Not another lame request for HOG regs service manual!

[comodino]

I already contacted Cerich, but somehow it seems like I don't deserve a reply....
I'll cut&paste what I wrote him, hoping that somebody kind enough can help me.
As I suggest in the thread title, I am not whining about the lack of availability of the service manual to the public. I perfectly understand the position of EDGE/HOG and I'd be glad to attend to one of the technician classes, if only I was based in the US.

Here's the text, with some small variations due to personal data I wish not to divulge :

No help here?
i perfectly understand your policy regarding technician courses and I imagine you are overwhelmed by requests of availability of manuals and such, but I am not a troll or anything like that.
I really need to fix my equipment so that I can work with it.
And I'd like to do it properly if possible....please.

Thank you

Davide

Hi,

my name is Davide, and I am a happy owner of a D1 cold water set bought back in october from *shopname*.
Unfortunately (just relating to this situation though eheh!) I am not from the US. I am from Italy, but live wherever the job takes me.
As a diving instructor I use my equipment a lot and now the turret retainer started to bleed (~300 dives since January).
Bad timing, since I am now in the Maldives, and anything delivered here gets charged a ridiculous amount of taxes, so sending the reg back to the dealer is not a viable option for me at the moment.
I remember seeing in the forum a thread with someone in a similar situation, so I imagine this whole thing not being new to you.
During my previous work experience in Thailand I attended a BSAC Aqualung Equipment Technician course
(BSAC Thailand - BSAC Equipment Technician) and since then I helped with reg maintenance in the shop. We used Calypsos.
And I also own a Legend Supreme. So I am already familiar with the overall design&maintenance of regulators belonging to the same type of HOG's products.
I have with me the hog service kits for 1st and 2nd stages, all the tools including a torque wrench and my only option is to open the reg and service it here.
Before doing that though, I decided to contact you, wondering whether I could get a glimpse of the service manual, or at least a list of torque specs for the different parts.


Thank you for your attention,

Davide
SSI AOWI & PADI MSDT

 

[cerich]

Sorry, it's been dive show season and I've been out of the office on the road 2-3 weeks of each month for the last 4, so constantly behind I'm afraid.

Send me a email with a copy of a other manufs cert for service and I will email you our manual

best,

Chris
edgediving at gmail.com

---------- Post added May 30th, 2013 at 03:00 PM ----------

my reply to this made me think...so I checked, I've had 45 phone calls so far today and have sent 33 emails, spent about 2 hours on Skype and don't know how many emails I have read. IMHO my cust service is sucking today and I want to be diving....

 

[comodino]

I am not accusing you of sucking at your job, absolutely!
Apologies if it felt like that, and thank you for your reply. I'll email you shortly.

Sorry, it's been dive show season and I've been out of the office on the road 2-3 weeks of each month for the last 4, so constantly behind I'm afraid.

Send me a email with a copy of a other manufs cert for service and I will email you our manual

best,

Chris
edgediving at gmail.com

---------- Post added May 30th, 2013 at 03:00 PM ----------

my reply to this made me think...so I checked, I've had 45 phone calls so far today and have sent 33 emails, spent about 2 hours on Skype and don't know how many emails I have read. IMHO my cust service is sucking today and I want to be diving....

 

[NCadiver]

Sorry, it's been dive show season and I've been out of the office on the road 2-3 weeks of each month for the last 4, so constantly behind I'm afraid.

Send me a email with a copy of a other manufs cert for service and I will email you our manual

best,

Chris
edgediving at gmail.com
....

l
---------- Post added May 30th, 2013 at 03:00 PM ----------

Like

my reply to this made me think...so I checked, I've had 45 phone calls so far today and have sent 33 emails, spent about 2 hours on Skype and don't know how many emails I have read. IMHO my cust service is sucking today....

Disagree

and I want to be diving....

Me too

 

[comodino]

Just as a heads up for whomever is reading/is interested, since I already received some enquiries...
I sent my cert to Chris via email but got no answer yet. I understand they're busy, so I'll just keep waiting.
In the meanwhile I had to open up the reg myself, and I used the random infos on torque specs I found in the forum here&there, plus a bit of the old "if you think it's tight enough it's probably too tight already" and kept referring back to DiveRite and Apeks manuals. So far so good, but still I'd like to make sure I don't have to demonstrate to my students a real OOA ascent in the open water :cool2:

 

[cerich]

resend it. I haven't gotten anything. I've even checked my spam folder.

Just as a heads up for whomever is reading/is interested, since I already received some enquiries...
I sent my cert to Chris via email but got no answer yet. I understand they're busy, so I'll just keep waiting.
In the meanwhile I had to open up the reg myself, and I used the random infos on torque specs I found in the forum here&there, plus a bit of the old "if you think it's tight enough it's probably too tight already" and kept referring back to DiveRite and Apeks manuals. So far so good, but still I'd like to make sure I don't have to demonstrate to my students a real OOA ascent in the open water :cool2:

 

[comodino]

will do right now.
this is the address I sent it to:

edgediving at gmail.com
right?

and thank you for your support, much appreciated ​

 

[comodino]

I just wanted to thank Chris & Edge/Hog for their help, I finally managed to solve my situation thanks to them.
:cool2:

 

[comodino]

Cool...let me add one last thing.
Rather than dealing with everyone privately I'd prefer to make a statement here, just to clarify the situation.
I once again will cut/paste part of a conversation I recently had with a fellow user, hope he/she doesn't mind

[...] I have to admit I was a bit disappointed with HOG customer service at the beginning, since I firstly mailed them a few months ago asking for indications on how/where to attend a technician class in SE Asia, where I was based before, and received no reply whatsoever.
But my exchange with Chris, although very brief and synthetic from his side, has been quite satisfactory. I provided him the proof that I am a trained technician already, even though it is with a different agency and for a different manufacturer, therefore I proved to know the topic. At the end of the day, it is just a matter of where things are rather than how they're done, once you know the tricks of the deal.
[...]
I have been looking for the manual for a while, and it never seemed to be available to the public although more than once I heard rumours about a public release of it.
I also recall the schematics of the D1 being on the HOG website until a while ago, but they seem to have disappeared now.
After this little rant of mine, I have to say that I totally understand some owners' situation.
But I also know that being handy with tools and familiar with the concepts of mechanics doesn't make you a regulator technician.
[...]
Honestly, as a fellow diver and as a professional dealing with people who claim to be experienced and systematically fail to prove it once underwater, I don't feel comfortable in handing out a service manual which has been kept unavailable to "amateurs" by the company itself.
As unfair and mysterious as it seems, I'm sure they have their reasons, which might also be commercial/business related, and I suggest you to try to email (again...I know, PITA) Chris directly if you have specific requests, or follow up here with an explicit request stating your situation. It helped me a lot. I don't think I would've gotten any reply if I didn't ask it publicly.
As I said, I believe the only reason why I eventually got a glance of the manual is because I had previous training.
I'd be happy to share the manual with everyone, but I don't think I am in the position to safely do such thing.
If you are just curious about the internals of the reg, the Apeks TX50 manual (widely available) will suffice as a thorough explanation on how to open/what's inside/how to rebuild it. If you are looking for some specific indications such as torque specs or subtle details I'll be very happy to assist you with that though

 

[tzetzo]

Cool...let me add one last thing.
Rather than dealing with everyone privately I'd prefer to make a statement here, just to clarify the situation.
I once again will cut/paste part of a conversation I recently had with a fellow user, hope he/she doesn't mind


[...] I have to admit I was a bit disappointed with HOG customer service at the beginning, since I firstly mailed them a few months ago asking for indications on how/where to attend a technician class in SE Asia, where I was based before, and received no reply whatsoever.
But my exchange with Chris, although very brief and synthetic from his side, has been quite satisfactory. I provided him the proof that I am a trained technician already, even though it is with a different agency and for a different manufacturer, therefore I proved to know the topic. At the end of the day, it is just a matter of where things are rather than how they're done, once you know the tricks of the deal.
[...]
I have been looking for the manual for a while, and it never seemed to be available to the public although more than once I heard rumours about a public release of it.
I also recall the schematics of the D1 being on the HOG website until a while ago, but they seem to have disappeared now.
After this little rant of mine, I have to say that I totally understand some owners' situation.
But I also know that being handy with tools and familiar with the concepts of mechanics doesn't make you a regulator technician.
[...]
Honestly, as a fellow diver and as a professional dealing with people who claim to be experienced and systematically fail to prove it once underwater, I don't feel comfortable in handing out a service manual which has been kept unavailable to "amateurs" by the company itself.
As unfair and mysterious as it seems, I'm sure they have their reasons, which might also be commercial/business related, and I suggest you to try to email (again...I know, PITA) Chris directly if you have specific requests, or follow up here with an explicit request stating your situation. It helped me a lot. I don't think I would've gotten any reply if I didn't ask it publicly.
As I said, I believe the only reason why I eventually got a glance of the manual is because I had previous training.
I'd be happy to share the manual with everyone, but I don't think I am in the position to safely do such thing.
If you are just curious about the internals of the reg, the Apeks TX50 manual (widely available) will suffice as a thorough explanation on how to open/what's inside/how to rebuild it. If you are looking for some specific indications such as torque specs or subtle details I'll be very happy to assist you with that though

That is a shame and and in my opinion nowhere close to the customer service that Chris/HOG claims to have!
And like comodino, I did ask Chris (privately) whether there would be any dates scheduled for the Reg repair class in Canada, and got no response what so ever from Chris/HOG.
And on numerous occasions within the past 2-3 months I did ask Chris (again privately) whether the Service Manual for their regs would ever become available for download through their website and got only one really sketchy reply from him on March 8th of this year:

"I changed web servers and platform, the link dropped. I just haven't put it back up. i've also posted on Scubaboard i am the worst worst web guy, that remains true.

Best,

Chris"

Reading at that reply, I'm left with the impression that at some point in the past a link pointing to the Service Manual was available, but not currently.

So Chris, will that link that you're referring to (and I'm assuming you're talking about the Service Manual link) ever come up on your website again in the near/far future or not?

thanks,
Tzetzo