Update On Nox 900 Horseshoe Button Failure And A Surprise On Pinpoint Function

[Chase Goldman]

Folks,

Just wanted to update you all on my experience with ML Support and Repair following the discovery of the non-functioning Horseshoe (All Metal) button on my new Nox 900.   To recap, I received my new Nox 900 a week before Christmas and decided to "surprise" myself with a new toy.  The only one who was surprised was my wife - she muttered something like "another one of those?...etc. etc."  I guess you could say she was less surprised than perturbed at the thought of another machine taking up space.  Anyway, literally like an excited kid at Christmas, I went out to the yard to play with my new toy and was having fun discovering what it could do until I discovered what it couldn't - and that was go into All Metal mode because depressing the Horseshoe button did nothing at all.  The button was non-frunctional.  With the air audibly exiting my joy ballon, I contacted my dealer and was informed that I needed to deal direct with ML to get the issue resolved because they wanted to be aware of and collect failed Equinox 700/900 and Manticore machines to assess failures and feed them back to ML HQ. 

So Sun 12/25 was a bust.  Contacted dealer on 12/26 and registered the Nox 900 at ML.COM and then made contact with Minelab Support on 12/27.  They advised me to fill out a repair ticket with the pertinent information (Model, Place and Date of Purchase, Serial #, Description of the issue, etc.).  They had me send a copy of my receipt in to "verify the purchase was less than 30 days old".  The purpose of this determination is that ML has a policy that if a detector fails within the first 30 days, you get a complete new-in-box detector.  After they verified the 30-day thing they sent me a pre-paid FEDEX shipping lablel.  I packed my failed Nox 900 and all accessories back into the original retail box and shipping box and dropped it off at FEDEX late afternoon on Friday 12/30.  I think it missed the final 4pm pickup at my FEDEX store, so it probably did not leave the store until Saturday 12/31.  I received a confirmation of receipt and verification of the issue and a shipping notification on Thursday 1/5 and it arrived this afternoon 1/7.  I took it out to play and everything seems to work great.  All-in-all, as far as the support experience goes - now that I know the drill, it was not too bad, especially considering that it was during the holidays.

If you are in the US and need to get your brand new Nox 700/900 or Manticore fixed your best bet is to just go directly to the following Detector Center page and fill our a repair ticket with the pertinent information.  If you attempt to phone or email you are just going to delay the inevitable because that is what ML will tell you to do once they do return your call or respond to your email.  So register your product's Serial number on the ML Warranty Registration page and just fill out the repair ticket form which you can find on this page:

Detector Center - Start Here to Set Up a Repair (detectorrepair.com)

If you are unsure if your detector needs repair or need technical support, here is the contact information (USA/Canada):

NORTH AMERICA
USA
Detector Center

Pennsylvania, USA
T: 814 283 4270
E: newrepair@detectorrepair.com
W: www.detectorrepair.com

Canada
T: 1-888-949-6522
E: service@minelabamericas.com

Other regions are listed here:  Service & Support | Minelab Metal Detectors

Minelab Americas Customer Care Contact Info

THE AMERICAS (NORTH & SOUTH)
MINELAB AMERICAS INC
SALES, SUPPORT & SERVICE
123 Ambassador Drive, Suite 123
Naperville, IL  60540, USA

Customer Care:
1-877-SOS-MLAB (1-877-767-6522)
Toll Free: 1-888-949-6522
T: 1-630-401-8180
E: service@minelabamericas.com for Service
E: info@minelabamericas.com for Consumer products
E: countermine@minelab.com.au for Countermine products

The office supports regions: USA, Canada, Mexico, Central America, South America and The Caribbean.

Other regions see this page:  https://www.minelab.com/usa/contact-us

Break - Break

While op testing the Nox 900 this afternoon, I noticed neat little added "minor" feature.  Pinpoint mode has been improved in terms of responsiveness and doesn't (so far) seem to suffer from the volume glitches and lockups that still plague the Nox 600/800 even after a few updates that were meant to address those issues.  But the kicker is that now Target ID remains "live" while in pinpoint mode.  Effectively that means you can actually search in pinpoint mode and get target ID feedback.  I think that is cool and useful under certain conditions.  Surprised no one mentioned that one yet.  The user manual confirms this new "feature".

Anyway, hope to get some real world swinging in this week to report on 900 performance in Virginia.

Cheers,

Chase

[dsb]

6 hours ago, Chase Goldman said:

But the kicker is that now Target ID remains "live" while in pinpoint mode.  Effectively that means you can actually search in pinpoint mode and get target ID feedback.  I think that is cool and useful under certain conditions. 

NICE, glad your back in in the game.   The Live pinpoint deal might be a real plus.

[TedinVT]

Good report, Chase. Glad to hear they F I N A L L Y fixed the glitchy pinpoint! And live TID is the icing on the cake.