I have a Craft Robo. It cuts paper. Sounds exciting right? Well, the cool thing is that I plug it into the computer, and can cut any shape, font, whatever I can draw in Visio, etc. Sounds more exciting now, right? It has some downsides. The blades don’t last that long, and if you run paper through without the carrier sheet just once, the cutting mat gets ruined. It also doesn’t cut cardstock that’s actually CARDSTOCK, but just thicker paper.
I used it pretty heavily for a while, then needed new blades and a mat and didn’t replace them for a while. So we painted the office a while back. Moved everything out, and back in. For weeks the Craft Robo was sitting on my desk, with a USB cable and power adapter next to it. I go to plug it in about a month ago, and low and behold - that power cord was NOT for the Robo!! No biggie, I go to look in the closet where Colin has drawers FULL of nothing but power cords. Not a single one was it! It uses some funky volt numbers and my robo power cord has dissappeared into thin air.
I figured surely I can’t be the first person to lose the power cord, somewhere in the corners of the Web there must be a store with some. Since Graphtec (the makers of the CR) don’t have an online store, you have to go through retailers. Nope, no stores had a power cord.
Now, Graphtec has more websites than I do. The actual Robo site’s support section has no contact info. So I went to the main site and found some options. When I found the list of numbers for American Sales, I also found another site.
I emailed them a few times with no response. I called them and left a message. A week later I hadn’t gotten a call back, so I called and got the machine again. I called the next day, same thing. Repeat. 6 messages. I didn’t get a call back until today, when I had called this morning and left a message that must have contained the F word a few times. The person I spoke to said their phones and email were having problems and was very apologetic. So I said okay, I just needed to get this part. He transferred me to their receptionist who couldn’t find the part number, and she sent me to tech support. Which went to voicemail. I left a message and called right back, and got the same people. They sent me BACK to the voicemail. I called back AGAIN and explained that since THEY called me back in the first place, I didn’t want to leave any more messages. It’s not like I wanted something for free, or needed to fix the machine. I just wanted to buy a part.
They finally got the part from tech support, and took my payment info. Hopefully it will get here soon. The tech support guy said he’s worked there 20 years and never had someone need to order a power cord. I find that hard to believe - someone else HAS to have lost their power cord - I guess they all just bought a new machine. I considered buying the new model but I really can’t afford to pay $300 because I lost a $40 part. (Also, the machine isn’t 20 years old, so it’s not like he’s been doing support for the CR 20 years.)
When the freaking thing finally gets here I’ll go nuts on cutting and post stuff for my lovely readers to see just why I really wanted the stupid cord.