Venty shit the bed: Have been emailing S&B for five days to get my E04 unit RMA’d, they won’t register my device or tell me who can. S&B will not honor warranty, basically said I'm SOOL
Hello, disclaimer: redacting this with AI because honestly I am tired of dealing with this shit so I just fed my whole S&B customer service exchange into Claude. Sorry about that but it also should be way more coherent than my ramblings, and provide a clearer timeline into the actions I've taken (and S&B inaction/incompetence).
I bought a new Venty (my first DHV after extensive research, was so excited!) in December 2025. Tried registering it the day I opened the box: couldn’t, because Mexico isn’t a selectable country in their registration system. Not a huge deal at the time, figured I’d deal with it later.
Fast forward to last week: the device throws E04 twice. I go to the storz-bickel.com website, click the message button and chat with "Herby" their AI. Their own chatbot confirms this means a faulty unit and that it’s within the 2-year Mexico warranty period. Still, Mexico isn’t selectable as a country, anywhere in their system. (If you can't see your country, click here! And it sends to a different page with literally the same country list and no other actionable items).
The chatbot first tells me to register the account as Brazil instead. I ask it if that would actually let them fulfill a repair/replacement to my Mexican address. It backtracks "no, they can’t process repairs for Brazil-registered accounts, and they can’t ship anything to Mexico either."
Thankfully I didn't follow the instructions provided by their AI, I might be in an even worse situation with a Venty stuck in digital Brazil(???). Suffice to say I needed a human, couldn't hold off on sending emails any longer:
I open a support ticket. Over the next 5 days I send them:
• A full writeup of the exact issue, with screenshots of my conversation with their bot and its instructions, at this point just asking for assistance registering the unit so I can proceed with the RMA myself
• A 2nd email with a Bluetooth connection log proving the device has <150 hours of use, up to date firmware, etc
• Photos of device and serial number sticker, as well as my full accessory kit (I have not only bought the Venty, but also the hard case and several other dosing cap accessories, thought this might make the human that read my case [🤡] more sympathetic to a loyal customer)
• The actual diagnostic identifier generated by their own device app’s built-in “Analysis” tool which some of you might be familiar with. Fun fact: if you use it while your device is in E04, it detects the issue and auto-generates and sends a report to S&B, along with providing next steps. So basically proof that gets sent to their backend that indeed the unit with X serial number is having Y issues.
Throughout the "conversation", I get the same copy-pasted “Step 1/2/3, create an account, register your device” instructions THREE SEPARATE TIMES, while I kept asking for a human to review my situation. Ofc those instructions don’t work, but nobody would actually know that since not a single human at S&B has read my situation.
After the third templated non-answer, I finally got something different: “Unfortunately, due to current trade restrictions affecting our products, we are unable to provide direct service to customers in Mexico at this time. However, we invite you to contact your retailer.
EDIT: Contacted my retailer, turns out they are affiliated with S&B. However they said that I have to pay for shipping the unit to Germany and back, which will cost around $140 USD total.
Not sure if I'm more or less angry than before: an extra 25% premium to get a known manufacturing defect resolved. Contacted S&B to see if they can asisst with warranty shipping costs, no response yet.
EDIT 2: Got this response:
"Thank you for your message.
Based on our current review, the import, distribution, and sale of vaporizers and electronic cigarettes are subject to significant legal restrictions in Mexico.
Current Mexican legislation prohibits the commercial importation, marketing, and distribution of such products. These restrictions are primarily based on Mexico's constitutional health protection reform and the provisions of the General Health Law (Ley General de Salud).
Therefore, we are currently unable to provide a positive assessment regarding the commercial importation of vaporizers into Mexico.
This concers warranty cases as well."
They still haven't registered my device which should have been easy on their end (nor direct acknowledgement of this request), no direct response to anything really. "Regarding the commercial importation of vaporizers into Mexico" I asked if they could either pay for my RMA shipping, or in its defect comp me a unit through my original retailer (which would not be importing, and they're actively affiliated). How is both the importation prohibition and active retailer relations true at the same time? I don't know, and they won't get into it either.
Also the Mexican ban isn't really explicit enough to say but the general consensus is that DHV don't qualify as dispersing the harmful aerosols specified in the bill. But that's a whole other thing.
Pressed further, they haven't responded in an entire business day so I'm praying someone is actually looking into providing a positive resolution to my case.