tphillipp
Contributor
I encourage you or your LDS to give us a call so we can help you. Too many unknowns to assess where the problem may lie.
Tom Phillipp
Product Mgr.
Aqua Lung
Tom Phillipp
Product Mgr.
Aqua Lung
Hey Aqua Lung, Wake Up
- Thread starter jar546
- Start date
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OP
Okay jar546, let me try.
1) Sorry you have a defect. I find that all manufacturers will have this mistake at some time or another. They are not all preventable. (you know, that 6 sigma thing)
2) Sorry the part you need is on backorder. Sometimes this happens. Sometimes the supply company does everything right & everything goes wrong. (I once had an international shipment come in on time, go through customs and the truck was hi-jacked. How do I cover that one?) At least the part has been ordered and things are in process.
3) Please take advantage of the invitation offered by Tom Phillipp. They may not have a perfect immediate solution but sometimes there is a stop-gap that can be done. There may be a defective BCD that has a bad bladder and a perfect set of weight pouches. Someone might have a the same BCD in the office & will loan you the pouches until yours come in. Sometimes the sales reps get notified so they can borrow a set of pouches from one of the thousands of dealers and the backorder will cover the inventory exchange. IN OTHER WORDS: Aqua Lung is willing to talk to you and is willing to try and help. Give this a shot, the other methods clearly aren't working for you.
4) Ignore all of this if all you are doing is venting. If that's the case, then vent on.
1) Sorry you have a defect. I find that all manufacturers will have this mistake at some time or another. They are not all preventable. (you know, that 6 sigma thing)
2) Sorry the part you need is on backorder. Sometimes this happens. Sometimes the supply company does everything right & everything goes wrong. (I once had an international shipment come in on time, go through customs and the truck was hi-jacked. How do I cover that one?) At least the part has been ordered and things are in process.
3) Please take advantage of the invitation offered by Tom Phillipp. They may not have a perfect immediate solution but sometimes there is a stop-gap that can be done. There may be a defective BCD that has a bad bladder and a perfect set of weight pouches. Someone might have a the same BCD in the office & will loan you the pouches until yours come in. Sometimes the sales reps get notified so they can borrow a set of pouches from one of the thousands of dealers and the backorder will cover the inventory exchange. IN OTHER WORDS: Aqua Lung is willing to talk to you and is willing to try and help. Give this a shot, the other methods clearly aren't working for you.
4) Ignore all of this if all you are doing is venting. If that's the case, then vent on.
OP
Yes, venting.
Tom Phillip is handling things as of today which I appreciate. I understand that things happen but when 2 items go bad within 24 hours of each other while on vacation with relatively new gear that was not low end I will get testy.
Tom Phillip is handling things as of today which I appreciate. I understand that things happen but when 2 items go bad within 24 hours of each other while on vacation with relatively new gear that was not low end I will get testy.
Venting is one thing. But let's look at this whole episode:
Your thread title, "Hey Aqua Lung, Wake up" is quite inflammatory, and you started off on the offensive with Aqua Lung. Your expectations of high quality gear are not unreasonable. Your follow up rants regarding backorders, and supply chain are though. Screaming loudly won't get the product to you any faster, or through customs, or through the manufacturing process... Sure you want your gear now... But worst case is... you wear a weight belt, and get your pocket as soon as its available from Aqua Lung (which in the above quote, you even scoff ((Bold Added for emphasis in your quote)) at the possibility that it might even be backordered. The nerve! It's a conspiracy!). Right?
IMHO If your thread were titled, "Help with broken pocket" instead of "Hey Aqua Lung, Wake up" - you'd be starting off with a polite concern, rather than a pissed off forum ranter with a broken weight pocket.
Your thread title makes it sound like Aqua Lung (who should wake up) probably has thousands of crappy weight pockets out there, and their entire manufacturing process is just garbage, and they just make crap gear. Which... if that was the case.... you probably wouldn't be the only guy here complaining about a broken pocket... right? Let's even go further to guess that you wouldn't have a whole bunch of Aqua Lung fans defending their quality, and people wouldn't question YOUR integrity either.
I truly believe that your weight pocket nightmare will be over soon, and you should seriously thank Aqua Lung for all of the kind attention they have given you...Personally, I was happy to see even unreasonably angry customers walk out of my store with a smile when all was said and done. Because after all... the Customer is always the customer.
Your thread title, "Hey Aqua Lung, Wake up" is quite inflammatory, and you started off on the offensive with Aqua Lung. Your expectations of high quality gear are not unreasonable. Your follow up rants regarding backorders, and supply chain are though. Screaming loudly won't get the product to you any faster, or through customs, or through the manufacturing process... Sure you want your gear now... But worst case is... you wear a weight belt, and get your pocket as soon as its available from Aqua Lung (which in the above quote, you even scoff ((Bold Added for emphasis in your quote)) at the possibility that it might even be backordered. The nerve! It's a conspiracy!). Right?
IMHO If your thread were titled, "Help with broken pocket" instead of "Hey Aqua Lung, Wake up" - you'd be starting off with a polite concern, rather than a pissed off forum ranter with a broken weight pocket.
Either it's very popular, or they only made 4 of them, and you got the bad one?
Your thread title makes it sound like Aqua Lung (who should wake up) probably has thousands of crappy weight pockets out there, and their entire manufacturing process is just garbage, and they just make crap gear. Which... if that was the case.... you probably wouldn't be the only guy here complaining about a broken pocket... right? Let's even go further to guess that you wouldn't have a whole bunch of Aqua Lung fans defending their quality, and people wouldn't question YOUR integrity either.
I truly believe that your weight pocket nightmare will be over soon, and you should seriously thank Aqua Lung for all of the kind attention they have given you...Personally, I was happy to see even unreasonably angry customers walk out of my store with a smile when all was said and done. Because after all... the Customer is always the customer.
Last edited:
OP
Update:
Thanks to Tom Phillipp and my LDS, a few items were resolved today:
1) The shipping of the pockets which are on back order with AL will be expedited and the order to my LDS will be moved up the backorder list.
2) My LDS just happened to find a BCD in stock with the same pockets and gave them to me today after speaking with AL.
3) The old pockets were handed over and a 2nd, closer look by the LDS reveals that the handles are of significantly different shading/color which may indicate a problem with the molding/injection. These will be sent back to AL for analyzation. The LDS does not believe this is from abuse, did not initially believe this was from abuse due the way the separation of the handle from the pocket occured.
4) I was refunded the battery charges by my LDS and they will be credited by AL. There is apparently an issue with the transmitter if the air is turned on too quickly which may cause the transmitter to reset itself and lose the connection with the computer.
5) I did a night dive tonight with my LDS and my AL gear.
So I would like to thank Tom Phillip for handling this situation and having this handled by those below him. I hope that upon analyzing the handles, they are able to correct whatever problem caused the premature separation in the molded handle where the soft, gray material is molded to the harder black mechanism. This is still a concern of mine and only time will tell.
Lessons learned:
I will be more careful in my choice of headings for future posts and wait until I cool down a bit. Although I may have thought out this heading more, the problem with the weight pocket is still unfinished business for AL until they are able to determine what went wrong. Attention was brought to a situation a little more quickly.
As someone who has experience in injection molding I have a lay-person's theory about this issue:
When running a product for the first time during a shift or between cleanings and/or colors, there is still some residual in the system that will mix with the new color/product in the first few components. At a higher temp and one at a time, you often cannot see the coloration difference of the mixed products. Due to the difference in color shading of the handles in question, I believe this may have been the case. If the batch is not mixed thoroughly prior to melting, the same issue can occur. Contamination could have also occurred in the hoppers prior to melting.
Anyway, I hope this gets resolved by AL.
Aqua-Lung appears to be very responsive to the needs of its customers when these issues occur and are genuinely concerned about the customer's satisfaction. This along with the fact that they stand behind their products is why the LDS that I use chose to be a dealer for Aqua-Lung.
Thank you.
Thanks to Tom Phillipp and my LDS, a few items were resolved today:
1) The shipping of the pockets which are on back order with AL will be expedited and the order to my LDS will be moved up the backorder list.
2) My LDS just happened to find a BCD in stock with the same pockets and gave them to me today after speaking with AL.
3) The old pockets were handed over and a 2nd, closer look by the LDS reveals that the handles are of significantly different shading/color which may indicate a problem with the molding/injection. These will be sent back to AL for analyzation. The LDS does not believe this is from abuse, did not initially believe this was from abuse due the way the separation of the handle from the pocket occured.
4) I was refunded the battery charges by my LDS and they will be credited by AL. There is apparently an issue with the transmitter if the air is turned on too quickly which may cause the transmitter to reset itself and lose the connection with the computer.
5) I did a night dive tonight with my LDS and my AL gear.
So I would like to thank Tom Phillip for handling this situation and having this handled by those below him. I hope that upon analyzing the handles, they are able to correct whatever problem caused the premature separation in the molded handle where the soft, gray material is molded to the harder black mechanism. This is still a concern of mine and only time will tell.
Lessons learned:
I will be more careful in my choice of headings for future posts and wait until I cool down a bit. Although I may have thought out this heading more, the problem with the weight pocket is still unfinished business for AL until they are able to determine what went wrong. Attention was brought to a situation a little more quickly.
As someone who has experience in injection molding I have a lay-person's theory about this issue:
When running a product for the first time during a shift or between cleanings and/or colors, there is still some residual in the system that will mix with the new color/product in the first few components. At a higher temp and one at a time, you often cannot see the coloration difference of the mixed products. Due to the difference in color shading of the handles in question, I believe this may have been the case. If the batch is not mixed thoroughly prior to melting, the same issue can occur. Contamination could have also occurred in the hoppers prior to melting.
Anyway, I hope this gets resolved by AL.
Aqua-Lung appears to be very responsive to the needs of its customers when these issues occur and are genuinely concerned about the customer's satisfaction. This along with the fact that they stand behind their products is why the LDS that I use chose to be a dealer for Aqua-Lung.
Thank you.
jar546 I have to give you credit on your last post.
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