Community frustrated with former KiSS-Technology

Zaventem, Belgium, 22 May 2007. The MPC Club Community has again publicly launched their disappointment with Danish-based company KiSS-Technology, now owned by Cisco Systems subsidiary Linksys. Despite numerous efforts undertaken by MPC Club, the Company still does not deliver adequate after-sales support for their products. The frustration of hundreds of consumers has been caused by the failure of the company to provide important spare parts and after-sales service that was promised 6 months ago in an offer to consumers promising them ability to purchase spare parts for expensive, failure-prone products that had been purchased less than 2 years before. Additionally, KiSS-Technology has not provided previously-promised solutions to not force usage of community tools which provide significant improvements in playback stability (though voiding the warranty). After many previous delays and broken promises, the latest statements from KiSS-Technology have promised the availability of these tools by August 2007.

“It’s not enough to promise things all the time for the future, we had a long list of issues and an update was only part of it. We need spare parts so people don’t have to throw a €650 player in the recycle bin after a short time, regardless of its cost today. The failure rate we see on these products is extremely high, caused by badly designed hardware (power supply) and very breakable DVD drives,” says Trippaers Ronny (Hi-Jack), founder and owner of the MPC Club Media Portal. “It’s as if they don’t care about the consumers left behind, even though they are the ones that should take responsibility. Requesting updates always results in the need of more time and Linksys making claims of being ‘busy implementing the solutions as promised’. We can no longer wait until the products are outdated and there’s no need anymore for support: these consumers have paid good money, partially for product support.”

MPC Club has officially stated it will never review or recommend equipment produced by or affiliated with the Danish manufacturer again, regardless of who owns the company, unless it deals with Linksys decision makers directly in order for these issues to be resolved. Until now no real progress has been made in this last effort to restore a good working model of cooperation on all fronts, benefiting the consumers. “This should be taken very seriously at Linksys headquarters: to loose one of Europe’s most popular and most active forums to work on their products”, stated Hi-Jack. “It may not mean a dramatic revenue loss for Linksys, it is a big company with a lot of money. They’re just not spending any of it on providing after-sales support to consumers of KiSS-Technology, a company they apparently acquired having no idea of what a mess it had made over the years. Losing MPC may hardly be felt, but at least we can save 40.000 consumers from making such mistake again,” says Hi-Jack. “We intend to tell our registered forum members what risks are attached to purchasing a device made or supported by Linksys, and will show them how the marketing around these products is wildly inaccurate and more promising than the product ever will become.”

MPC Club administrators blame Linksys mainly for not taking care of these issues even though they are very aware of the problems with the products. According to Hi-Jack, there would be only one way to show they care which is breaking the silence and providing solutions instead of leaving it up to the consumers to find them.

MPC stated with a “promise” that it will not conduct" further communications or reviews on Linksys affiliated products unless the company takes control of the once great relationship by addressing the concerns that have been raised. “We have smaller brands fighting their way into Europe against the more established brands and they can deliver every single support request received. These smaller, more receptive companies make serious updates month after month and also manage progress in constantly releasing new products,” continuous Hi-Jack. “Who would believe a company such as Cisco / Linksys is not even able to address relatively simple issues such as faulty DVD drives and power supplies causing 15% of KiSS products to fail within the first year and double that amount in the second.” This leads to the biggest frustration according to MPC: KiSS DP-558 and VR-558 owners who are forced (by Linksys inaction) to use MPC solutions for being able to record without the usual problems lose warranty coverage by doing so, and therefore cannot submit warranty claims. “It would have been better if we had just decided to have all the units returned, and we surely recommend that consumers do so in the future as we learn from our experiences with Linksys support. We were perhaps a bit too patient in this case, but we do learn! In fact, we took charge of finding spare drives and came up with a solution within 2 hours, something the great after-sales support at Linksys or KiSS-technology could not accomplish after 6 months.

Trippaers Ronny (Hi-Jack) reiterates his in-person availability for all inquiries to discuss Linksys’ faulty equipment issues, inadequate service, and history of broken promises, as seen through the context of his years of work on the media player device scene. A long list of issues remains unresolved after Linksys acquired the Danish manufacturer. “To me, it’s clear that stall tactics and wasting time is KiSS management’s strategy to eventually have the topic die a slow death and live happily ever after. I don’t believe for one second that Linksys is unaware of these problems and our efforts to hold discussions with KiSS-technology to these issues. We have written Linksys directly about these issues, and are confident that they are more than aware about the problems. Small brands still go the extra mile for pleasing the customer, something that KiSS has never done and apparently will not do under Linksys leadership either. We again are caught up pleasing them by buying overpriced and unsupported hardware, and it’s time to change things around and have them work hard to show us more than their ability to talk nonsense. There’s a reason why companies sometimes lose millions of dollars, and this story is a perfect illustration.”

If you’d like more information about this topic, or to schedule a discussion on the subject, please contact us using our details below.

MPC Club is a community in supporting consumers during their use of the latest technology in Networked Entertainment and has close operations with over 25 brands for reviewing their products prior and after release to market. MPC Club is considered the main EU portal for Networked Media Players and is a none commercial organisation.

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This release was published on openPR.