrong way.

I've been wanting a GO for the longest whole now, but reports of how iffy the after sales and what have you have put me off a bit— screw it offering excellent SQ in a properly-pocketable portable amp/DAC, I want to know my ass is covered if this thing starts burping sparks while in my pants.

Having said all that, I really hope this is a proper fresh start for LH Labs, and that all the complaints accumulated over the last few years (!!!) will be met with an amicable solution. This last bit is me speaking from my own experience, but I'd say candor is far better-suited to the current situation than platitudes and reassurances. Based on what I've read so far, there have been many instances in the past when LHL'd placated the sharks only to leave them starving for weeks on end once they were out of biting range. If you need to talk crap about your brand, do so, but do NOT embellish stories or try to ingratiate yourself to the masses either; any form of feces, bull or otherwise, will just add fuel to this spontaneous dump fire.

Disclaimer, I have gotten in trouble for following these guidelines, but not once have I ever regretted it.

Best of luck!

 

It is kinda ironic you posting that piece of advice on a forum.

 

I actually selected the limited edition 'armchair CEO' perk, but is it yet to be delivered.

 

Essentially correct. When I was reading the forums, I saw a lot of people mentioning the same type of issues with their tickets. I'm gathering those examples and will review with Matt (and/or Larry) and see if there is a common denominator between them (either due to the ticket system, or LH staff, or policies, or something else). Based on that, we can decide what (if anything) needs to be corrected.

100% not my intention and I'm sorry if it came across that way.

 

Just for my understanding, zerodeefex, with "on the board" you mean member of the board or more like "being part of the LHL crew"?

 

Guys, anyone else has faced similar issue to mine?

It seems like I'll have to open the device up to find a way to switch off/on the power instead of relying on the non-functioning power switch. I have raised a ticket, requesting for help. Hopefully, there is a way to keep it working without replacing the device or sending it to US for repair. Let me know if anyone has found a way!

 

Does the button seem to depress correctly, or is it stuck? Do you have the all-resin case, or with plates?

 

I'm having aluminum case with sides being plastic. No, it is not depressing at all. Are you not supposed to slide it? (When sliding, does it depress a bit)

 

Hey guys, a very small update. I checked with Matt (ticket guy) and we toggled something in the ticket system, so they should not be closing anymore after X period of time. They should be open until physically closed by us. That appears to have been one of the major problems I was seeing on the forums - tickets closing for no reason. Really sorry about that, and I hope it's fixed now.

On another note, we are still working on the tickets I gathered earlier. I have no exact timeline, but they are on the agenda and actively being investigated and worked on.

Finally, Larry and I are working on some updates regarding the campaigns, with content I hope backers will appreciate.

I'm still locked out of the LH forums and Facebook. Hopefully those are fixed soon. I'm still around the forums and IGG. And I still have no access to the ticket system, so I apologize about that. Hopefully soon I can gain access.

If anyone has comments or questions, please feel free to let me know.

 

Sorry @LHCommSquad but I don't really understand something:

I'm sure you discussed and aligned the scope of your "support" for the company (usual thing, right?). And improve the comms via/on FB and the own forum was definitely one of the activities you both agreed on.

Then I really don't get it that you don't have the needed accesses for FB and the LH Forum (and whatever else) to start from Day 1.
As an employer shouldn't he assures that his employee is able to perform for what he is hired for?

Is Larry, again, the bottleneck here? (or will now the "shitty Internet situation in China" be blamed?)

 

Something got switched when they were doing something with the forum/Wordpress. No one was aware of it until I tried to register. Larry looked it up and said, "I know what happened. We'll have to have that changed back." Matt has to fix it and Matt is currently working on the tickets for me and there's a lot of other things going on in the background that I'm not probably at liberty to say yet. So at this point, Larry and Matt are aware of it and it's on the agenda.

Hopefully Larry can grab time tonight to link me up to Facebook after all the meetings are done. (he got back to Shenzhen 2 days ago and has been working locally)

It seems I just happened to start at a really busy time and so it's been kind of rough getting things in motion. Hopefully some of the activities settle down so we can get started on those communication aspects.