Halcyon & Santi's policy: we perform drysuit repairs "even without prior approval"

[Effervescent]

While I agree that this case does not seem right, ie repairs made without preauthorization, I find it hard to believe that in all the years halcyon/Santi have been performing repairs you are the only person to not know of their policy.

Perhaps this is due to how your suit got to the repair facility, handed by Steve gamble (who does my drysuit repairs, awesome guy) so you didn't have a face to face talk with repair center. I tried to find a copy of the repair policy that the halcyon ceo referenced, all I found was a repair sheet that a drunk 4 y/o gorilla could have written.

2 - how often does halcyon do Santi repairs? Educating a repair facility on all that a warranty repair does or does not cover is important. I must wonder though if the repair person you spoke to assumed through your description that the issue was the common Santi boot problem mentioned earlier in the thread.

Matters not really, as they should have been in email contact with you at the least when the status changes.

Given the surprise reaction of almost all the responses I received, I believe that Halcyon does not let its customers know about this policy. As the national repair center for Santi, I doubt that all divers are able to personally hand their suit and talk to the Halcyon and Extreme Exposure in Florida in person. I called them twice before my suit got there and if the representatives I talked to did not know the warranty policy, they could have simply gotten my name and number down and given me a call back once they found out the answer.

3 - silence social media threads? I assume your speaking of Facebook or something...

Yes, they deleted two of my posts. Granted this was Santi's Facebook page but I would have hoped they would address the issue. Not silence it once they saw the backlash from fellow divers.

I was hoping we would get the other side of this story, but understand that they don't want to come in here and deal with a bunch of idiots.

I do hope that after 9 pages someone has realized there is always three sides to a story, victim, perpetrator and the truth in the middle somewhere. Not calling the OP a liar, just stating a fact.

I have posted both sides of the story for full disclosure in my first post so that everyone could read the emails I received from them: Halcyon-Santi Drysuit Emails.pdf

After I posted these emails to Facebook, Mark Messersmith responded to me on August 17 and doubled-down on this policy. Santi did apologize though for the mishap.

Here is Mark Messesmith's reply to a Facebook post on the same topic yesterday, August 17. You will see that he is confirming Halcyon's unethical business policy:

Alice and others, Halcyon works very hard to provide the best products and customer service possible. It appears we came up short on this occassion, for this I do apologize. Providing work and services without pre-approval is quite rare but will happen once in awhile. We support many high profile divers and projects so if a technician is in the midst of a repair and under a tight deadline, they are encouraged to do what they think is best for the customer. This was the situation with your suit. On Monday one of our customer service representatives reviewed the scope of the work completed and charges with you before the invoice was finalized. You gave us your credit card and we processed the payment as discussed. It was only after the credit card company informed us you had put a hold on the total payment that we learned of your desire to not be charged for the zipper. This was a suprise to us but as I said in my email, you are welcome to delete the cost of the zipper since the work was indeed done without your prior approval. Drysuit repairs is not a profit center for us but instead part of the services necessary to sell premium Santi suits. Our goal is to provide excellent products and service. Again I am sorry we didn't achieve this objective with you on this occasion and remain available to discuss this further if you so desire. Kind regards, Mark.

Luckily, Santi is on my side and has gone against Halcyon on this matter:

Dear Alice,
We agree that effectively the whole situation and undertaken actions were not professional. Apologies for that. Being thankful and appreciating all remarks given by our friends - divers, we always take lessons from them. SANTI is constantly working on service improvement and will do the best to avoid such a situation in the incoming future. Hoping that you will keep diving safely and dry in SANTI drysuit we wish you a great day.

Here are my two responses to Mark in case you missed it in the earlier threads:

Here is my reply to Mark:

Mark Messersmith - “Providing work and services without pre-approval” is just simply wrong and unethical. While you state that is rare, I have now received numerous private messages from fellow divers telling me that they have experienced the same sort of service from Halcyon and Extreme Exposure. This is clearly not an isolated incident despite what you believe.

This is a bad business policy that needs to be changed as you can see from the many responses from divers across Facebook, ScubaBoard and other forums. The bottom line here is that the decision to make a significant and unexpected repair, especially one that costs hundreds of dollars, should always fall on the customer.

Furthermore, I was notified about the new zipper after it was already on my suit. My suit was basically taken hostage and I had no recourse but to pay the amount including the unauthorized charge in order to get my suit back. I asked for the invoice so I could dispute the unauthorized charge. I never said that the dispute was resolved.

The fact that you are doubling down in your position is quite shocking. As the COO of Halcyon, I would have hoped that you would change your views on this unethical business policy. Basically saying that ‘I’m sorry that you feel that way’ is not an apology. This is a passive aggressive tactic that is unacceptable when dealing with customers.

Mark Messersmith (COO of Halcyon) says that "We support many high profile divers and project so if a technician is in the midst of repair and under a tight deadline, they are encouraged to do what they think is best for the customer."

1) My suit was not under a tight deadline. My suit took over 6 weeks to repair. If Halcyon is incapable of processing repairs for Santi suits in a timely manner, they should admit that this is a problem and hire more technicians. Otherwise, Santi should not allow Halcyon to continue to be the official service center for the US.

2) I am not a "high profile diver". I am a regular customer who paid over $3,000 for a Santi suit. "High profile" divers have the luxury of getting key man discounts and/or free drysuits. I do not get this benefit being a regular diver. If Halcyon and Santi want to be taken seriously as a business that sells drysuits to customers instead of a start-up that makes suits for their friends, I believe that they should grow up and adopt ethical business policies.

3) The fact that drysuit repairs is not a profit center is none of my concern. I paid for a drysuit and one of the reason I chose the brand is because of quality and service. Without the service component, Santi and Halcyon would have no business.

I suggest that Santi reevaluates its relationship with Halcyon and Halcyon should reflect on its unethical business policies.

I am posting this here because Santi has took down my comments on Facebook. Divers should have the right to know that this is how they are treating problems.

 

[RhodeDiver]

I am assuming that that most people just pay when Halcyon does this sort of thing or else they would not do it. It doesn't make it right tho. I personally would be angry. It seems a lot of people in the scuba world just come to expect to receive bad customer service and do nothing when it happens.

I also enjoyed how they said they gave you weekend service. Which I would only call a service if they got my suit on a friday and sent it back to me on a monday. After 6 weeks I would just say they are extremely understaffed.

 

[Lorenzoid]

They did charge me for the full amount and I had to pay it in full to get my drysuit back. They only acquiesced after I commenced an action with my credit card company and after numerous emails back and forth.

Instead of standing by their unethical and most likely illegal policy of doing unauthorized work, I think they should just change their policy and make sure that they tell the customer what they are doing to the drysuit BEFORE the make adjustments. All it takes is a simple 3 minute phone call or a quick email.

Yeah, I got that from your original post. I will drop my attempt to make sense out of all this. I just cannot get my head around the idea that they expect every person who receives an unauthorized repair to pay whatever they say the cost is.

 

[Doby45]

Neither can I @Lorenzoid but we must be a couple of the idiots mentioned in the previous comment.

they don't want to come in here and deal with a bunch of idiots.

 

[Effervescent]

Interesting... So now SANTI and Halcyon have silenced my thread on Facebook and they have somehow convinced the moderators of Cave Diving Forum to close my thread because it was getting too much attention there. Shame on them. This is an extremely poor way of handling a customer service problem.

 

[kelemvor]

Hopefully the mods at scubaboard won't follow suit. Fortunately, scubaboard seems to have a good track record with this stuff most of the time.

 

[stuartv]

Interesting... So now SANTI and Halcyon have silenced my thread on Facebook and they have somehow convinced the moderators of Cave Diving Forum to close my thread because it was getting too much attention there. Shame on them. This is an extremely poor way of handling a customer service problem.

I just read your whole thread on CDF. Shameful that it was summarily closed like that.

I've only had one Halcyon product - a wing. It did not work as well for me as any of my other wings, so I sold it. I don't see buying any of their other stuff. I DID think Santi was a good outfit and had considered getting a tri-lam suit from them. Now I can say that I don't see ever buying one of their suits, either. Boots and a zipper that need replacing and aren't covered under warranty? Other minor leaks? How old is your suit?? How many dives on it?

 

[kelemvor]

I just read your whole thread on CDF. Shameful that it was summarily closed like that.

CDF does have a history of closing anything remotely controversial. The only exception I can recall is an argument about a particular cave agency. I'm not saying it's good that they close threads, just that they probably didn't take Halceon's side.. they simply close anything remotely controversial over there.

 

[Effervescent]

I just read your whole thread on CDF. Shameful that it was summarily closed like that.

I've only had one Halcyon product - a wing. It did not work as well for me as any of my other wings, so I sold it. I don't see buying any of their other stuff. I DID think Santi was a good outfit and had considered getting a tri-lam suit from them. Now I can say that I don't see ever buying one of their suits, either. Boots and a zipper that need replacing and aren't covered under warranty? Other minor leaks? How old is your suit?? How many dives on it?

I purchased my suit in March 2013 and I think I have about 200-300 dives on the suit. I told Halcyon and Extreme Exposure the exact purchase date twice over the phone as I have all my credit card records and they said that my boot replacement would be covered. This is the only reason why my suit was at Halcyon in the first place.

Also, a friend of mine purchased a Santi suit around the same time I did and he got his boots covered by warranty. He said that these boots are known to leak over time so they replaced his for free. I confirmed these facts with him yesterday. I am not sure why his boot replacement was covered under warranty and not mine.

 

[Effervescent]

CDF does have a history of closing anything remotely controversial. The only exception I can recall is an argument about a particular cave agency. I'm not saying it's good that they close threads, just that they probably didn't take Halceon's side.. they simply close anything remotely controversial over there.

I have reached out to the moderator to find out the reasoning behind the censorship. I still believe that Halcyon or Santi had a hand in it because they already deleted two of my Facebook posts on their wall so they clearly do not want their official policy of the unauthorized drysuit repair or the issue about the boots getting out there in the public.