I have an order (about $500 US) that I originally placed before the Chinese new year, it was cancelled for some unknown reason so I placed it again on 26/02/18 (more than 6 weeks ago). I got in contact with someone from Seeed (after multiple attempts using the Support facility on the website) they promised me that it would be complete by the 23’rd of march. I then contacted them on on the 30th (one week after they said that it would be ready) I got a vague email saying.
Dear,
The boards have been finished. There was one issuer, and I will send another mail to you for confirmation later.
Thank you!
I never got another message, I don’t know what the issue was or what the board status really is
I have been trying to contact Seeed since then (nearly 2 weeks ) using email and their “support” button but with no luck, no one will talk to me.
Unfortunately, this order will almost definitely make or break a startup that I have put everything (my families life savings and several thousands of hours work) into starting. I promised a pilot unit to a company by the first of April and I have now had to break that promise.
I desperately need to know if I should get another electronics manufacturer to make the boards for me or not but I cant make this decision as no one will talk to me to tell me what the progress/status is.
Any suggestions?
~investigating :geek: , as mentioned in the related post. Thank you for your patience!
Thank you very much, any communication would be great, I have sent about a dozen emails and support form but am being stonewalled.
Hi Camen,
Any news yet? I will place the order with another vendor I I dont hear from you by the end of the day. And I should let you know, to reduce my risk, this will mean placing all of my future orders with another vendor.
Regards
Hello Sam,
The PCBA team have got back to me and said they are waiting for a reply from you regarding an issue with the BOM. They have sent the message again. Would you mind checking? All the parts are in, so they can get them assembled in a jiffy
Thanks for your patience!
Hi Carmen, yes they sent me 4 identical emails a couple of hours ago. I have replied to them. Thank you
Fab, and lol 
Hi Carmen, It has been a few days, can you please provide an update on this order?
Regards
Carmen? please reply. I haven’t seen any movement on the order and I am still not convinced that it wouldn’t be quicker to place a last minute order with another manufacturer.
Sorry for the late response, it seems Linda has already got back to you. The boards are scheduled for completion on Wednesday. I have put your order on my watch list and can give you the tracking number once available.
Hi Carmen,
How did it go?
Yea, is the PCBA service not as good as just PCBs? This is throwing up a red flag for me; now I’m going to have to make some decisions. OP can you say how large the order was in terms of the number of components/number of boards? Perhaps it was just too much for them to handle or some other exotic issue.
Sure,
The order was very simple:
- 2 layers ~60mm x 100mm boards
- roughly 20 components, nothing tiny no BGA or anything fancy and components on one side only
- only 4 units!
I originally added the board to my cart before Chinese new year (this is what you do so that they can price the components that they don’t have info for)
I waited over the CNY only to have it removed from my cart (it might have timed out or something) a day or two after the CNY holidays in China. I put the board up again and managed to complete the order on 26/02/18.
I waited for about 1 week about 1 week after the quoted 25 days and tried multiple times to contact SEEED. eventually, I got an email to say that they were ready for shipping except for one issue and that they would email me soon about that issue.
I then didn’t hear from them and they completely stonewalled me for about a month, finally, they got in contact with me and it turned out that they hadn’t event started making the boards (So that is one of several blatant lies that I have been fed). a couple of days later Carmen told me that they were due to be complete Wednesday but from what I can see they are still in production, Carmen hasn’t gotten back to me either.
If they told me after 25 days that it would still be a few weeks then I would have happily placed the order with someone else and it would have arrived 2 weeks ago. instead, they still have me hanging on with a series of false promises.
Unfortunately, this order was for a pilot for my main target customer. I told them that they would have the product over a month ago, I expect that they will tire of waiting very soon which will likely mean that this startup will be over before it began. (along with all of my families savings and a few thousand hour of work)
I think it has now been 63 days and still no sign of completion let alone delivery.
I must say that I have placed a couple of small PCBA orders with SEEED in the past and they have come in an appropriate time and been of sufficient quality.
Hi Carmen, is there any news yet, you said Wednesday and now it is Monday and still not shipped. If you think it is going to be much longer could you please, please just tell me so that I can order it from someone else. Four times now I have ready to place the order with another company but have held off because you have made false promises, it is getting beyond ridiculous.
Hi Carmen,
It has now been a week since you said it would ship and it is still “in Production” and I am being stonewalled again.
Hi Carmen,
I still haven’t heard from you and I have no reason to believe that you will be sending this order any time soon.
Today I will place the order with another EPM. Are you going to send me the boards eventually or should I be asking you to refund the order?
Regards
If anyone is interested.
It is now nearly 10 weeks since the re-order. About 12 weeks since the initial order.
The cost of the order was $623.33
It was 4 x simple PCBA and also another PCB which is 50*27mm extremely simple (5 components and no board only - no assembly)
The last email that I got, about a week ago, showed a photo of the main PCBA fully populated and ready for reflow (I think) they asked me to confirm if it was finished. I told them that there was not much I could confirm from the blurry photo, but if it was complete as per the design then to please send it as soon as possible. I have not heard from them since.
Every indicator that I can see shows that I will probably never see my PCB (I can only conclude this as every promise so far has fallen through, I don’t know what is going on because no one will tell me so my intuition says I probably will never see the boards)
I have just started the process of placing the order with another manufacturer, I expect I will get the boards from them in about 3-4 weeks.
If Seeed had told me of their expected delays when I first contacted them, I could have placed the order with the other company 7 weeks ago which would have meant I would have received the boards 3 weeks ago.
I don’t think that I will even bother trying to get a refund as looking at other people experiences it seems that refunds are not an option.
Hello Sam,
Sorry for the late reply, I just got back from a break. Firstly, thank you for your honest review of the PCBA service and I am glad it has worked well for you in the past,
I have spoken to Linda directly and she has informed me that she has been trying to contact you for some time, first regarding the BOM issue and then to confirm the completed boards but she has not heard back from you. The boards have been completed since 23rd April, can you confirm that you can receive her messages? It seems in the past you have been sending your responses directly to our general PCB support e-mail address, in which case it will take much longer to deal with since it first has to get forwarded to the correct department and then queue up behind other PCBA enquiries. The PCBA team gets a lot of enquiries everyday and they work hard into the evening to get through them all.
Can you confirm that you have received this message?
[attachment=0]TIM截图201805041134052.png[/attachment]
Anyway, they have pushed the order to dispatch and the completed boards will be dispatched tonight or early tomorrow.
Apologies for the unpleasant experience. For any future issues, you can find me directly or CC me ([email protected]). That way I can keep up to date with the entire situation and work with you to resolve any issues.
Thank you for much for your incredible patience! 
Hi Carmen,
I have responded to all emails straight away
Linda sent an email 6 days ago with a photo and asked me if i could confirm that it was comple. I replied immediately with the following"
“Hi,
No I certainly didn’t get an email on the 23rd. Are you saying that it was finished 5 days ago and still not sent? There is not much that I can tell you from a photo. If it is finished please send it immediately.
Regards”
I always reply to emails by clicking the “Reply” button, there for my response always goes the same place that the query came from.
Thank you
Hmm… it seems you have a problem getting e-mails from Linda’s personal e-mail account. From the records I can see that the first e-mail was sent from this account on the 23rd. Then she replied again on the general support account on the 28th, that’s when we got your confirmation. But it got queued to the back again…
Anyway, the boards have been dispatched and I have sent you an e-mail with your tracking number. Let me know if you can receive it 
Also, just realised that the picture has yours and Linda’s e-mail addresses. I’ve blocked them out now, sorry.