proform.com

Caution Warranted

This review was going to start off as a 1 star review. But in the course of the day, things have improved. Here's the story.I bought my ProForm elliptical machine in September, and everything was running great. Until the fan decided one day to turn on and never turn off again. There was clearly a defect with the control board running the fan constant or (less likely) with the fan itself.Contacted ProForm support via their "contact us" website form. They couldn't locate my registration or purchase for the machine, so we had to go through that loop. Correspondence was via email.It took them about 1 week to answer my first inquiry, and then another 2 weeks to register my machine. They also asked for a video and photos of the machine misbehaving. A pain, but OK let's go through the motions. Recorded everything related to the fan, how it turned on high before the machine even booted, how it stayed on high when the fan buttons were pressed. Verified that my software was up to date and that "my cords weren't twisted", whatever that was supposed to mean. Submitted all of this in reply email.Three weeks go by, finally heard back from them. This was literally their response, "That noise is normal and is just the fan to cool down the CPU."Uh no, that's not "normal" noise. I know what the fan sounds like when I deliberately turn it on and what it sounds like when it's off. The fan was not cooling the CPU (I mean, it's a freaking tablet built into the console, it doesn't need a fan to cool it). The customer service agent "Bree" definitely wanted to avoid dealing with my issue and was clearly not skilled enough to know how to actually help.So when I got this email reply, I was beyond pissed. At this point, the only thing to do was to call their toll free number and speak to someone in person. I was loaded and ready to tear someone up.Instead, I got a new customer service agent who was remarkably helpful. I explained the situation, the problem with the machine, the failing response of the previous customer service rep, etc. She took it all in, verified my information and verified the previous response. She looked at the video I had sent and then did the right thing, sent them to the service manager for review.Sure enough, the service manager immediately authorized a replacement console unit, based on the defect shown in the video. The new console should arrive in 10 days or so, with any luck.So yeah, after reading all the very negative support reviews here, I was about ready to concur, that ProForm support was awful. But today's phone-based interaction was much more positive and I am at least back to neutral feelings.I guess if you need help from ProForm, you need to call them and wait for a long time on hold for them to pick up. At that point in time, there might be hope that they can resolve the issue.

Date of experience: Dec 21, 2022