Is it reasonable for repair to take three months?

[Gihgehls]

Originally Posted by JohnG

Segways, for better or worse, were not designed or built to be readily serviceable. This was for numerous reasons, but my understanding is one of the primary reasons is because of the assumption that most of the parts simply couldn't fail in the normal life and use of a Segway. That has turned to be a false assumption, and the company is undertaking some steps to rectify the turn-around times on repairs (by equipping a few dealers with the necessary tools to do some).

Hindsight is always 20/20. Not much more can be done about it now -- taking into account the company's current financial state and the economics of repairs.

John

To be fair, you don't hear much about i167s needing to go back. It seems to be mostly Gen2.

[JohnG]

And because of the advice I got from this community, I was able to do a swap-out of the power supply of my dead i167 with a good one, putting it back into service.

Some parts are fairly serviceable -- the most difficult thing is the diagnostics. Our collective knowledge here at SC has cobbled together some trouble-shooting knowledge thankfully.

But it would've been nice if it had always just had a network port where you could plug in a computer, pull up a browser, and it would spit out diagnostics of the machine for anyone who cared to plug in. (By the time it was realized such a port would've been handy, it was too late to design it into the Gen 1 machines.)

Best,
John

[KSagal]

Originally Posted by JohnG

And because of the advice I got from this community, I was able to do a swap-out of the power supply of my dead i167 with a good one, putting it back into service.

Some parts are fairly serviceable -- the most difficult thing is the diagnostics. Our collective knowledge here at SC has cobbled together some trouble-shooting knowledge thankfully.

But it would've been nice if it had always just had a network port where you could plug in a computer, pull up a browser, and it would spit out diagnostics of the machine for anyone who cared to plug in. (By the time it was realized such a port would've been handy, it was too late to design it into the Gen 1 machines.)

Best,
John

John,

In general I do not disagree with your statements on this topic, and clearly have taken on a bit of a moderator roll in trying to keep some of the service complaints here on this site in perspective, or at least enter the perspective of the segway population as a whole to those who have taken a more subjective position...

But on your last statement, I think I have to disagree. As early as October 2004 and most likely before, it was possible to plug your segway base into a special plug that went into a serial port on a laptop computer, and it would give all the data and more you describe above.

At that SegwayFest, I rode a segway that matched my individual tire rotations, and I was able to glide out my name on a patio at the hotel, and see it plotted onto a printed page. It also allowed me to see the micro speed in mph of partial rotations, allowing me to see a speed of nearly 17 mph as the segway was getting in front of the weight of me trying to go too fast, and I was able to see this micro burst of speed that allowed for the handlebars to push me back...

If a wire like the one on my segway existed back then, then if the factory wanted to, they could have produced more of these wire harnesses, that plugged in between power supply and Handlebar, and then into computers. Had they wanted this diagnostic to exist, perhaps a new USB port was too late to design in, but a wire harness to insert was not at all too hard or too late.

So I feel that this was a decision that was made by management, and it was not a technical limitation.

[dgbint]

Hi Karl

You are almost right.

I was a dealer at the time, and I had one of those 'rigs' then.
The plug-in was actually a ( pair of ) CAN bus interface(s).

They were quite expensive bits of hardware.

Once the data got into the laptop, it could either:
a/ be viewed locally with permission, which I never had
b/ be uploaded to Segway Inc, where they could view it.

Yes, absolutely, access was a management decision not a technical isue.

Cheers
Michael

[Civicsman]

Lastly, Civicsman, you say you were a field service professional for years, did your company do what you described?

Nope. It had a large group of field engineers to support the equipment. In addition, there was no internet to make it incredibly easy to communicate diagnostic information. My point in bringing up my past employment was to demonstrate that I too know something about fixing things for a living.

I can't say for certain that there ANY companies who handle field service exactly as I described in my earlier post, but I can also say for certain that there is nobody on this forum who can say, definitively, that there are NO companies operating in a similar fashion. There are most certainly companies using some elements of my proposal.

I can say, for certain, that there are companies who ship replacement hardware to individual product owners, by overnight express, so they can open their laptop and replace circuit boards, batteries, and hard drives...all by themselves. For sure, a laptop is unlikely to cause a face plant, but the automotive business seems to survive (somehow) selling parts (like brakes or steering gear) directly to car owners who do their own repairs. I'm not saying that Segway should abandon the concept of taking your Seg to a dealer for repairs. Many people do that with automobiles too. Rather, I am proposing some enhancements to that process, and which might also provide some repair alternatives.

Remote diagnostics, troubleshooting flowcharts, overnight shipping of repair kits for specific diagnostic results, factory-supplied assistance in returning the base when necessary, reducing the factory backlog of repairs? Which of these is Segway not capable of implementing?

[JohnG]

The interface was and is expensive for Gen 1 machines, yes. And the interface gave you access to the code, which is the primary reason Segway didn't want that software + hardware combo out there in the wild (even dealers, some of whom Segway had in the early days left something to be desired).

A lot has also changed in the intervening decade and Segway never grew to be the $500M/year business they thought it would be.

As for why they don't pour more money into service? I suspect business reasons drive that cost. It's never been a profit center for them (from my limited knowledge about such things), and apparently they don't know how/understand to turn it into one and make their customers happier.

John