Hammerheads Disregard for its Customers!
The recent customer uproar about the last update and Hammerheads' lack of response is the icing on a very tasteless cake!
Ali was very quick to reply to a question about a bug with the Varia Radar and gave a definite time scale for the resolution of that bug. However, his generic, company written reply(?) to the UI update was further proof that Hammerhead has no regard for what its customers really want or desire for the Karoo2. It was the usual 'reply without actually giving an answer' that Hammerhead excels at. Although, reading between the lines, I got the impression that the reply implied that Hammerhead are on a path that didn't include customer wishes. Let's see if that is true!
Nearly all of the most requested customer wishes are met with similar generic responses. Sometimes, one of the team will give a promise that a particular change 'is in production and will be implemented in a future update'. If you check the threads on this site, you can see that a lot of these 'promises' are still 'in production' 2 or 3 years later! The most recent 'promise' was for an option to turn off the Re-routing. I believe that was 3 months ago now.
Anna Ronkeinen once suggested in a thread, that for Hammerhead to go back on one of their updates would be an admission that they were wrong in the first place. She was absolutely correct! If they could step round their egos, they might just listen to the thoughts of the people who pay their wages!
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Hi Lee A Dorney, I happened to come across your alleged response by chance as it is not to be found in the original post. As usual, this message is written in a subtly aggressive tone that, based on my experience, rarely, if ever, achieves its intended goal. Evidently, you are not inclined to alter this approach. If you were hoping to engage me in a verbal altercation, I must regrettably disappoint you. I prefer to spend my leisure time cycling rather than on the internet. This will be the sole response in this matter.
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I wrote to the support team expressing how many of their users are gravely disappointed in the new UI and how Ali’s canned response makes the situation even worse.
The immediate email I received:
Hi there!
Thank you for reaching out to Hammerhead. We will get back to you shortly.
We are currently experiencing a higher than usual volume of inquiries, which may result in a delayed response time. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
So obviously Hammerhead is getting hammered with complaints and hasn’t quite figured out what to about it because doing something about it would mean admitting they made a mess for themselves.
Now that Wahoo creatively solved their financial issues without selling their souls to big corporation I’m happy to be back on team Wahoo. Best thing is a clean interface and actually being able to see the screen in direct sunlight.
Sadly Hanmerhead you sold your souls because you couldn’t figure out how to creatively make it on your own.
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@Lee. Thanks for the comment. The Wahoo UI is just such a clean stress free experience all around in my opinion. This latest move from HH just confirmed less is often more - and I suspect the primary reason more pro teams at the top of the sport are now using Wahoo than Garmin and Hammerhead.
I really do want to love Hammerhead. I just think they’ve backed themselves into a corner with over promising and under delivering and now it feels like they’ve really created a headache for themselves with this latest update and I’m not convinced they have a clear direction set or know how to actually address this PR nightmare. I would have rather have seen them invest in a vibrant screen that you can actually see clearly in direct sunlight. The screen of course is brilliant out of daylight but once it gets under the sun it’s been horrible. I’m pretty much over being patient with the company.
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@Stephen Black. I live in Australia and have so much trouble seeing the screen in the (very) bright sunlight 😎.
I have to agree with you that Hammerhead over promised and under delivered! It was mentioned quite some time ago that most owners would rather the company concentrated on taking time to deliver stable, bug free updates. The 2-week time scale was always unsustainable IMHO. This latest UI firestorm is the culmination of Hammerhead's continued slide down the bike computer hierarchy. Most people hate to complain and will wait and hope that a situation improves, but the sheer volume of negative responses to the new UI shows that the summit of patience has been reached.
Like @Lee A Dorney said, I also really wanted to love Hammerhead, but their continued bland 'no replies' and apparent disregard for their customers suggests arrogance and a 'We know better than you' attitude. It is all very sad!
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Hi All,
We appreciate the time you all have devoted to provide us the continuous feedback on the new update. Although, from the support team we cannot provide any immediate solution to our end users, I assure you that all the feedback has been shared with the Product team. Once I have more update from the Product on the next steps, I will be happy to share them with you all.
Note: Please expect slower turn around times as we are overwhelmed with incoming inquiries relating to currently ongoing Karoo 2 sales and trade-up requests.
Thank you.
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@Ali
I won't hold my breath. Karoo SDK was developed from 11.1.2021 to 11.2.2021 if one looks at github commit history. One whole month two+ years ago. It's not something new.
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