When I joined the group buy for the Skog Lite back in December 2018, I had recently discovered
plateless tray mount, but I didn’t yet have experience with shaky buys.
Turns out this had some major red flags.
They cut the price by a hundred dollars after poor sales, and didn’t even close the product
page after it was supposed to.
So knowing what I know now, I would have backed out.
After 13 months of nothing-updates, the thing finally delivered in January 2020, and much
to my surprise, it was totally broken.
The problem was a glaring one.
There was a portion of the bottom case near the USB port cutout that was straight up not
machined.
This caused the USB port to collide with the case, which meant that I could not screw it
in, or even just rest it flat.
I thought I was going crazy so I reached out to other people in the buy through the Percent
Discord Server.
One of the users showed a picture with the correct cutout.
The fact that this error would have been caught if they simply tried to put a PCB in is a
bad sign for Percent’s QC.
Also, it’s a little besides the point, but the interior of the bottom is riddled with
small dimples that just look really bad.
To fix the situation, I first reached out to Kono.
I still wanted the board, so I asked for a replacement, but unfortunately they didn’t
have one.
They did offer a full refund, which is more than usual in the hobby, but you are left
a bit salty after waiting so long.
Additionally, the board came in shrinkwrap probably straight from the factory, so I don’t
blame Kono for not catching the mistake, and I think their customer support response was
very good.
But even then, I wanted the board more than the money, so I decided to reach out to Percent.
As usual, I used my personal email which has no connection to my channel to contact guo@percent.studio.
I forgot how I found this address, but there’s also a contact us page on their site.
I sent it late January and to my surprise, they responded on the same day, saying that
they will send a replacement but will have to wait until after Chinese New Years.
They said they’d reach out when they’re ready.
This was an understandable response, and having just waited 13 months, what’s another month
right?
At this point, I shelved the Kono refund option.
Well, as you all know some world events went down at this time, so I headed to my parents’
place for 4 months and just let this sleep for a while.
When I saw that they were launching buys for the polycarbonate Canoe as well as the Canoe
2, I thought they were ready to get back in the game so I sent them follow-ups first in
March and second in July.
This latter one got a response of “Hello, Fugui from Percent”
This to me sounded like the message chain was broken, so I copied and pasted the original
message and have not heard back since.
I’ve also sent the message in a new email chain, as well as by using their contact us
form and none of those got a response.
Finally, I was browsing the Percent discord and saw that Fugui is active, so I sent a
DM on August 29 which is to this day unanswered.
So at this point, it’s starting to sound like I’m SOL which is a real shame because
I might have really liked the board.
I do acknowledge that Percent technically has no obligation to handle my customer service
request since my point of contact is Kono who had a solution, but because they said
they would send me a replacement, they should really follow up on their word.
Especially since I decided to not return the board based on Percent’s word.
Honestly just the fact that this problem came up at all is worrying.
There was that issue a while back with Canoe PCBs misbehaving and as far as I can tell
with the Geekhack page, those buyers were out of luck too.
Just to reiterate, my issue with Percent’s customer service is that they offered to help
and then ghosted.
If they denied me from the beginning, it honestly would have been fine because I could have
returned the board in a timely manner.
Now I’m caught in a weird situation where I’ll need to go back to Kono and say “hey
remember that return request from like a year ago?” which they will probably and understandably
decline.
But here, your takeaway should be that maybe if you’re buying Percent boards, which nowadays
run through their own website, you might have to consider that they won’t provide support
if something goes wrong.
As an example of a really positive experience I had, I contacted Tex a while back about
a broken trackpoint module on a Yoda II I bought in the aftermarket.
I was going to see if I can buy one, but they sent me a revised one for free by 2 day DHL
from Taiwan.
That to me is a creator willing to stand by their product.
Not really getting the same vibe from Percent.
Again, I understand that this problem is mostly my fault for rejecting the solution.
But I’m sure the sentiment of refunds not feeling adequate after waiting months for
a product is not unique to me.
Let me know down below if I’m just being a big baby.
Thanks