Customer ReviewsforAdafruit Industries LLC

The company has absent customer support. Customer support consists of a public forum where customers can ask for help from other users or official support staff. I had an issue regarding one of their in-house products (an Adafruit Feather RP2040 ThinkInk) and its support with a display that is listed as compatible on their GitHub page (a WaveShare 4.01-inch ACeP 7 color eink display). The microcontroller and display did not function together and would instead both heat up to a temperature that could cause skin ***** and in the worst case could potentially start a fire if left unattended. The product is designed to be used in conjunction with an optional rechargeable lithium battery, which with the issue mentioned could pose a significant safety risk. There was no response to my customer support request and I was not at the very least guided toward sources that might allow me to fix the issue on my own or get in contact with someone that can help. My request was originally filed on the 12th of October 2023 and has not been answered by official Adafruit support staff within 30 days as of the 11th of November 2023. I only managed to get another user to give me basic troubleshooting advice, which ultimately didn't resolve the issue. I still have not received any word that my problem was going to be looked at or if they potentially needed more information. In contrast, the company of the display I used (WaveShare) contacted me within two days of my customer support request and at the very least told me that they couldn't help me due to using a product they didn't officially support, instead recommending me to use one they did officially support. The only positive I have for this company is that my order was fulfilled in its entirety.

Person is asking for support for a non-Adafruit product which is *** not be supported, Adafruit does not sell / support or own WaveShare products, and it could very well be that the WaveShare display is not compatible with the microcontroller and the power supply is being short circuited. Not all EInk displays are the same pinout - Please check pinouts and power capabilities before connecting two electronic components together!

Adafruit has been voiding orders without explanation and have not been replying to customer service inquiries. I tried placing an order for a raspberry pi 4 twice and both orders were voided with no reason why.

There is currently a Raspberry Pi shortage worldwide, there is a limit of 1 per customer, the person continues to attempt to order Raspberry Pi units, we do not accept orders for multiple Pi units, there is no order from this customer at this time, please do not attempt to order multiple Raspberry Pi unit so educators, makers, and young person can get them.

Good company. They don't let you rate their products, which means they do some pretty nutty things, but I've been overall satisfied.

Thanks ******, appreciate the kind words :)

I love the products and innovative spirit at Adafruit. The company changed my life and got me into 'making'. So, it's with a heavy heart (and out of 100% pure frustration) that I write this review. Unfortunately the support function at Adafruit has a pathological apathy for customers. In 14 years of purchases (several thousand dollars), I had to file my first RMA on a component this year. This simple transaction lead to someone on their support team placing my address on a list of fraudulent locations and effectively 'cancelling' me from using their services. Why? I had the audacity to feedback their process and ultimately dispute the charge for my DOA component after two weeks of follow-*** with their support team netted me nothing but frustration. Their process for 'support' is to post on a forum. Responses on the forum are not governed nor done in a timely fashion. After waiting over a week, other customers who had posted their cases just a day prior were getting support responses. I contacted them again to point this out--no response. It was at this point that I disputed the charge with my credit card provider, having spent plenty of time following up with Adafruit myself and running behind on my project timeline, I informed them I was taking this action and asked that they work out the dispute with my card company. Days later I got a response to my forum post and went to proceed with an exchange (once complete I'd revert the dispute). But I did not get a chance to complete this transaction before their support team 'noticed' (I had clearly told them I was doing this) that the order had been charged back. Without any real deliberation--as if using consumer protections afforded by credit cards is an obvious and unforgivable sin--my account was 'cancelled'.Since they seem to rabidly defend themselves in these reviews, maybe I'll get the courtesy of an explanation that was never adequately provided thru my several follow-*** since.

We attempted to assist the customer, they were not satisfied with the assistance, we provided and offered a replacement as well as support, the customer decided to do a chargeback. We have canceled the replacement and do not have any pending order or funds/payment from the customer. Please instruct the person to seek another supplier.

Adafruit's response is a blatant misrepresentation of the facts. As noted in my review, I disputed the charge after they were non-responsive for over a week--meeting the criteria for guaranteed consumer right to withhold payment for faulty merchandise after making a reasonable effort to effect a resolution. I have (and have provided to BBB) the e-mail thread to evidence the sequence of events occurred EXACTLY as I described. If Adafruit would like to challenge or revise that narrative, have some integrity and back it up with evidence. As it stands, you simply lied in your recap to justify your position. I can only assume you are lying to yourself too... but do you honestly believe it's sensible to cancel a loyal customer of over a decade who has spent thousands of dollars with you over a <$100 order when they did nothing but exercise legal consumer protections exactly as they were intended?The sad part is that this is not surprising based on the abundant reviews out there on various forums where other customers alike complain of this same treatment: They reach out to customer support > provide feedback about the experience > have the gall to ask for or seek remediation > get cancelled. On glassdoor you can read about the toxic leadership culture that promotes these crude, anti-customer practices. When oh when will customers be worthy of your awesomeness Adafruit? My guess, if you continue to abuse once loyal patrons in this manner, is never. You won't be around much longer as a viable business if you are steadfast in your commitment to removing pesky customers who give you feedback and exercise their lawful rights as consumers in the face of your apathetic customer support function. People like me take umbrage to this... yes I can and will move my business elsewhere but this experience has been sufficiently upsetting to me that I am motivated to help others avoid it (I'd prefer that you commit to changes here so me and your other cancelees can go back to supporting you).Be worthy of your mission and honor the inspiration you provide. Your customers are passionate people... You are not worthy of them at the moment. Still, I won't give up on you... I'd happily still support you (and remove this and other cautionary reviews I've provided) if you saw your way clear to unbanning my account. Tho I would recommend you do a more comprehensive audit as there are a great many other 'victims' of yours in this regard.

They are awful. If you never have an issue, you'll probably be ok. They do not offer phone support. Last time I checked we are in 2022. I tried resolving a billing issue and referred me to post on an internal forum for assistance. Our company will be removing them as a vendor as quickly as possible. Totally ridiculous. Stay away from them.

The customer emailed our team at ******* on March 22, 2022 the Adafruit team responded at 11:47am March 22, 2022 asking for more information as the customer did not have the details for the ********************** team to look up the request.While we attempted to assist the customer, ***** (customer) emailed multiple times 1 minute apart, over and over.Mar 24, 2022, 9:35 AM Mar 24, 2022, 9:37 AM Mar 24, 2022, 9:38 AM And left voice message(s) for our team.We referred the customer to our support forums, the customer was then contacted via email afterwards: "we received one ticket yesterday and responded to the email that was provided to us by the account submitting the ticket - we also replied to the customer via a new ticket that was submitted".For security reasons (phishing, social engineering, etc...), we would not call or reply to any emails other than the email that was submitted in our support tickets (this is the account that is signed in and submitting the ticket in IO). In this case, they initially emailed us on an email address they must not have been monitoring anymore. Once they changed the email and reached out again, we replied, but have not heard back from them again.It's unfortunate that their expectations weren't met. We responded quickly, adafruit.io does not offer SLA's or one-on-one support contracts, etc. We feel for their situation, but this wasn't a bug or failure of IO. It appears the issue stemmed from them using a non-group email and an expired credit card. We didn't terminate their service mediately either. We alerted them about the failed payments to the email on file and gave them nearly a month before it was shut it off.We went beyond what we've built out and manually re-enabled all of their feeds that were shut down due to their unpaid service.The customer's request is resolved, we would prefer the customer seek another service / company as it does not seem they want to interact with our team professionally or politely.

Horrible business model! Very rude people! Bad customer support! Refuse of service for no reason!

HI BBB - This person *************************** was asked to not participate in our online communities over 5 years ago (2016). ***** is not a customer, our last email to him was in March of 2016 when we gave him a final warning which he decided to ignore. It's been 5 years he needs to move on. We are not able to include his words since the BBB filter says "Inappropriate language was detected""*************************** - please do not come in to the chats or make comments or post other unfriendly things in the community or statements that are not respectful to others (we've needed to delete comments over and over that were flagged) we've asked you numerous times and the community needs you to respect the our collective needs to have a safe supportive place where they can share their projects and where our team can broadcast, post and more."this is your final and last warning, if we need to remove your comments again we'll ban your account(s) from the communities we help maintain."