Of course, the factory hasn’t offered a refund for all those (relatively expensive) cables with the high defect rate.
hi, just by curiosity, do you have any recourse for this ? in the future how can you prevent this from happening ? there should be a way to keep these Chinese manufacturers in check
Honestly, as much as I hate to say it, the only recourse really is to keep trying to work less frequently with Chinese factories. I'm still waiting on a reply from the cable factory to my video documentation of the issues with the first batch of cables, but I've encountered similar problems with other such factories in the past. Whenever I ask for a refund or replacement in such circumstances, their usual reply is "every product has a defect rate" and then to offer of some trivial discount on a future order. Obviously, this creates a bad set of incentives, so I've never taken a factory up on such an offer. One could technically sue them in China, but that would far exceed the cost of the cables. I could technically also have put in place a China-side inspection process (like I do on the housings and breakout PCBs themselves) to test the functionality of the cables, but a) it never entered my imagination that such a simple, standard component could have such a huge defect rate and b) again, it would add a lot to the unit cost.
In short, I just had to take the loss and do my best to fix the problem quickly on my own, which meant paying around $1500 to buy alternative cables and getting cards printed to include in the box to explain to folks why they're getting two cables.
I have a fairly good relationship with the factory that does the machining in China and, as most people know, I'm a very vocal supporter of free international trade. However, I find myself increasingly worn down by the prevalent culture of "quality fade" in China in particular (competing on low prices and then making up for it by increasingly and knowingly slipping in rejects). It's a well-known phenomenon that seems specific to the business culture of that country (which I've been reading about a lot lately) and not even something that generalizes to Asia more broadly.
I do my best to insulate people from all the quality problems associated with sourcing stuff in China (which is why I order far more units than I need and personally inspect everything by hand before it goes out), but it all takes its toll, which is why I'm currently working to try to arrange to machine the Heavy-6 (my next housing) here in California, even if it means things cost way more. My goal in my keyboard projects is to create everyday art objects of insanely high quality, and I sadly find myself increasingly feeling that vendors that are part of Chinese business culture to be incompatible with that objective.
Just to needle people who are blindly opposed to free trade, I put "Proudly Made in China" on my boxes, but I suppose I really should have put "A proud product of US-international collaboration," both since a fair amount of the work actually happens here in the US, and because while I'm all about the globalism, when it comes to Chinese manufacturing practices, it's not always a source of delight.
Fortunately, I fight these battles and take the hits on all this so you guys don't have to.
I take care to make sure that stuff that goes out my front door is something I can be proud of, no matter where it was manufactured or what the defect rate coming out of the factory.
Ryan, do you have a better estimate about powder coated cases? Although mine is anodized I did not realize I'll have to wait for powder coated ones if ordered via a proxy
I'm still waiting on a confirmed timeline from the powder coating factory. Their quote said around a month from start of work, but they're currently sourcing all the various powders and tallying up the parts I sent them, after which that clock should begin ticking.
If you'd like to switch to regular delivery, just send an email to shop@norbauer.com and I'll take care of it for you.