u/anonmt57

Hey all, sharing a frustrating experience with Napoleon. I’ve been a loyal customer of theirs, but no more after this.

In short, my 2000 dollar bbq melted itself when toasting buns and no one at napoleon gives a shit. Pitiful showing from a company I used to really respect.

Details:

I bought a new napoleon phantom 500 NG (with the built in digital wifi thermometer kit) about a year ago. No issues with it other than some minor build quality issues which I didn’t mind. I do the typical maintenance.

Last week, i went to grill some burgers on medium high for about 20 minutes. Burgers were done, put burners on low and then put buns on to toast. Around this time I noticed the front left burner KNOB was on fire. I was so confused - turned off the gas supply, and noticed behind the knob there was a fire that was melting the knob. With the gas supply off, the fire eventually extinguished itself with air.

Unfortunately the fire ate through the wiring harnesses and the lighting on the knobs stopped working too. When I touch any harnesses near the fire they just flake away into dust. The knob is now loosely connected to the bbq and doesn’t have control of the gas.

The pictures don’t really do it justice -
Smoke was billowing out of the burner knob area and it would have been so much worse if we didn’t catch it right away. And yes I checked, nothing fell in that area that could have started a fire.

Since then I haven’t used the bbq. I went to napoleons website to start a claim and holy shit it is the worst experience ever.
- website doesn’t make it easy to even submit a claim online. There is a support area where you can fill out a form but you can only “save” it. It’s unclear if saving is submitting. I still have no idea if it works.
- live chat was a little better, agent was able to get me to a better form (not accessible on the website) where I filled out a lengthy set of questions.
- from there I get an email a day later asking me to fill out 10 questions and submit 10 photos. I do that.
- four days later napoleon responds (after I bump up and ask them to respond) saying to send the missing photos. He didn’t clarify which were missing and I have no idea which were missing. I sent them all. So I sent them again and explained they have the photos.
- since then, no response.
- in parallel I’ve called them several times and have been on hold for over 6 hours. No one picks up. Pretty sure no one works on the CS line. Currently 3 hours and 44 minutes waiting for someone to pick up.
- live chat interface is also infuriating on mobile. The text box is clipped at the bottom of the screen and makes it so hard to click into and copy paste. On chrome it thinks it’s a password form which also clips the the text entry. Very frustrating

Has anyone had this issue? I can’t find anyone else reporting it.

To contrast, my Weber smoker had an issue. I called Weber and in 5 minutes I was speaking to a lovely lady who was fulfilling the part replacement over the phone without needing any photos from me. You can guess which brand I prefer now.