SuperTrickler warranty service

[sgav8r]

Just curious if anyone has sent their SuperTrickler in for warranty repair in the US at all? If so how did it go, and was there measurable improvement?

My unit has been SO erratic and unpredictable (the “Fine H.R.F.” specifically) with Varget, that they authorized me to send it in for replacement of the vibratory tube/motor under warranty. It’s been shipped off to Steve Fine in Michigan so fingers crossed. The expected turnaround is actually pretty quick. Peter and Rex quite were helpful with the troubleshooting, and even though I purchased the unit used, they authorized the warranty work. I’m hopeful that it will fix the problem!

 

[Stud Duck]

Let us know how this goes.

 

[sgav8r]

I received an email back today stating that the vibratory motor and tube have been replaced, and the unit’s being shipped back out to me in the morning. Tracking number already provided. That was FAST considering the unit only arrived for repair yesterday, so we’re talking about a one day turnaround! Wow.

 

[Krogen]

I received an email back today stating that the vibratory motor and tube have been replaced, and the unit’s being shipped back out to me in the morning. Tracking number already provided. That was FAST considering the unit only arrived for repair yesterday, so we’re talking about a one day turnaround! Wow.

Wow! That is spectacular customer support. It speaks highly of the folks running the operation.

 

[Chiquita]

It seems like the ST team stands behind their products.

 

[sgav8r]

It seems like the ST team stands behind their products.

They definitely do, yes. Especially given the fact that I am not the original purchaser of my ST. I bought it used off a member on The Hide. I of course told them this, and I had to guess at when it was purchased new, because I honestly do not know. I was 100% willing to pay for the repair which honestly is quite reasonably priced. They approved a warranty repair though without me ever even asking for one.

I had previously reached out to Steve Fine inquiring about what the cost would be to replace the vibratory tube and motor assembly if it needed it. I believe the whole repair (parts and labor) would be under $100, plus shipping each way. So you can figure, worst case scenario, you’d be out of pocket about $150 or so to replace the vibratory tube and motor assembly in your SuperTrickler.

I was told that is really the only repair issue they ever see, as I guess it’s a fairly robust and well-built machine overall. This surprised me because it’s so light and plasticky feeling, I assumed it was pretty fragile. Others have said it before, I think that vibratory tube is the Achilles heel of the SuperTrickler. We’ll see if having a new one makes a difference. I do love fiddling with the SuperTrickler, but at the end of the day my ATV4 is the goto dispenser. Just power it up, calibrate it once, and get to work, no overthrows. Not the same process with a SuperTrickler, even on its best day.

 

[sgav8r]

UPDATE:
Well, I got the SuperTrickler back from warranty repair yesterday. I don’t really even know where to begin with what a clusterfuck this whole thing is now…

I got it set up and all reset, I did a complete hard reset since it had new hardware installed. I figure it’d be best to start with no preconfigured settings and just get it going from scratch. Not really a big deal because when I was troubleshooting it before I must have done a hard reset a dozen times!

I let it warm up for about 30 minutes and I even (unnecessarily) re-calibrated the scale it sits on. All in the name of having a nice fresh new beginning. I filled it with Varget, started up a fresh powder profile with moderate AI learning selected. I primed both tubes and fully warmed up the vibratory tube. Then I let it run base vibratory speed auto-set and saved that data. Ready to dispense, so I set my usual target weight of 45.5gn with +/- .02 tolerance and let it begin learning. Well… it’s bad. Really bad. Worse than before even.

It simply will not stabilize the fine settings. There is literally nothing you can do with this machine to make it run smoothly. It’s seriously so bad that it can’t even get out of AI learning. It just starts dispensing and once it begins collecting data (after 5-10 charges) it never goes above about a 30% success rate and the avg charge time fluctuates between about 20 and 30 seconds. I reset the profile multiple times and tried again and again to no avail.

I then decided that since it used to dispense N140 and TAC really nicely I’d give those a try. Same issues I had with Varget. No stability. Fine speeds all over the place. Never above 35% success rate. Total disaster. The thing is absolutely unusable in this condition.

So naturally I reached back out to Peter with videos of it doing what it does. He was kind enough to send me a beta version of the NEW firmware (as yet unreleased), V3.3.1. Apparently there’s a known issue in 3.3.0 with fine speed algorithms and 3.3.1 has a fix for that. I was super hopeful that this would be the solution so this morning I woke up early and installed it. I again did a reset and tried to run Varget. Exact same problems as before. No stability in the fine settings and never above a 30% success rate. Unusable.

I have now contacted Peter, he’s out of options as he deals only with software. I’ve messaged Rex, he’s busy and will get back to me (I sent him several videos of it doing what it’s doing). And I’ve emailed Steve, who did the “repair”. I believe he is on a vacation so I don’t expect a resolution from him right away.

In any event I’m pretty frustrated and really sort of pissed off about the whole thing. I have about an $800 paperweight sitting on my bench and I’m not particularly confident in the chances of getting any resolution. I cannot sell the unit in its current state. I’m not confident that it can be repaired. Ultimately I hope that SuperTrickler will either replace it, or buy it back from me. Not sure the chances of that since I bought it used. At least they accepted it as a “warranty” repair, so at this point they’ve more or less accepted responsibility for whatever is wrong with it (legally speaking).

I will post updates. Hopefully the problem will be solved as soon as possible. I honestly think I want to wash my hands of the SuperTrickler altogether. The quickest (and actually very tempting) solution is to yank the fucking thing off my reloading bench and smash it against a brick wall. As therapeutic as that would be, I really don’t want to just piss away the money I spent on the thing!

 

[Krogen]

Thank you for posting about your continued experiences with tricklers. Your early comments helped me decide on an AutoTrickler. It does exactly what I need without fuss. I am sooooo glad I didn't go down an alternate route. Your post above supports my decision 100+ percent. I'm sorry you've been hassling with this, but appreciative that you kept me out of the quagmire.

Thanks so much @sgav8r !!!

 

[sgav8r]

Thank you for posting about your continued experiences with tricklers. Your early comments helped me decide on an AutoTrickler. It does exactly what I need without fuss. I am sooooo glad I didn't go down an alternate route. Your post above supports my decision 100+ percent. I'm sorry you've been hassling with this, but appreciative that you kept me out of the quagmire.

Thanks so much @sgav8r !!!

Dude I’m so glad to hear that. At least something positive can be said about this then!

When the SuperTrickler WAS working, the first week or two, it was a little fun to mess around with. But even when it’s operating the way it’s supposed to, it’s WAY more trouble than it’s worth. So much adjusting and tinkering and tweaking, just to get it to do what the ATV4 will sit there and do over, and over, and over, with zero fuss.

 

[sgav8r]

Well it seems like they at least want to make it right. We’ll see though…

I’ve been upfront right from the jump that I did not buy the SuperTrickler brand new. I’m not quite sure how he intends to “refund” me as I bought it off the forum member on The Hide. I’d be perfectly happy with a replacement though. One that works hopefully. Though at this point I’m not sure the juice is worth the squeeze with the SuperTrickler!

 

[jxb]

Oh I'm pretty sure they have made more than enough $$$ over the years to afford the occasional refund, it's called good will and pays dividends.

Presume when you say reset, you did a full factory reset after any firmware update and start from there, not one of the lesser resets (there's several options). Even though this is not supposed to be required I have found with mine over many firmware updates including some beta along the way that my unit simply requires this (or it is all over the map).

I've had the similar issues as yours with some firmware versions and even doing the factory reset didn't help but nothing recently and I mostly run varget through it. Lately it takes maybe four throws for it to nail it and I might get 1-2 overthrows out of the next 30-40. I'm fine with that. I have found that I do need to manually fine tune it some, but that's only to get the speed down to +/- 10 seconds area.

I would have thought they would test it before sending it back to you and confirm it was working to spec and even better do that with varget since that's what you're having issues with, but maybe not.

 

[sgav8r]

Oh I'm pretty sure they have made more than enough $$$ over the years to afford the occasional refund, it's called good will and pays dividends.

Presume when you say reset, you did a full factory reset after any firmware update and start from there, not one of the lesser resets (there's several options). Even though this is not supposed to be required I have found with mine over many firmware updates including some beta along the way that my unit simply requires this (or it is all over the map).

I've had the similar issues as yours with some firmware versions and even doing the factory reset didn't help but nothing recently and I mostly run varget through it. Lately it takes maybe four throws for it to nail it and I might get 1-2 overthrows out of the next 30-40. I'm fine with that. I have found that I do need to manually fine tune it some, but that's only to get the speed down to +/- 10 seconds area.

I would have thought they would test it before sending it back to you and confirm it was working to spec and even better do that with varget since that's what you're having issues with, but maybe not.

Oh yes. Full “deep system” restore multiple times. Including several times since the beta FW was given to me. I’m now pretty much in the habit of deep system restoring it every time I fire it up because all I’ve been doing with it for the past 48hrs is troubleshooting.

Today everything took a turn for the worse. Rex pretty much decided there would be no more warranty coverage (claims he didn’t know I bought it used). He then switched gears and directed me to send the unit to one of his “beta-testers in the US” he put me in touch with someone and I was instructed to send him my ST, on MY dime. “To see if somethings wrong it…” Rex said. This took my frustration level to a new high and I expressed my dissatisfaction to Rex. He said the ST does have a 24 month transferable warranty but you need to have the original invoice to verify it’s not stolen (who’s stealing SuperTricklers lol). Well I was able to contact the user from TheHide I bought it from and he provided a screenshot of his purchase of the ST brand new from Annarchy Outdoors in July of 25. So that means the thing is not even six months old. Hopefully Rex honors the warranty now.

And you’re right! I can’t imagine how INSANE the profit margin has to be on these things. The most expensive component is probably that touchscreen they’re so proud of. I bet they’re bought in bulk from China for $10 a piece. The machine is essentially a hunk of plastic, a pcb board, a touchscreen, a stepper motor, a tiny little vibrating motor and two tubes. That’s it. Probably costs under $100USD to build. Even in Denmark.

 

[sgav8r]

Incidentally, as a “technical” update, I did determine a little more about what specifically is going on with the ST. I’m fairly sure it has to with the POWER going to that vibratory motor. Or potentially it’s the resistance in the circuit (I don’t think it’s the motor itself bc it’s supposedly changed out). But what I noticed is when performing a “test” function of either the fine or pulse instruments (which of course use the vibratory motor), whenever you press “start” at a given setting, the powder begins to flow out rather fast. But then it quickly slows down, in some cases to a complete stop and you can audibly hear the motor run high and then slow down. Mind you this is all at one particular speed setting. If you then press “stop” and take the motor to idle, wait a few seconds or however long, press “start” again… it does the same thing. Spits out powder pretty fast and gradually slows down. You can do this over and over and witness it do it again and again. Consequently the ST is never able to stabilize any fine or pulse instrument setting and it just stays in AI learning indefinitely while the success rate dwindles further and further down (naturally as the stability continues to degrade). I was able to verify this tonight on FaceTime with one of Rex’s US beta testers. He sent a video of it to Rex so hopefully now I’ll be believed! This has been my primary complaint about Peter and Rex. They seem like genuinely helpful guys. However they are EXTREMELY reluctant to ever admit there could be an actual problem with a SuperTrickler. It’s as if you’re being gaslit through all the troubleshooting with them, trying to be convinced that somehow it’s something YOURE doing wrong. Lol

 

[Krogen]

I hear ya sgav8r. Thing of it is, great customer service simply means achieving a solution. I've spent hours on the phone with customer headaches. I've traveled on a moment's notice to get a grounded airplane in the air. It doesn't matter one whit who or what created the problem. The goal must be a fix to the troubles. Heaven knows I've seen some bone-headed things on both sides of the table. Get it fixed and it's a win-win.

 

[jxb]

My great grandfather used to say, "you're not holding your mouth right". Hey at least Peter and Rex didn't say that. lol

Yeah pretty obvious it has some gremlins. Hopefully they will honor the purchase and get you fixed up.