I just had an interesting journey getting help with a failed Quad Lock product. The company made things right in the end—they sent me a warranty replacement for free even though technically I think it was past the warranty period—but there were some annoying bumps along the way.
Before I tell the whole story I first want to share the most important thing I learned. The official website for Quad Lock is https://quadlockcase.com/. There’s another website, quadlockcases . com (note “cases” instead of “case”), which is fake and you should not use it. It looks like somebody in China is using that website to sell knock-off versions of Quad Lock products.
My motorcycle has a Quad Lock mount, vibration dampener, USB-powered wireless charging head, and waterproof 12V to USB smart adaptor. Yesterday the wireless charger started malfunctioning: when I mounted my phone, it started switching itself off repeatedly, while the LED on the charger cycled through solid dark blue (ready to charge), green (charging), flashing light blue (“overheating”, according to the documentation), dark (resetting).
I went online to try to find documentation about why this was happening. Somehow I initially ended up on the fake website mentioned above, but I eventually ended up on the correct site, I believe by doing a web search for keywords related to one of the products I have which is only available for sale on the real site. This is where I learned that the flashing light blue LED supposedly meant “overheating”.
At this point I needed to ask for support, because “overheating” didn’t make any sense: it was dark outside and not hot.
I opened a live chat, which connected me to a chatbot (sigh). The chatbot was actually pretty effective. It asked me clarifying questions, to do some additional tests to narrow down the problem, and for some additional info, and then told me that it had created a support ticket for me and a real person from Quad Lock would be reaching out to me about it soon.
The most important test the chatbot asked me to do was to unmount the charging head from my bike, take it in the house, and see if it worked properly when plugged into a wall charger instead of the 12V adaptor; it indeed worked perfectly in this context, implying that the problem was probably with the 12V adaptor, not with the charging head.
After the chatbot gave me the ticket ID, I asked it to send me a transcript of the chat. It said it couldn’t do that but if I wanted it could add a note to the ticket asking a person at Quad Lock to send me a transcript. I said, “Frankly, the reason I’m asking is because I’ve heard horror stories of chatbot claiming they opened tickets that they didn’t really open. If that’s what happened here then adding a fake note to the fake ticket isn’t really going to help.”
The chatbot conceded that was a fair point and transferred me to a person. The person confirmed that a real ticket had been opened by the chatbot and that the chatbot had put all the information I provided into the ticket. They also asked me to in the morning send a better video of what I was seeing (since the first video was taken in the dark) and proof of purchase for the Quad Lock stuff, which I had to call the dealer to get since I couldn’t find it.
This morning I went outside to do the new video and instructed and discovered that things had gotten worse: now the charger LED was completely dark and charging wasn’t working at all. At this point I performed some additional tests to confirm that the problem was definitely the 12V adaptor:
- Disconnect USB cable from charging head and plug it into my phone. Result: phone does not charge.
- Disconnect other end of that cable from 12V adaptor, plug in different USB cable, and plug other end into my phone. Result: phone does not charge.
- Disconnect other end of adaptor from battery SAE connector and plug in battery tender instead. Result: tender has solid connectivity to battery.
- Remove and put back fuse between SAE connector and battery. Result: tender loses connectivity to battery as soon as fuse is removed, gets it back as soon as fuse is returned.
At this point I replied to the support email I was sent last night about my ticket, explained what I was now seeing and the tests I’d performed to isolate the problem to the 12V adaptor, and attached a photo of the adaptor on my bike and the invoice PDF that the dealer had sent me earlier that day after I called them and asked for it.
Within a few seconds I received a response asking me to send proof of purchase, even though I’d already done that. 😠
I replied and said I’d already done that.
Within a few seconds I received the exact same response asking me to send proof of purchase. 😠😠
I replied again and said I’d already done that, and attached the invoice PDF a second time to that reply.
Within a few seconds I received the exact same response a third time. 😠😠😠
At this point I went back to the website live chat, told the chatbot that I needed to chat with a real person, and then, once I was connected to a real person, told them what was going on and asked them to get me out of this “dumb loop” so that my ticket could move forward.
The person reviewed my ticket, thanked me for the additional information I’d provided, and offered to arrange for a warranty replacement of the 12V adaptor. I thanked them and gave them my address and phone number, and a couple minutes later I received email confirming that the replacement had been ordered.
After this was done, I asked the person I was chatting with two additional questions:
Q: I leave my bike plugged into a battery tender all the time when I’m not riding. Could that be bad for the 12V adaptor if I leave the adaptor in “Auto” move so it’s on all the time when the battery tender is plugged in?
A: The first answer I was given made it clear that the person misunderstood my question. I clarified the question, and they answered that no, they didn’t think it was bad for the adaptor. Personally, I think she’s probably wrong and I’m going to try to make a habit of putting the adaptor into the “Off” position when the bike is plugged in at home.
Q: Why are there two different websites, “quadlockcase.com” and “quadlockcases.com”?
A: The second website appears to be fake and you shouldn’t use it. Thanks for letting us know about this.
That’s the end of the story so far. I hope in a week or so I’ll receive a replacement 12V adaptor which I can install. That’s going to be a bit of a pain since the wiring for the existing adaptor runs underneath my gas tank and I’m going to have to unbolt the gas tank and remove and replace several cable ties to install the replacement. But that’s obviously better than needing to pay $40 for a replacement adaptor.
All of the problems I had getting support from Quad Lock for this problem were technological, because tech is shit nowadays. Both of the real people I dealt with were courteous and helpful, and the company ultimately did the right thing.
