I think I am officially done with my Profilux!

[Matthias Gross]

I think it is time to comment some of these things

1. customer support
I think the picture drawn about GHL resp. the customer service from some is not right.
Please consider that GHL has several tenthousands of Mitras, ProfiLux and Dosers out there and compare the amount of "complaints" to that.
Of course, every single complaint is one too much, but as we all know it is not possible to satisfy everyone.
GHL Europe and GHL USA reply to EVERY customer email, in most cases in 1-2 business days. If someone can prove that GHL denied to give support then let me know, contact me personally, please.
We have a huge support forum.
We redesigned the entire website. Created a new download center. Added FAQs and How-Tos.
Maybe check out the new website: https://www.aquariumcomputer.com/
We have a service center in the USA. Repairs and upgrades are made in max. 2 days for stock items.
So I am not sure if the criticism is still justified in all areas, maybe some opinions about the GHL support are just a bit outdated.
And yes, I must admit that we had to ban some people in the past in our forum when it becomes too subjective or the tone gets too rude. The forum is there to help, and constructive cricism is welcome, but there is no room for campaigns against GHL, the products or even their staff.

2. firmware updates
Again, several tenthousands of products out there. The majority has no issues, at least we don't read much about it. We have so many customers doing nearly every update - without problems.
Most problems come from USB drivers (example: the last Windows 10 update was a nightmare, they overwrote the WORKING USB drivers - but GHL is blamed for that) or just not following the instuctions (example: for security reasons the update must be confirmed on the device). Another problem is caused by Parallels, not all USB drivers work there. So we recommend to use Bootcamp which fixes this.

If someone has a problem (firmware update or anything else): Get support in our support forum or contact us by email. I don't know what we can offer more.

3. myGHL
I am not sure when you looked the last time into it. I think we have a lot of features and the usability is quite good meanwhile. Stability and performance was also massively increased. When I compare with the cloud solutions of the competition I can't see that myGHL is slower or harder to use, in my opinion the opposite is the case.
I recommed to try it right now: https://www.myghl.com/
(I will write further information about myGHL in another post)

4. Software/Firmware updates
I wonder why some say there would be no development.
We had about 40 firmware updates for our products in the last 12 months.
GHL Control Center has features the competition can only dream of.
Of course we can't implement ALL customer wishes at once, but we permanently work on it.
For example, we redesigned the entire dosing section, have new lighting and simulation functions, not to mention all the myGHL stuff.

 

[AQD_ottawa]

Many thanks for your reply matthias.

If you read the thread it really has not a lot to do with the things you kindly list. Nobody is knocking the brand or hardware we all know its probably the most reliable unit out there, but for people firstly to know its out there it needs advertising and then at minimum a quick software set up guide. Just those two things will have a huge impact on the USA market.

We have all agreed there is no issue with the hardware, we have all agreed its a great product. I have personally stated Vinny does the best he can with support.

The product sales are due to no marketing that we as retailers see anyway
The lack of any functional manual relating to the software is a big negative. Even i am employing Gareth to set up my new system as i dont have time to "guess"
The firmware updating is still without doubt the products blind boil'
Service - having to send a controller back to Germany.
understanding USA market differences , example supplying the right USA fittings for your USA clients to install flow sensors. If you want a USA market you need to support that also.
profiLux touch pretty much forgotten about.
Does the doser 2 now support PAB products after over 2 years?

As i said we all know the product hardware is first class and local support has never been questioned ever over the years, its just about sorting out the basic things that hold back GHL success in the USA and they are not hard things to achieve.

Its great to see you getting involved and listening to constructive feedback as we all want the brand to grow in the USA

 

[Matthias Gross]

Service - having to send a controller back to Germany.

Only in very special cases when a repair can only be done by experts (e.g. soldering chips).
Standard repairs are done in the US service center.
Other companies handle this quite easy: They just don't repair if it gets too complicated.

And besides this - this public forum is not the platform to discuss marketing strategies.

 

[Matthias Gross]

I see some of these improvements have been asked for in 2014 & still waiting

Label the lever sensor

Send SMS with error Level,
Identify which level sensor is being triggered. ie leakage, sump, overflow, low flow,

option to limit the amount of emails sent when alarm trigged

- level sensors (or better the level control which uses the level sensor) can be labelled
- you can set how and when an email should be sent (cyclic every x minutes, at a certaim time, when alarm comes or goes ...) - so it is already possible to limit the amount of emails
- SMS and level - I just checked, the state of the level sensors is included in a sent SMS

What am I missing here?

You are very welcome if you want to further discuss (missing) features, but I recommend that we open a new thread, this thread here is already too mixed up in my opinion.

 

[SPotter]

- level sensors (or better the level control which uses the level sensor) can be labelled
- you can set how and when an email should be sent (cyclic every x minutes, at a certaim time, when alarm comes or goes ...) - so it is already possible to limit the amount of emails
- SMS and level - I just checked, the state of the level sensors is included in a sent SMS

What am I missing here?

What you're missing is that it's impossible to to get help on how to exactly do these things and what's not missing is your cavalier attitude about your product. We get that's there's thousands of people that own your product.....it doesn't mean that some still have problems with your product. I posted about the graphs on my touch pad not logging correctly...I was told someone would look into and never had a response after that. That's almost 6 months ago!

 

[Matthias Gross]

it doesn't mean that some still have problems with your product.

You are absolutely right. if there are questions then please contact us, either in the forum or by email, we are glad to help.
And yes, it is possible that something is overread by us (we have 6000 users in the forum with nearly 63000 posts), and yes, we also make mistakes. Or sometimes there is just no solution for a certain support issue at the time the question comes up.

In regards to the Touch graph issue.
We found a solution a few months ago and we posted it in the forum. It seems we didn't post it in every relating thread, please excuse.
The display manufacturer made a design change without informing us, this ended in problems to store data in the flash memory. We fixed it by adapting the display firmware, this update cures the problem. Please contact us directly in order toget this fixed. Thank you.

To

What you're missing is that it's impossible to to get help on how to exactly do these things

Why not? If there is a concrete question please ask it, preferably in our support forum. I am sure my support team will answer it. If it is overseen - send us an email.

 

[SPotter]

Wow.....the banning continues!!!! Mathias you better wake up before you drive your product into the ground!

 

[Matthias Gross]

Wow.....the banning continues!!!! Mathias you better wake up before you drive your product into the ground!

I have no idea what you are talking about or how you mean this. If you are a member of the GHL support forum who has been banned in the past and you think it is not justified then please contact me personally. I can't know who of them you are.

To give some numbers and avoid another wrong impression:
We have 6000 users in our forum. Since we started our forum 8 years ago we had exactly 6 users banned. Banning someone is the very last step.

If you were talking about banning in general, then yes, this is something unfortunately forum owners are forced to do from time to time, you'll see this in most of the other forums (here, Ultimate Reef, etc.), too.

Edit: Meanwhile I found you with your email-address in our forum, you had never a warning or were even banned, so I guess you were talking about banning in general.

 

[Matthias Gross]

So, this thread has more than 3000 views today and is more popular than most of the other topics.

I think I read and understood what has been said and I said what I can say.


I leave now this discussion, of course I will continue to monitor the GHL part of RC and give replies I someone has questions or needs support.

 

[Anim8me2]

Thanks for responding Matthias.
I started the thread and while the title was probably a result of my frustrations at the time and I did in fact resolve my problems, they simply hi-lighted the complexities of the upgrade path/procedures.
This is not to say they are impossible, but if I (as someone with a background in computers and programming) has issues then I am sure others with less experience might be even more frustrated.
As Mike said, we still think GHL makes a superior product and when asked I still recommend you over the competition . However you have to look at our position, the competition does a better job at disseminating information ( it's not enough to say " we posted in our forum") both via social media and direct emails. To date the only emails I have received from GHL have been marketing emails. I have a touch screen and while I have not experienced the problem with graphs it would have been great to get an email explaining the issue and telling me there was a fix for it.
I guess it's just a matter of style, but the other guys do a better job at this and as a pretty loyal GHL customer (Profilux3, 4 powerbars, 2 dosers, 4 Mitras 6200 ) I want you to understand that we as customers WANT you to succeed. We want GHL to grow and become a bigger deal in the market. So word of people being banned for anything short of outright foul language or defamatory statements makes us sit up and take notice.
No one wants GHL to quit (despite the thread title I am not giving up on GHL products) but it would be great to know that our suggestions, questions and criticisms are being listened to and responded to everywhere and not just in the official forum.
Thanks again for responding!

 

[doggydoc]

thanks for responding matthias.
I started the thread and while the title was probably a result of my frustrations at the time and i did in fact resolve my problems, they simply hi-lighted the complexities of the upgrade path/procedures.
This is not to say they are impossible, but if i (as someone with a background in computers and programming) has issues then i am sure others with less experience might be even more frustrated.
As mike said, we still think ghl makes a superior product and when asked i still recommend you over the competition . However you have to look at our position, the competition does a better job at disseminating information ( it's not enough to say " we posted in our forum") both via social media and direct emails. To date the only emails i have received from ghl have been marketing emails. I have a touch screen and while i have not experienced the problem with graphs it would have been great to get an email explaining the issue and telling me there was a fix for it.
I guess it's just a matter of style, but the other guys do a better job at this and as a pretty loyal ghl customer (profilux3, 4 powerbars, 2 dosers, 4 mitras 6200 ) i want you to understand that we as customers want you to succeed. We want ghl to grow and become a bigger deal in the market. So word of people being banned for anything short of outright foul language or defamatory statements makes us sit up and take notice.
No one wants ghl to quit (despite the thread title i am not giving up on ghl products) but it would be great to know that our suggestions, questions and criticisms are being listened to and responded to everywhere and not just in the official forum.
Thanks again for responding!

+1

 

[Matthias Gross]

Thanks to all, your ongoing loyality and support is very encouraging.
As said I heard you and there is always room to improve ... we are working on it.

 

[Antipodes]

Thanks for responding Matthias.
No one wants GHL to quit (despite the thread title I am not giving up on GHL products) but it would be great to know that our suggestions, questions and criticisms are being listened to and responded to everywhere and not just in the official forum.
Thanks again for responding!

Quote clipped for shortness.

But very well said Anim8me!