Excellent Customer Service on my Everlast 255 EXT welder
My Everlast 255EXT experienced a failure on Saturday, July 30 a little after 6:00pm PST. I had a little TIG job I wanted to complete, so I turned the machine on, adjusted my gas flow, and then the back breaker on the welder tripped. My wall breaker did not. Reset and the unit tripped again. Since I'm running 240Vac, I decided to see if it would trip on 120Vac so I used the pigtail and plugged her up. She held just fine. So I figured I had an issue with the power board.
I removed the cover and found a capacitor had failed on the power board. I've been in electronics all my life, with extensive manufacturing experience...industrial and mil spec. This is infant mortality of a component. You can predict how many units of a component will fail early, but you cannot identify which specific component will fail. You can burn them in a specific amount of time and under stress, but you cannot catch all of these failures without wearing out the product.
Some might say that Everlast should use better components. However, it is challenging to find a 2200µF 250V Aluminum Capacitor with a better rating than 3000 Hrs @ 105°C. There is indication that the one Everlast uses might be better than 3000 hours (possibly 5000 hrs), though it is hard to find the exact specs.
I ending up digging into the unit by removing several boards/components. There is nothing that gave me heartburn from a build and component perspective.
Now on to the customer service aspect:
After finding this, I decided to call Mark (Lugweld) that sold me the unit. I'm on PST this time of year and he is on EST, so it was almost 10:00pm his time. He picked up immediately (I was surprised, expected his voice mail). Anyway, we walked through the failure and what I found. I asked if it would be possible to get a replacement board instead of shipping the unit back.
He asked if I could send him some photos and he would email them to Everlast first thing Monday. I did this Saturday evening. Monday morning at 10:00am I receive a call from Oleg (owner of Everlast). He was going to send me the power board until we both realized this is not just a plug in replacement. I told him I did not mind desoldering the board's wires (I had already taken out the capacitor and located a suitable replacement just incase). He said no....the unit is too new to have problems (I purchased this in April of this year). He asked if I could wait until later Monday evening, but he would arrange a new unit to be shipped to me.
That evening I received an email from Katya (Customer Service Rep. Everlast) stating that Oleg has a new 255EXT to ship me and asked that I use the UPS return label they supplied to ship my unit back. I then received an email from Oleg saying the factory had just completed a run of 255EXT's and I would be receiving one direct from the factory.
I had to go to Phoenix on Tuesday August 2, so I dropped my welder off at a UPS store on my way. (I did pay the UPS store $20 to package my welder properly. I had just used the original 255EXT box to ship a bunch of stuff to my daughter....never fails...should always keep the box!)
Today, August 3 I receive a message from DHL that I had a shipment arriving on Friday, August 5th! The package had been picked up on August 2 and was in route to me!
Wow, if that is not customer service than I simply do not know what is. Not only did the Rep. take my call late on a weekend, he followed it through to the HQ and the owner intervened on my behalf. He made it happen fully at his expense.
Customer service is everything. They have earned a customer for life. I appreciate Mark and the Everlast staff that made this easy for me.
(Disclaimer: I have no interest in Everlast. I'm just a small business/hobbyist customer.)
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