My Experience

[1unhappycustomer]

I’ll keep this succinct – it has been 12 months of pure hell with C4 products. The installers were picked from the C4 website and I foolishly assumed that as such they would be trained. Turned out they had never installed a C4 system and I was the test. Well they failed.

OK, a bad installation company – it happens but, I think C4 should vet their dealers so the public does not get screwed as I did. Enough on that point, I was stupid and unlucky.

Now C4 does not offer customer support to consumers so when you end up with a lawsuit against the installer you have zero support.

So, I get a highly reputable company who do C4 to come in and check the system over. The result is that while the original installation was a bit funky nonetheless with some proper programming from someone that knows what they are doing all the C4 components are working correctly. First thing they do is check software version and load 1.3.2. As they leave they start a scan (makes sense) but don’t need to hang around for 3 hours or more @ $250+ an hour to see it completed. WRONG!! ………….

V-1.3.2 corrupts all audio (100’s of albums as single tracks), lost albums, albums on controller that I never had. 2 weeks later the solution is to load all albums again, wipe media file and start again (takes 2 weeks to load and 2.5 days to re-install). On completion ALL artwork for CD’s lost. 2 weeks later and I’m told that the media controller is full (less than 7000 tracks) as they were ripped at 320. Solution offered = buy an external drive. This has not been installed yet so we will see what issues this latest fix brings (C4 support seems to be alike to rearranging the deckchairs on The Titanic).

During the whole escapade the dealer is as embarrassed as all hell at the lack of support from C4. This forum shows that new software can cause issues like these and C4 does nothing to support its customer base – they know there’s an issue but they do nothing and worse still they don’t even support their major dealers.

I had Crestron in my previous house – I chose C4 because I liked the idea of seamless components (all C4 rather than Crestron, Lutron, Audiorequest etc) but it just does not work. Money was not an issue. For my new house the dealer is recommending Crestron (now they won’t touch C4 on larger installations) and I have had to tell friends and business associates not to go the C4 route. That’s probably over $500k in lost business alone.

I understand business and the dynamics of getting product out the door to provide cashflow and name recognition while dealing with immature products that need patches but support the customer base when you reach a good number or you’re destined for failure and C4 is.

[slemay]

You don't need to cross post between different forums - FYI.