Time to give up the Filco :(

[GreeN]

Hi everyone! It's been a while since I posted here, though I still lurk the boards every now and again. But today, I come bearing some unfortunate and disappointing news.

I'm considering selling my Filco! (For spares?)

Some of you may recall the problems I have had with this board over the last year or so; I made a thread about it in March http://geekhack.org/showthread.php?t=9027.

Since I have owned the board, I can recall at least 6 keys that have given me key chattering trouble. I continue to have problems, and try to ignore them just because I love this keyboard so much! But the time has come where the problem has become unbearable. I have to doctor every line of text I write, and it even effects gaming.

It almost seems as though, once a key has encountered the problem, it will last for a few days/weeks, stop, and never return. But do I need to wait for all 100+ keys to pass this stage? How common is this problem exactly?

I would love to get a repair or replacement, but I bought this from EliteKeyboards in the USA and there is no warranty covering me. (I have no gripe with EK themselves. They were very helpful when I enquired about the problem and even sent me a few replacement switches, free of charge)

At the end of the day, I really have just had enough. I love this Filco to bits and the brown switches suit me perfectly. I just need a keyboard that works! I would like to ask you guys for advice, but I think I know what needs to be done

This is a sampleee paragraph to show the ky chattere problms I am curreentlly dealing with. The E and L keeys are quite noticably troublesome. What makes this problem so infruriating is that it is not consistent! That, and the fact I cannot touch-typee; correcting a mistake you typeed 36 characters ago, is a lot moree hasslee than correcting yourslf on thee fly.

[nocturn4l3030]

that sucks dood.. it seems like youre literally the only one as no one has even replied to share a similar experience =[

[takasta]

i'ts really a shame. I own 2 tenkeyless filco boards, brown / blue, love them both to death, don't have chattering problem, so i guess its really just tough luck.

[itlnstln]

I wonder if there is some kind of corrosion occurring in the switch.  You would figure with gold contacts, this shouldn't happen, but it might be occurring somewhere downstream from the switch.

[majestouch]

Hi GreeN,

I'm sorry to hear you're still having trouble. This sounds very far from average as far as chattering switches go, please e-mail EK support and we'll see if there is anything else we can do.

[GreeN]

The problem worsens occasionally (and is currently affecting the S key now, too). Here is an example of how temperamental my E key is..

Fifty E presses, each seperated with the space bar:

 e      eee e       ee      e    e e e      ee  ee      ee       ee

(That's right, I just attempted to type E fifty times; I had to vent this frustration somewhere)

EDIT: I've just unplugged my Filco and plugged in a Dell "QuietKey"..

I feel nautious..

[elef]

Well if that's fifty, then a lot of your keypresses don't register at all
Anyway, it's a little worrying that such an expensive and seemingly well-made keyboard can have issues like this. Still, instead of venting your frustration, you should probably be writing to elitekeyboards and see if they can help.
Every manufacturer has the odd lemon coming off the assembly line, the important thing is what they do when the **** hits the fan.

[GreeN]

I suppose I should have mentioned this before, but I have indeed contacted EliteKeyboards and thankfully they sound concerned and interested in helping me.

Your concerns are simply my own; such a piece of equipment seems like it should perform flawlessly. Though, it seems even the gods themselves have imperfections.

[GreeN]

HUGE update on this situation:

Regardless of the fact I purchased from EliteKeyboards in the US (I'm in the UK) and that I had already agreed to a no-warranty basis with the sale, they have turned around and surprised me with more than anything I could have asked for.

Since my last post in this thread, EliteKeyboards have read into my problems and sympathised so much to the extent where they have (at no cost to myself) sent me a direct replacement for my dying board. They have been really understanding and helpful, even during the communication prior to this result.

Excuse me if I sound flustered, but I am once again (for the first time in over a month) typing away on Brown MX switches and I am just blown away with EliteKeyboard's compassion towards this whole situation.

BIG THUMBS UP TO ELITEKEYBOARDS
(also thanks to majestouch on the forums who directed me towards this result)

[kidchunks]

Glad to see you've got it all worked out! EK is pretty good despite what some have to say about them. They were nice enough to bundle my keycaps into one order when I placed them separately. :biggrin:

[Brian8bit]

Good customer service is what keeps people coming back. Over at the OCuK forums they're in love with Logitech because they usually go out of their way to deal with and replace faulty goods at no expense of the client. And people keep going back to them (unfortunately). Which is easy for a company with the turn over and revenue of Logitech to do. The fact a mech keyboard supplier went out of their way to take on a loss in a niche market speaks wonders for customer service on their part. I also notice Bruce at keyboardco jumped on a problem in their forum section to help someone out with a similar problem.

I've had no problem with either of the keyboards I bought through keyboardco, but it's reassuring to see them go out of their way to resolve even the smallest problems with a board.

[bugfix]

I also notice Bruce at keyboardco jumped on a problem in their forum section to help someone out with a similar problem.

Which is why I'm not afraid to order a 300$ keyboard from them.

[woody]

Bruce is one helpful fellow. He and KeyboardCo won me as a customer.

[muchadoaboutnothing]

Seems like my 8 month old Tactile Touch NKRO Otaku is giving me the same issues.

o o o o o o o o o o oo oo o oo o o o o o o o o oo o o o o oo o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o oo o o o o o o o o o o o o oo o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o oo o o o o o o o o o

I hope replacement is swift.

I think the problem is oocurring (see, there's the O key giving me grief) on other keys but I am somewhat prone to typos and the only one that is giving me enough where I went to deliberately test for the problem to be sure is O... at this moment.

I'll probably do a test with each key soon.

Keys that WERE giving me issues (like "t") seem to have stopped which initially led me to dismiss it as human error. But then I read GreeN's post:

It almost seems as though, once a key has encountered the problem, it will last for a few days/weeks, stop, and never return. But do I need to wait for all 100+ keys to pass this stage? How common is this problem exactly?

And it gave me pause. Now I'm not so sure...

In any case, I'm confident the "O" key is having the issue. I suspect others but I tested my other keys now and was unable to reproduce the issue while my O key reproduced it easily.

[elef]

Dammit, that's not very encouraging. I would hate for my brown switch filco to develop this problem.

[WXGhoul]

I'm pretty new to the scene, but it's so refreshing to hear such good things about a company these days.I feel like everyone is just out to make profit at any cost usually, but not EK it seems. I only regret that I couldn't order from them and had to go through armygroup. Shipping would have been cheaper too

[ch_123]

that sucks dood.. it seems like youre literally the only one as no one has even replied to share a similar experience =[

I was about to make a serious reply to this, then I was like

[hailey]

It sounds a lot like the problems my rk-9000 has. Sometimes it's just insane how many repeated keystrokes I get, other times it doesn't seem to happen at all.

Tons of different keys have had the issue. Maybe the switches are just made cheaper or something

[muchadoaboutnothing]

Well, the results changed for O. And everything else because of the key I alternated with...

Code: [Select]

o  o o o o o o o o o o  o o o o  o o o o o  o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o  o o o o o o  o o o o o  o o o o o  o

(Sorry for the code block, it's the only thing that didn't strip the extra spaces out.)

Keys that are giving me trouble that I've noticed:
-Q
-The space bar, when pressed lightly, is doing it consistently at this moment
-O has almost stopped completely
-T, but rarely
-M, occasionally

I got an RMA number and I'm sending it back. No complaints about EK - fact is, I've bought a lot of electronics in the past year and this is the first thing I've had to RMA. Statistically you're going to get hit on something.

[stuiees]

I RMA my girlfriends almost weekly

[msiegel]

I RMA my girlfriends almost weekly

because of bounce?

[keyboardlover]

I RMA my girlfriends almost weekly

Don't hate the player, hate the game.