Unreliable dealer

[Hua]

I've been working with a dealer for my new house for the past 18 months. He has done almost all the work, with a few items remaining. However, he has a tendency of disappearing and not responding to my messages, and any time we got to meet, he gave unreliable times. Now he is doing this again, as I am ready to move in. But the door station hasn't been installed, none of the keypads are programmed and the alarm system needs integration into control4.

My question is:

1. how do I find reliable dealers in my area? i checked the list of dealers and went on yelp, and most of them had few reviews (the one I went with actually had 5 star reviews!)

2. Do I have to rely on dealers to program my keypads etc? Can I do it myself?

Thank you!

[RyanE]

The usual answers to these are:

1) There are a lot of dealers on these forums that will make changes for homeowners who have equipment installed (or will install the equipment themselves).  Most have pretty good reputations for following up within a reasonable time, and charging reasonable rates.

2) You can purchase ComposerHE (Homeowner's Edition) to make many programming changes.  It does nearly everything that ComposerPro will do, with the exceptions of: you can't add new device drivers, you can't make bindings between device drivers, and and a handful of other things that are rarely used.  If an online dealer does those things for you, ComposerHE can do the rest.

RyanE

[Matt Lowe]

1 hour ago, Hua said:

 

2. Do I have to rely on dealers to program my keypads etc? Can I do it myself?

 

We have a training course for composer home edition. In this course, we will be using the same Composer Home software available to you as the end-user. We will go through real-life situations to automate your home, troubleshoot your system, and educate you about the tools you have as a consumer.  We hope this course will help to take full advantage of your investment in Control4. You can see our first video here for free on youtube.com . You can sign up here on our Pateron Site. We will be offering a lot of benefits for our supporters including discounts on all walts.com products, private discord channel, free email support, and much more.  Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions.   

[Matt Lowe]

1 hour ago, Hua said:

1. how do I find reliable dealers in my area? i checked the list of dealers and went on yelp, and most of them had few reviews (the one I went with actually had 5 star reviews!)

 

Your best bet is to go to control4.com and use the dealer locator and see who is in your area. Interview any or all of them. Or as Ryan stated myself and many other dealers here offer help. Can find some of my testimonials below.

 

[tekki70]

honestly ive been doing av for nearly 30 years, and installing, designing and programming for 10 years. We get so many new clients for takeover jobs its really crazy for so many reasons. Picking a dealer for your area i would suggest a few things, one thing i would do is to see how long they have been doing c4, and look at what level dealer they are, after that i would interview them and ask the lead time it takes for service calls, ask if they do remote service calls because any quality company will always try to fix a system remotely and save a truck roll. Also see if they offer service contracts. The company i work for i am our main service tech/programmer, i work out in the field most days, but also have days when im just in the office making changes to clients systems, i also at my discretion take on emergency calls nights and weekends and when im out with the family i just let the boss no and leave the company phone home. Trust me i understand, im a tech, but im also an end user and understand when a system is down, or not functioning properly it can be frustrating. i work tons of ours outside of my 40, its the nature of the business but some companies either don't have the manpower to handle the load of work, or just plain out are trunk slammers. Interview, choose wisely and i hope you find a quality dealer in your area.

[ekohn00]

On 2/7/2022 at 4:48 PM, Hua said:

 However, he has a tendency of disappearing

wow the flashback I got from my install 15 years ago....

As Tekki70 mentioned, what worked for me is going to the dealer locater and finding another dealer in my area, talking to them and getting that good feel. Hate to say luck had a lot to do with it too. Don't just think a large dealer is better.... in my case I ended up with a "new" dealer who had time to work with me. I talked to other dealers who also would disappear because they worked bigger installs first or just didn't maintain the staff for all the work....

Being you're in the middle of an install, all I can hope for is you didn't pay large amounts upfront. Maybe you'd get the dealers attention if you threaten no to pay for incomplete install??

[Control4Savant]

Dealer status were also recently updated. Always use the Control dealer locator to verify status. Lots of dealers keep previous years statuses on their own sites as a badge of honor and for sales which is terribly misleading to most people. I always suggest a mid level dealer. High end precious metal dealers CAN be very good and very well run but if they are a very large operation there is a lot of $ overhead that needs to be fed and I often acquire clients just based on them avoiding the “service contract”  SaaS mentality. They could also be reaping rewards of plug and play expensive c4 systems for the non tech luxury market which often leads to problems and over promises and poor support for anything out of their repeated process. “Authorized” dealers should just be receiving the line and getting used to the product, if an established dealership is only holding an authorized level they are likely not touching the product much on a daily basis and that can impact getting timely and appropriate service. Hold you dealer accountable. It is VERY easy and common for professionals to agree or promise to something they see work on paper (or on video) but never have implemented in the field.