To the members of the HifiRose community: Let the open, timely and transparent dialogue continue so we can inform Hifi Rose of issues in realtime and hopefully impact change to benefit current and future Hifi Rose equipment owners.
Hifi Rose merely a hobby brand or a serious business, that is the question, part 2
(My apologies for the lengthy post. Worth the read as I do my best to advocate for change to benefit us all).
Hifi Rose professes to be customer centric but rarely responds to technical requests for help. Hifi Rose often attempts to fix one problem via a system update but then breaks other features with no line of sight for additional fixes for what was working fine prior. Hifi Rose professes to welcome feedback and suggestion for updates but rarely, if ever incorporates that feedback. Now Hifi Rose removes a feature (minor for some not so minor for others) which degrades the functionality of the device (since the original software / product introduction) with little to no explanation.
I was one of the first to receive the 150b in the USA so I was fully prepared to be an early adopter and suffer the consequences accordingly. We are now 2+ years out since Mofi started distributing the Hifi Rose products in the USA and Canada. During my experience I have seen bugs come and go and new ones introduced. Expected behavior as the product matures. But what I did NOT expect is the total lack of customer support for newbie users and mature users alike. Issues arise and users seek support from Hifi Rose via this forum and directly through corporate email outreach. Overwhelmingly (I am not alone in my experience) Hifi Rose either doesn’t respond at all, or offers a very delayed response which is often filled with misinformation. Hifi Rose is often empathic and vows to be / do better but they never do in fact they have gotten worse as more users have adopted the technology.
With each iteration of system upgrades fingers are always crossed that nothing is broken and what was broken before is fixed. But that too never happens. For example in Dec '22 Hifi Rose introduced a system update that broke VU meters for those of us that use an external DAC via USB. Hifi Rose reproduced the error in short order and committed to a remedy in 2 weeks. Hifi Rose missed that date and 7 consecutive promised dates thereafter with no explanation. Finally after 94 days it was fixed keeping in mind this was an error they caused and it took them 94 days to fix. Unacceptable.
There are many examples like the above. These products are not normal Hifi they are computers and require and deserve support accordingly. There is a lot of margin in this product and the volume sold warrants an entire customer service team not just one guy in Korea who sometimes is available but often not. I did not signup for that.
All I mentioned was on the software side. But there have been a slew of issues on the hardware side where customers were without their devices for months as remedy was sought. Also unacceptable.
Distributors are barely supported by Hifi Rose as documented from Mofi directly in their email responses to me regarding a technical issue I was experiencing. Hifi Rose is slow to respond to them and has not provided the tools and training to fully support the domestic USA market. Again, unacceptable. The distributors don’t have parts on hand to even do minor warranty repairs. The parts are shipped directly from Korea to the distributor a process which can take weeks and even months and the poor customer waits with zero recourse.
So this is all about expectation setting. If I spend 5k on a Hifi device / computer the minimum expectation is that the device will work the same as the day I purchased it and any added features is a bonus but features taken away or broken from when I first purchased the device is once again unacceptable. Another expectation is there is technical and warranty support after the sale because a percentage of your purchase price supports after sales services and to date not many are being supported in a timely and complete manor. That is not an opinion that is a fact.
Hifi Rose took off like a rocket ship when they starting selling to North America and the EU so I ask again is Hifi Rose a hobby brand or a real business. A real business fully supports all levels of customers (newbies to mature) for presale and after sales support and warranty services. That is what a real brand does and sadly is a huge void in the Hifi Rose experience and one that could cripple the brand.
I have seen so many great products die due to a simple lack of customer support. If the expectations were set upfront that if you buy a Hifi Rose product today there is little to no support for you in the future (I am not talking updates but real support for today’s experiences) then I would be okay with that because that was correct expectation setting but Hifi Rose does not set expectations that way when they sell their products very much the opposite.
Just my 2 cents. Take it for what it is but Hifi Rose is at a crossroads and they need to listen to the customers that have good experiences and bad alike so the consumer experience can be refined along with the device / software itself.