Brent Brown wrote:
> Wondering if anyone has any servicing experience with Technogym equipment
> before? A friend of mine has 3 x Technogym Excite Run 700 treadmills in 
> the gym
> he works in. They are getting into the the habit of faulting and refusing 
> to run. The
> reported fault on the display is something like "equipment is blocked - 
> refer to
> sevice agent". The distributor of Technogym in NZ says replace the main 3 
> phase
> motor controller board (NZD1500, ~ USD850). Contacting the Italian tech 
> support
> they also say replace the controller and don't talk to us, talk to our NZ 
> agent.
>
> The annoying thing is there is no obvious hard fault ~ all main power
> semiconductors seem ok, nothing with smoke coming out of it. The excuse 
> we're
> given is that the equipment has been overloaded, due to lack of servicing 
> the belt
> creates too much friction and the controller is "blown". In practice it 
> seems like we
> get maybe 3 or so chances at this ~ the equipment faults, a power 
> down-wait-power
> up cycle clears the message and it runs again, but after "n" times the 
> fault can not
> be cleared and the unit must be replaced. I am starting to suspect a 
> software
> lockout mechanism using non-volatile memory. This goes against the grain 
> of our
> "can fix" attitude.
>
> We've requested a technical explanation, asked for servicing information, 
> asked if
> they do a exchange service. The answer is no to everything, and the 
> standard
> reasons why this is impractical, impossible, what we are doing wrong etc. 
> There's a
> small chance someone on the list has had experience with Technogym 
> products,
> would love to hear form you. Thanks!

Brent, IANAL -- but what if someone gets hurt on one of the machines you 
repair? Is it really worth the savings?

If this sort of thing keeps happening too frequently, perhaps it's time for 
your friend to vote with his NZD, and switch vendors? I would expect a 
decent vendor to have a decent warranty on the stuff they sell.

Vitaliy 

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