New Minelab Blues

[phrunt]

They should do a submit informaiton form on their website where users can report what they're finding with firmware updates or with detectors in general, a bit like a feedback form, that way they'll gather more information along with not having to search through various forums and Facebook posts to find out information about users' thoughts, if end users could just submit what they're finding it would be beneficial for them, I think and cut down the number of complaints on forums.

It's the ultimate way of showing they care.  As many know I do a lot of skiing over winter, I scan my pass going onto lifts and then the ski field knows where I've been and how many runs I've done and I can see my statistics for the season, another benefit of this is they gather informaiton about where people are going and what they're doing, more often than not after a day of skiing I get an email asking me to fill out a survey on my day, it asks various questions about my thoughts on things that matter like if I used the cafes and how my food was, if I used the toilets and how I found them for cleanliness etc, along with my thoughts on the snow conditions, grooming of the snow and how the lifts were organized with any queues and so on.  They also have a feedback field at the end where you can type anything about your day, and to ensure people fill it out they randomly give away passes to people who have done the survey.  

Imagine how much valuable information Minelab could gather easily doing something similar, when you register your warranty they have your email address, they could send out a random survey link asking how you're going with your detector, any changes or improvements you would like to see, any problems you're having.  The same with firmware updates, a month or so after you've updated, they could send out a survey to see how it's going or even just have a form on the website you could fill out and submit any video of your problems if any.   It might even keep a lot of the complaint videos off Youtube damaging their brand.

If they're going to make us beta testers they may as well do it thoroughly and take advantage of it in full, it would benefit us all including them to have a better product.

[Gold Catcher]

56 minutes ago, phrunt said:

They should do a submit informaiton form on their website where users can report what they're finding with firmware updates or with detectors in general, a bit like a feedback form, that way they'll gather more information along with not having to search through various forums and Facebook posts to find out information about users' thoughts, if end users could just submit what they're finding it would be beneficial for them, I think and cut down the number of complaints on forums.

It's the ultimate way of showing they care.  As many know I do a lot of skiing over winter, I scan my pass going onto lifts and then the ski field knows where I've been and how many runs I've done and I can see my statistics for the season, another benefit of this is they gather informaiton about where people are going and what they're doing, more often than not after a day of skiing I get an email asking me to fill out a survey on my day, it asks various questions about my thoughts on things that matter like if I used the cafes and how my food was, if I used the toilets and how I found them for cleanliness etc, along with my thoughts on the snow conditions, grooming of the snow and how the lifts were organized with any queues and so on.  They also have a feedback field at the end where you can type anything about your day, and to ensure people fill it out they randomly give away passes to people who have done the survey.  

Imagine how much valuable information Minelab could gather easily doing something similar, when you register your warranty they have your email address, they could send out a random survey link asking how you're going with your detector, any changes or improvements you would like to see, any problems you're having.  The same with firmware updates, a month or so after you've updated, they could send out a survey to see how it's going or even just have a form on the website you could fill out and submit any video of your problems if any.   It might even keep a lot of the complaint videos off Youtube damaging their brand.

If they're going to make us beta testers they may as well do it thoroughly and take advantage of it in full, it would benefit us all including them to have a better product.

That would be the most efficient way to fix issues. But they might be worried about receiving so much negative feedback, visible to everyone, that it might hurt the brand and people would shy away from buying their products. Or they could just not show it.

GC

[phrunt]

5 hours ago, Gold Catcher said:

That would be the most efficient way to fix issues. But they might be worried about receiving so much negative feedback, visible to everyone, that it might hurt the brand and people would shy away from buying their products. Or they could just not show it.

GC

Yes, it would just go to them, nobody would see it.  

[PimentoUK]

Quote:"Even better a Nox ID Mode, where you can switch to the Nox number of ID's if you want to. Can't be that hard in software ..."

I commented on the idea of User-selectable ID scaling in the "Equinox Improvements" thread:

Eqx New Features thread

In summary, different search modes should have differently-calibrated ID scales, with a user-selectable choice of the existing "single scale" for those who like it.

That post was written before the 900 / Mandingo were released, but the general idea is still applicable.

[jasong]

12 hours ago, phrunt said:

Yes, it would just go to them their trash folder, nobody (including them) would see it.  

😄

Sorry couldn't resist. But in all likelihood, may not be far from reality. Sendto:trash the entire email account, save them the trouble of sorting through pesky customer issues requiring boilerplate gaslighting responses, business department racks up another few thousand $k in savings for the books, win. 

[phrunt]

To their credit they listened with the tiny gold complaint on the Manticore, which I'm thankful for.  I can't imagine too many people contacted them saying it's not as good as the Equinox 800 on tiny gold nuggets when comparing 11" coil with 11" coil.  When I contacted them to discuss it, they were fantastic and then, a couple of months later a firmware update comes out that largely sorted it out.

Their issue is lack of communication with their customer base on a global scale, yes individually if you contact them, they're great and tell you what you need to know, I speak for Minelab Australia rather than a middle man like one of the overseas branches largely there to handle sales and distribution.   They have the means to do it with their website and they're active on Facebook for marketing so keeping customers updated on delays in product, eta's, problems etc would be cheap and easy yet they don't do it and it just annoys people.  They need a middle ground between Nokta that are excessive with communication and that it itself can be problematic.  

They should have never killed off Treasure talk and moved onto social media detect-spurts either, big mistake.  They went from technical experts writing excellent informative documents to marketers doing a poor job of representing a product.

I'm a massive Minelab fan, they're my favourites by far as by and large are their products but they're certainly not perfect, nor are their products so they should appreciate constructive feedback to help improve themselves as a business and their product, and surveys or feedback forms are a way to do so.

[BigSkyGuy]

On 7/29/2023 at 11:17 AM, UT Dave said:

I wonder, how the update with the M8, considering #2, fares on tiny gold compared to the M8 on the old version.  Complications, always complications 😁.

On the Manticore plus side, I was reminded this morning of how fast the Manticore is.  It think it does better than the 800 at finding good targets amongst non-ferrous park trash.  With the 11" coil at least.  This morning I was in a spot I've hit with the 800 before.  There's a section with heavy EMI and heavy non-ferrous trash, that I've definitely plucked some quarters and dimes out of with the 800, but it's not the easiest ground to detect.  But scrubbing it with the Manticore this morning, once again, I was reminded that it really does do better than the 800 for me in those conditions.  Cherry picked about $7 in clad, a tungsten and a few junk rings and only four trash items out of there in two hours before the temperature started getting up there.  Considering what I know of the spot from hitting it in the past, that was nothing to complain about.

- Dave

I wonder if the MC is open gate audio while the Nox 800 is closed gate audio. The reason that I say this is the Nox on a mixed ferrous/nonferrous signal would give kind of a chopped nonferrous signal with intermittent iron tones. If it soulded good and solid in the center, I would dig. On the MC the signal is more blended ferrous/nonferrous, including average signals when a nail is in the same hole with a coin. For instance, on the MC a nail might drag down a dime signal from 81-82 into the 50s. The Nox on the other hand would signal on both at different times in an intermittent fashion (if it alerted on the high tone at all). I think this gives the MC an advantage over the Nox in this regard.