Last year smartrise announced in their website, LinkedIn and even Elevator World magazine that their controllers will have 5 years "WARRANTY", even the ones that were installed in the past 5 years! Now we see they use any excuse to expire the warranty and charge you hundreds of $s to replace their faulty boards!! They say" IT IS MECHANIC'S FAULT" which is a lie. I have also heard from a few other colleagues that they had the same experience! We shouldn't let this happen to our industry. Please speak up if you have had the same experience. They need to be responsible for what they promise
I have had too many issues with smartrise. Not just the boards go bad, but also safety issues. And yes, their warranty is not real!, "mechanics fault" is all you hear from them.
They came to out office to try sell us on these new controllers and the warranty. According to them even the parts like the drive/soft starter would be covered. I have not had to deal with any warranty issues on their new stuff yet, but would be fit to be tied if I called them to get something replaced under warranty and they try to blame it in me..
Their C4 controller is all headache. Too complicated, weak software, always says syncing..., and we had to change a brake board after a few weeks and they charged us. They said we have mistakenly connected 120V to a low voltage terminal. But the car was working normally and no one was even in the machine-room when this happened!
I take care of a bank of 4 smartrise traction cars, double wrap, 700fpm, had to replace 2 brake boards, all 4 cedes boards, an interlock board and update all the software, all within a year of the Maint contract we have, the mod was done in 2018, and the other company also replaced a few brake boards and cedes boards, I know that because they left them in the machine room marked “bad” there hydros aren’t bad, but anything involving a gearless machine, I got no faith in it, it’s a double edged sword, nobody can beat there price, so you have to put it in to get the jobs, but even the independent companies know they suck, I’ll take a 20yr old MCE IMC SCR over a C4 any day
MCE is much better. You could now use then to mod a KONE MRL. Their sister company Imperial now makes a machine that looks like the the KONE MX series (Ecospace version). I hear it works with multiple types of encoders, not just the HPV900-S2-AF.
The 5 year warranty is a scam, they blame everything on the field guys ! I was told the owners of smartrise granted this warranty thing to boost sales, the turn around and sell the company. We have been using MCE for our traction cars after we have had major issues with the C4 product. And now we are using Alpha control for all our hydro controllers.
This is just an opinion, but I think the reason when people have Smartrise removed and swapped w/Alpha is due to the design similarities (although not exactly the same) with the two controllers in terms of wiring and components, which in tern reduces swap cost. Imagine swapping a Smartrise with a Galaxy or MCE. That's a game changer in terms of wiring and subcomponents.
Yeah, one of there top guys left and started Alpha, I heard he brought a few of the top engineers over from smartrise also, that’s how it works tho, EC was started from an MCE guy I was told and then smartrise and now alpha
If you haven't tried the hydro product from Alpha , I think you are missing out , product looks like a smartrise but functions differently , easier to setup , no hidden parameters , no passcode to call in for , and the support is fantastic ! And most important they deliver the controllers when they tell you it will ship .
I was hoping I could hear more about your experience with smartrise warranty issue rather than alpha controller, MCE, EC or other companies. Please don't make it political.
For legal reasons , I wouldn’t post a pic calling their warranty a hoax. We have never had them deny a warranty due to “mechanic’s fault”, they have always been good about that. We did however stop using them because of the amount of failures it’s very hard to compete with the big boys , and going back on service calls due to failure is a quick way to loose money. The straw that broke the camels back with us was it took them a year to make a software change to correct a code violation.
Smartrise did the 5 year warranty in order to boost sales. Their company is failing. They are down to one engineer and they outsource for engineering to engineers that are not familiar with elevator operation. All of the key engineers have left. Most of their top Tech Support have left. They only have one person that can write code in R&D. He is not familiar with the C4 controller.
