Ultmost Technology Group, Fuss Digital, OVO Digital products
United States
Seller:
Ultmost Technology Group, Fuss Digital, OVO Digital products
Seller Website:
http://www.fussdigital.com
Seller Address:
160 Longping West Road, Longgang, Shenzhen, Guangdong, 518000, China
Initial contact with the supplier:
Trade Show
Type of product(s) being purchased:
Video projectors
Value of the Purchase Order when the incident occurred:
Under 1,000 USD
Destination market of order in question:
US or Canada
Type of Complaint(s):
missed lead times, contract violations, scams & other unethical activities
Stage of relationship with the supplier at the time of the incident:
Sampling/Testing
User Experience:
This is one of the strange things that can happen. We already had one of their mini video projectors tested and figured out how to make a mounting kit with cooling air ducts and sound proofing. I bought a sample projector but it actually didn’t work and with limited time on hand before the presentation I opened the unit and found out it was butchered, tried to fix it with little success. I sent it back and had to pay them repair fee. When the project boss heard it he was furious:”This is unheard off, a factory sending a bad unit and then even charged to fix it”. Only later I found out why it was so big deal, the total order was well over 3 million USD (I was told “maybe 4000USD” it’s a just a 4k simulator prototype” then later, “maybe 180k if we get the order”) and it was placed to a factory that was not even real video projector manufacturer, but hey the TI DPL engine kit just needs optics and case. That was just over 2 years ago.
In October 2014 I needed to show the projector to a client. I hooked it up as usual but now it started missing the colours one by one. I immediatelly sent it back to the factory and they said I should pay for a new motherboard because the warranty was over. Later they saw it had very low hours and promised to replace it with the next generation model. Now it’s February 2014 and Chinese New Year 2-3 week vacation, no projector, no word what happened. This wouldn’t be that bad, it’s just one of the sample projectors, but I heard from 3 other customers they have had similar problems and had decided not to use this factory anymore. “Too fishy, too unprofessional, we just can’t trust them with our orders that usually are several hundred thousand USD per item”.
I feel sorry about this factory (and Jerry, Lucky, Sam). I know they are quite big operation and have lot of different products, but something is not right. If your life depends on this factory, I would think twice. I didn’t lose any money on this, but what I have gathered the factory has probably lost close to 10 million in orders for my customer alone. I still have clients that I need to show these products, they have already seen them elsewhere and just like to have their own presentation/simulator systems built around them.
User Recommendations:
Even the factory is big it doesn’t mean they know what they are doing, sometimes they are just too busy. Our job is to find reliable suppliers, as a matter of fact sometimes the whole purchasing operation is just a test, the product doesn’t matter, we are just evaluating the sales team’s performance and another other group takes over and offeres the factory consultation for a fee how to improve their services.
I have read enough reports to be amazed how much money the Chinese factories lose every year because:
A. the sales people don’t know or understand their products and only have degree in English.
B. the sales people don’t/can’t give straight answers to simple questions.
C. the tech department does not understand that there are lot of buyers that are consultants, engineers or designers that are building systems around the factory products and are really not the actual importers but will make the buying decisions.
D. when something goes wrong the factory should immediatelly jump into action to find out exactly what happened and be very responsive. It’s all measured.
Knowing that lot of the problems foreign buyers have with Chinese suppliers are based on the knuckle head performances of the sales people, that can get the whole company in trouble. Sometimes the buyer is not even dealing with the actual factory sales person but a person that knows English and has just asked to sale the factory products on her own, or you are dealing with a sales person that used to work with the factory but is now just scamming the old and new customers. There are so many possibilities, that’s why Alibaba and Taobao are now in trouble with the Chinese government. Lot of factories will be going out of business this year, they just can’t get bank loans. What will happen is some of them will offer very good deals, get your money, but will not deliver just to get the local customers or suppliers that would kill them paid off, then just quit the business.
We finally got the fixed projector back in late October 2015 and it has worked fine, so at least that’s now OK.
I just had long discussion with my US colleague and he felt that in real life 6 months delay is totally unacceptable, there is just no excuse for it. For me personally I see this only a loss for the factory, after carefully tracking back the events I don’t think we lost that much money, maybe up to 2000USD the most. We just ended up recommending competitor’s products. I don’t have any problem buying from this Fuss Digital in the future, they have the capacity and technology to produce what we need and are quite big company with their own campus.
This projector issue was solved late last year, the factory finally fixed the unit and sent it back to me. Looking back, if I was the factory I would’ve just sent a new replacement unit, but it’s impossible know how important the customer is or how important it is for the customer to have the unit back quickly. I didn’t even know that we had caught a tiger from its tail thinking it’s just a head of a fluffy toy. After talking to my colleagues I’ve now realised we have lost quite a bit of money as we spent time and money creating installation kits and promoting them. But we are trying again with different approach now that all the commercial projects have been settled.
There are 5,600 cinemas with 28,000 screens in China, and that number is projected to nearly double this year. That means there will be more home theatres too and there will be need for silent running mini projectors. BTW, the noise issue really is what keeps many projectors out of apartment living rooms.
With China Film Group, Perfect World and Ratpac leading the way, our new clients/investors are making some interesting moves.
I finally received the video projector on Feb 18th 2015 and it was a new next generation B model. It lasted less than 20 hours of use (till June 21st) and lost power (burned LEDs?), had to send it back to the factory. They’ve been promising to send it back to me every week and I even thought I just go and pick it up, the factory is about 20 km away, but decided to wait. I have several other display models by different brands, so missing one doesn’t really hurt. Hopefully they will send improved C model this time.
Which brings me to a conversation I had at last week’s Hong Kong Electronics Expo. A sales guy from a competing company said this Supplier Blacklist website is one of their tools, saying: “We always bring this up to convince buyers that our products and service is better. You are not the only one that has problems with Ultmost and it’s not the only blacklist either. I want to thank them for their bad service and bringing us some good customers”. Hah, that’s quite funny, but after seeing their sales materials I think they were quite effective and to the point.
Thanks for the update. Great to hear the good suppliers recognize the value of staying off the blacklist. Hope this encourages those suppliers who sit on the line between good/bad to think twice before abusing the international buyers!
Funny thing happened, I got two messages from two companies one day apart warning me not to deal with this Ultmost Technology Group. I told them to submit their own experiences, waiting now….