I sued Ubiquiti

[Deleted Account]

This isn't a rant post, just a suggestion to Ubiquiti about customer service.

We recently planned out a network to include some Unbiquiti tools for sectoral client connection.

However, we purchased the wrong equipment, getting the AC version instead of the regular versions. The AC ducomentation is misleading, and it is hard to determine that the AC products we purchased would not work with regular WiFi clients.

The reseller we purchased the equipment from refused to accept a return, so we reached out to Ubiquiti and asked them if we could trade our products out, especially given the misleading information both on the reseller's site and ubnt. We waited 4 weeks, sent numerous emails, and tried calling UBNT, and I eventually got tired of this and 6 weeks ago I drove down to the county courthouse and opened a small claim against UBNT. We sent them a summons via certified mail, and awaited their reply, a reply that never came. After the two-week period for response was up, I appeared in court and the judge awarded me $1700 in damages (the worth of the items) and $5800 in punitive charges. That should be it, right?

Haha, no. Turns out Ubiquiti has decided they are above the law and will not be paying the fines, or responding to the judge or district court, at all. This is where it has been for the last week.

My personal suggestion to Ubiquiti is to perhaps provide a phone number that someone can actually call and actually get to speak with someone.

Also, ignoring a Judge, not the brightest move. Today, the Judge moved my case to criminal court, and issued subpoenas to entire departments at UBNT. Interestingly, no one at UBNT has responded.

If UBNT would like to reach out, that would be great! I would be more than happy to just exchange the products and waive the the fines, I really do not want to spend months in court, especially if UBNT will not even bother to show up.

[mhoppes]

I don't have any idea why you would do this? You clearly purchased the wrong equipment due to lack of proper research. That isn't Ubiquiti'S fault.

[Fireblade]

A case where a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Mea culpa in my opinion.

[Deleted Account]

Of course, it was our mistake purchasing the darn things.

Keep in mind we purchased over 100 Ubiquiti products all at once, so mistakes are bound to be made.

This is more about Ubiquitis lack of customer service. For such a rich company you would think they would have some form of outreach.

[Fireblade]

If you are going to invest in 100 items then you would surely investigate the technical specs and suitability of the proposed product. A simple thread started here would have given you a wealth of opinion from many posters. Google itself would have led you here but the first we hear from you is a thread regarding litigation. The wrong way round IMHO.

[Deleted Account]

I understand where you are coming from.

Given that we tried for a month and a half to work with our retailer and UBNT to exchange or return these, and they repetedly ignored or denied our requests, litigation was the only other option.

From what I understand the man that ordered all of this simply added too many of the wrong thing to his cart, because of the misleading labels. We actually needed a few of these antennas, we simply purchased too many, and neither the reseller nor Ubiquiti was able to help with that.

I should mention that we did pursue litigation with the retailer as well, but because the recommeneded selling information came from Ubiquiti, both my company and the retailer ended up going after Ubiquiti.

All of this could have been avoided if one person would have responded to an email. I do not feel sorry for Ubiquiti.

[mhoppes]

So your reseller is also incompetent? Any return happens with the reseller, not with ubiquity. The only thing ubiquity takes back is a damaged RM a item, all of the returns of the responsibility of the retailer who sold it to you.

[Fireblade]

Different laws in different countrys. Here in the UK the seller would have been liable for incorrect selling and there is also a difference between trade and retail purchase rights.

[RedLink_Juan]

How can anyone can buy 100 incorrect items? Someone is going to get fire for that mistake, at least here in the country of bad hombres, you can return new un-opened items to the reseller, that makes the system great for us, ubiquiti doesn't sell to final customer, their products are only sell to trained professionals or people with the sufficient skills to understand them.

[Deleted Account]

Its is very easy to mix numbers up in the shopping when we ordered nearly $11,000 worth of networking gear in a single day. Either way, Ubiquiti is legally responsible according to the court.

[Isolate]

I doubt you'll get much sympathy on this board due to the fact that we're only hearing your side of the story which is light on critical information and clearly indicates a lack of attention to detail on your end.  

If you were reading this from our perspective, we have no idea what email you tried to contact (and if it actually was received), what phone numbers you called, or basically any real detail on how you attempted to resolve this issue other than the court summons (which may have been cheaper for Ubiquiti to ignore, no clue).  We do not know the reseller (was it one of their certified distributors?) or why they were unable to recommend you the correct equipment.  

I will grant you that it can be somewhat difficult to narrow down which specific products you will need for a given project, but that is not due to Ubiquiti being misleading, there are simply many options for various use cases and it requires due diligence on the consumer's end to purchase what is required.

Lastly, I've never had trouble finding ways of contacting Ubiquiti or finding the information that I need.  In additional to the official contact methods, there are the community boards, /r/ubiquiti, and decently populated irc/slack channels.

[johns68]

I agree that woudl be frustrating, as long as unopened, I woudl think they would work with you

did you try the contact link at the bottom of this page?

[mhoppes]

Once again, ubiquity does not take returns for merchandise unless it is an RMA, everything else is between you and your distributor.

[doush]

Actually the AC products SHOULD work with the plain 802.11 wifi mode.

Although the OP is not quite right since he didnt make his research before purchasing the equipment, I think the million dollar question is "Why AC products doesnt really support plain 802.11 AC ? " 

Obviously there is no techincal reason behind it since the chipset etc are all made for plain 802.11ac operation. It is purely a managerial decision to LOCK IN the WISPs to their propritery protocol.

And this is the only reason AC equipment sales are not going up as expected..  

[Deleted Account]

We purchased our equipment from a dumber of distributors, the items we incorrectly purchased were from Unifying Solution (Oklahoma).

They refused any returns, and the court found them not responsible for the misleading information, and therefore not resonsible for the refunds/exchanges.

We contacted UBNT via their website multiple times.

We also emailed them dozens of times at info@ubnt.com and sales@ubnt.com

UBNT has a phone number, but you cannot use it to talk to anyone.

It should be noted that our orignal requests (before any litigation) asked Ubiquiti to assist us in dealing with the distributor who was unwilling to accept a return on the items. We never got a response, and no cooperation from Unifying Solution, so we initially filed a small claim against Unifying, then the court essentially told us it was Ubiquiti that needed to pay or exchange the items, after a rep from Unifying Solution agreed with us that the title and information was intentionally misleading, and that the information on their site is the same information that is available from Ubiquiti.

Also, I think it is a pretty bad business model to make the AC not compatible with 802.11.

They have the technology to make their normal airMax products much cheaper, but instead want to force you into Ubiquiti through cheaper but locked equipment. If you could use, for example, the LiteBeam AC AP as a sectoral antenna for 802.11 devices AND airMax CPE, you could be looking at huge sales. An $89 5Ghz 120 degree 16dBi sector antenna that supports 802.11 would wipe out the competition and boost sales.

The bottom line here is that Ubiquiti refuses to comply with the law, has no interest in the customers who actually use their devices, and are greedy to a fault. Just a bad company all around.

[rockhead]

I would like to see some sort, ANY SORT of proof that this real before I believed anything other than this is somebody trying to blow smoke up the hoo-haa of anybody willing to be smoked. 
Show me the judgment !

or is that Show me the judgy

ok, now somebody check my hoo-haa for smoke

[eejimm]

Yeah, this sounds extremely fishy to me.   UBNT has a barrel full of attorneys who would have been all over this if an actual legal summons was delivered to their headquarters, which is public knowledge since they are  a public company...

Jim

[mhoppes]

What is the misleading information ?? I'm not sure that has ever yet been spoken about.

[LLigetfa]

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doush wrote:

Actually the AC products SHOULD work with the plain 802.11 wifi mode.

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No.  There is nowhere anything written to suggest that it should work.

[Deleted Account]

Essentially that the title and description of the item was so similar to other 802.11AC sector products that it could be considered misleading.