In an interview with MRTV earlier this month, Pimax COO Kevin Henderson revealed that the company moved its US-based customer support back to China.
UPDATE Jan 14: In response to UploadVR covering these statements, a Pimax representative claimed on Twitter that the company is preparing new service centers in France, Germany, and Poland. The headline and lead have been updated to reflect this. He did not refute the claim that support is currently all China-based, or that the US-based support is no longer active.
Pimax is a company which sells wide field of view PC VR headsets to enthusiasts. It was founded in 2016, and became widely known in 2017 after launching a Kickstarter campaign.
During the end of the interview, MRTV host Sebastian Ang forwarded recent emails he’s received from viewers expressing frustration with the customer support of Pimax. The viewers reported waiting weeks for replies which didn’t help with the actual problem they reported.
Surprisingly, Henderson himself called out the decision to move support to China. He described the problems with such a move:
Some of the people in tech support don’t speak the language that the requests are coming in. So they sometimes don’t understand what the request is. If the request comes in and it can be interpreted more than one way the response that you get may not even be related to your request, sometimes.
That’s why we created the US office and were working on the European offices, but those offices and those personnel aren’t really contributing anymore, it’s all coming out of Shanghai and that’s unfortunate.
At no time did we have less tickets than when the US office was contributing every day. We had actually got the tickets for US-based customers and Canada down to zero.
When asked why this decision was made, Henderson replied that he “wished” he could answer that, and expressed that it was not under his control. “They felt like it was more cost effective and better to do it from Shanghai“, he explained.
We spoke to Henderson at CES 2019 last year. At the time, the US support center seemed to be one of his main projects and he was excited about how it could improve customer service for the company. Henderson’s LinkedIn profile lists him as “Chief Operating Officer and Company Spokesperson”, but also as “Head of North American and European Operations”. With the loss of the US support center, it seems his role will now solely be as a spokesperson.
A Company Still Stuck In Kickstarter Mode
At CES 2020, Pimax announced even more headsets, adding to an already crowded lineup. A wider range of products makes customer support more challenging and costly, which could have led to the decision to relocate to China where labor costs are usually much lower.
The company has also repeatedly failed to meet its own deadlines for shipping new products, and reports of quality issues with what it does ship are widespread.
Pimax is the only company delivering ultra wide field of view VR to the consumer market- an important feature for immersion. Because of this unique offering, Pimax has a loyal (if comparatively smaller) following which the company can continue to try and up-sell with accessories and new headsets.
But Pimax is no longer a Kickstarter project, and this strategy can only last so long. Given the price of its products, if it wants to appeal to and retain a wider customer base it will need to get serious about support.
Hi, I was going to DM you but your Twitter DMs are not open unfortunately.
Following you now. 😉
Where are the Pimax 8kx impressions from CES 2020? You post this negative article before even telling us how the new headsets are?
We post the VR news, whether it’s negative or positive! 🙂
We have impressions of the Artisan coming later this week, AFAIK.
Impressions of the Artisan and not the 8kx? Cmon.
Did Pimax adopt you when you were a baby or something?
Arguments please, this is not an argument
If you don’t agree, just correct me where I’m wrong. You don’t need personal attacks
Not a personal attack, don’t be a snowflake. Just wondering when you put on the Pimax fanboy blinders, or if you have a personal stake in not allowing any criticism about your decision to buy into this company’s vision, despite it’s customer support failures.
Criticism is absolutely welcome. Criticising Pimax is what Pimax customers does every day, but many of us have noticed that UploadVR only covers negativity and never publishes the positive news. It’s so obvious…
They been adopted here by facebook but this is not the case for everyone, thats it.
To be fair winning an award does not automatically make anything good.
To be fair, that is not the point. A CES award is a news? I think so. What if Quest had won the award for the Link cable? How many trumpets would UploadVR play to celebrate?
The prize, however, was won because the product made a really positive impression. To everyone but UploadVR
They briefly discussed the 8kx in their podcast. Don’t hold your breath…glitches and issues from pimax as usual.
8kx won Digital Tech Trends best of show award, which is why I’m eager to hear Upload VR’s impressions
Watch the video and you’ll hear their impressions. I assume any forthcoming article will essentially reflect what they said about it in the video.
Don’t give a shit what UploadVR think about Pimax 8KX. I have heard enough, seen enough testimonies to say confidently that his headset is the absolute BEST headset in the whole entire world destroying all other headsets out there, that include Rift, Vive Pro, Valve Index, Quest!! Can’t wait. RTX 3000 series, please come out fast.
Annnnnd suddenly deciding not to go through with that 8K X purchase. :-/
Some have suggested they are facing financial difficulties and this further supports that narrative. Either way, the way senior leadership in China has run this company is bonkers. Investors should demand more experienced management.
listen to their VR Roundup from CES Martin. They dismissed Pimax from the beginning. They said that they demoed a faulty headset at CES that was flickering in the right eye (The one that was dropped my someone) He said it flickered within 5 minutes, but gave no impressions as to how it actually was in those 5 minutes.He then said you invited him to try the 8kx on the Flight Simulator (the one that everyone at the show was wow’ed with) and he refused because he had somewhere else to be. And thats it, they moved right on without giving any actual impressions of the headset, other than to say he noticed some distortion on the edges playing Boneworks I believe.
You do realize you 100% make uploadVR’s point? How can they take Pimax as a company seriously when you post things like the above? Come on Swe, cool down next time before posting something when representing Pimax
???
“As the European Marketing Director of Pimax I must say this article is plain bullsh*t” ??? Who says things like that? I mean somebody past 10 years would realize that’s not how a spokesperson of a serious company acts. He not only makes himself look stupid, but he makes Pimax looks extremely unprofessional. Pretty much UploadVR’s point.
Pimax should hire somebody who can keep his cool and actually has studied PR, You know, a professional. Sweviver should stick to being a security guard, where he can unleash his anger on people trespassing the property 🙂
Times change, if you hire a youtuber you should expect youtuber’s style. We all know Martin here and that’s why he was chosen. It would be pathetic if he stopped being himself now. Oculus was founded by a guy in a Hawaiian shirt and sandals… Times change.
Didn’t Oculus sack that guy? But you’re right, a youtuber is a youtuber. As a company Pimax should ask themselves: is that who we want to represent us in public? Or do we want somebody who actually has studied and trained for the job and acts as a professional? I mean, we clearly see the result above. Sweviver made UploadVR’s point: Right now Pimax is just not to be taken seriously as a company
Yes, I think you’re right, Oculus fired Palmer because of his Awayan shirts. 😉
As I said, times change, influencers today are more important than businessmen. Pimax is a small company, created by enthusiastic VR engineers, should make good products and should offer good customer service, but shouldn’t pretend to be Facebook or Samsung. It’s not.
Martin was hired because many people interested in VR loved his job, that’s why. You should give people what they ask for, not what you think they should ask for.
You do realize you 100% make uploadVR’s point? How can they take Pimax as a company seriously when you post things like the above? Come on Swe, cool down next time before posting something when representing Pimax