Pre-Order Discussions

2 hours ago, NotMario said:

Chinese manufacturers are nothing if not forthright. As a customer, they will readily show off their factories to increase your confidence. If you ever use Alibaba, you'll notice they often post pictures of their production lines - about as public facing as a factory can get.

In my experience, American manufacturers are far more private. Though that's probably more a function of regulatory burden rather than concern of scrutiny by the customer.

Nail on the head.

2 hours ago, NotMario said:

Honestly, a pretty big problem. Would imagine it has at least some business impact.

Yes.  But unfortunately, with a global-facing number (PJ for several years put the Genetry phone number on a slip in the inverter boxes)...Sean HAS to use spam protection just for his sanity.  If he didn't have call spam filtering on, he'd get 40-50 scam calls a day--worldwide incoming too.  Unfortunately, with our limited knowledge and abilities, that's the best option we have.  And doubly unfortunately, if customers "hammer" the system "trying to get through", the system auto flags them as spam calls, and blocks their number--without notifying Sean.

I wish we had a better solution.  Maybe someone has suggestions for avoiding those "enlargement" spam calls??

(oh you think I'm kidding?  Whew.)

I am not passing judgement. Only being honest from a customer perspective.

I've got a few thoughts that you guys have probably already considered...
1) Separate Lines for Separate Purposes (Give GS it's own number distinct from the PJ spammed number)
1a) This allows you to apply aggressive filtering to one, but not the other.
1b) Also, i realize this is hard to do because of the mnemonic. But FWIW, i find mnemonic numbers completely worthless.
2) Use a service like Google Voice, that has fairly sophisticated anti-spam, without being too aggressive.
2a) WRT 1-800. Probably completely useless for the US market - i live in the arctic, and i know of nobody who pays for long distance - and nobody that has for at least 10 years - and we are usually a solid 20 years behind the lower 48.

I have a little experience with PSTN, so if you have any particular question, i might have a rudimentary answer.

I second the idea of a second number for GS business

You definitely need to shed some of the spam callers

So here's the deal: We need a proper business phone setup that integrates into a CRM (customer relational management system).

That would solve 99% of our issues--and without changing phone numbers.  Every customer will be in the database--and when they call, we will KNOW exactly who it is, plus being able to pull up a complete record of all orders, previous calls, any email history, as well as notes, etc. the moment they call. 

At the moment, the current phone provider charges significantly more for an "address book" (i.e. so you can put names with numbers)...which Sean hasn't done due to costs.  And they don't provide any of the other integrations.

With a call system, we could easily see who has called in--and if on a call with a PJ customer, we could try to wrap up the call more quickly, and handle the GS customer.  Or if with a proper CRM system, I could drop in from time to time as necessary.

There's a lot of systems out there, but most of them fail at a one or more of the following requirements:

• supporting a toll-free number
• supporting SMS/MMS texting on the exact same toll-free number (most fail here; they use "relay SMS" numbers)
• supporting call queues / dialed extensions
• integration with a reasonably priced CRM system (i.e. not a $400/mo "Enterprise custom" system)

Closest I've come up with is RingCentral (phone) with AmoCRM (CRM system).

Another possibility was JobNimbus + Simplii.

In my research, I've classed 17 CRM systems as "definitely unusable."

Any suggestions?

use of a CRM would allow us to ignore unknown calls if we have other things to do--but even if we are busy with something else, we could answer existing GS customers.

Another option would be to "screen incoming calls"--i.e. you have to leave a message the very first time you call (as a very easy way of sorting out scammers), but once your number is in the system, we would know who it is and you could call in direct.

Can't say i know a professional solution.

But you could whip up a Freeswitch implementation that could integrate with your Sales DB. Totally free, too.
One thing that would pretty much knock out all spam would be a very basic IVR. Very easy to do with freeswitch. Just have a simple menu. Press 1 for Sales, Press 2 for Product Support. Most spam wont try sending a DTMF, so it will just die on the IVR menu.

You'd be surprised......all the spammers Sean's system has to deal with get past the dialer menus.  That doesn't even seem to slow them down.

Keap? They integrate directly with Twilio. not sure about their call screening options, but I think they offer texting and some other things.

Very pricey...$150-200/month + taxes and fees.

December 31, 2022.  Last day of the year.

• factory suddenly seems to have decided that they will order parts for the inverters, supposedly to get finished units "on the last boat to leave China" before the multi-week long Chinese New Year holiday.......but do I believe them?  That's only 2 weeks of time...and several of the parts they haven't ordered over the past months have a 3-week turnaround.  And that's 3 weeks on a good day.  Which China definitely is not having at the moment with the CCP "zero Covid" policy being abruptly canceled.
  • in other words, there's actually an excuse for manufacturing delays now, but that's an excuse that definitely wasn't there the past few months when the parts should have been ordered.

On our sourcing fronts:

• Sean now has the sample 12kw transformer from the official transformer supplier...now it's down to load testing.  Which I expect it will pass with flying colors; the only real test is to see if the outer plastic layer can be left on without causing the transformer to overheat.
• PCBs I ordered from the PCBA factory are awaiting relays from the relay factory--but messages I received last night from the relay factory indicate that SF Express (apparently a very common shipping service in China) has so many sick workers that they're prioritizing medical packages...not relay packages 😉
  • in short: relays are completed, packaged up and ready to go to the PCBA factory--but SF Express just hasn't picked them up due to staffing issues as a result of the "zero Covid" policy being canceled.
    • normal pickup is expected to resume on January 6th.
  • It's taken the PCBA factory a bit longer than the agreed-on 2 weeks to get the boards made--but at this point that doesn't matter, as they don't have the relays yet.
• The package of of current sensors, power buttons and thermistors (all customized for GS inverters) hasn't had any tracking updates for the past while...but it finally has some rather unbelievable tracking info (from Shanghai, China -> Anchorage, AK -> Osaka, Japan -> Louisville, KY in the space of 2 days!)  Whew, talk about getting bounced around...! 
  • ETA is January 4th to Sean's place.
  • according to the tracking, it was only "shipped" on Dec. 29th--but I know the supplier shipped it a week before that, it just sat around (likely due to staffing shortages).

Just before someone says "just buy American products"--remember that those have a 55-65 week lead time on 'em.  Lot worse!

in other words, there's actually an excuse for manufacturing delays now, but that's an excuse that definitely wasn't there the past few months when the parts should have been ordered.

Jack has a lot of practice  with the  ebay  30000 watt  PJ inverter and my ASL 11.0  transforner  and he doing it again and again   and get away with it  again  and again .     

As for the impossible tracking

I have seen that before

I've had stuff land in my box the day they showed it shipped and hit everywhere in between days prior 

You should just be straight with customers that there is little  chance they will ship units before CNY break.  At least another month of delay is likely with CNY break.   Do you have delay penalty clause in your contract?

Problem is.....there is no contract.

We're learning the hard way.

Every single future order will be either be a storefront order (with buyer protection) or on Alibaba with a contract and Purchase Protection.  This sort of issue will never happen again.

January 8, 2023:

• We finally get an ounce of progress from the factory...only this is what I expected to see three months ago.
• Some 12kw cases have been prepared--and yes, those are PJ cases in the background.  Almost looks like galvanized steel on some of those (fortunately not on the GS cases!)

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On my sourcing fronts:

• The relays finally got delivered to the new PCBA company...and 2 days later they provided me with a photo of one of our control boards with SMD parts placed, asking to verify the orientation of several parts.  (All was good.)  Next they will run the SMD assembly on the entire run of boards...followed by verifying orientation of through-hole parts, then doing the through-hole assembly.