A review of my Handy ordering experience and Ohdoki customer support

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As a modern consumer I think the support you receive from a company is just as important as the quality of a product. I am experiencing a quality issue with a brand new device so I want to share my experience as it unfolds. I think this will help other people thinking about purchasing this device decide if Ohdoki is the right vendor for them.

I made a post on reddit yesterday about my brand new Handy 1 which I thought was quite noisy and a few helpful users helped me confirm that it was indeed noisier than it should be right out of the box. I was surprised to see this morning that my post was removed by the handy admins claiming it was a request for support. Just to clarify, it was not a request for support or a support ticket, I have already opened that with Ohdoki, I was using the community to get feedback on a question about my device. I can see the grey area on that so I just want to be clear, this post is not a support request.

This is a review of my still developing order, device review and customer support experience with Ohdoki. I hope my post is in the right spot I tried to make sure I was in the correct area. Seems like Ohdoki is more interested in reputation control than helping customers. I will get to that unfolding observation below.

Let’s start from the top and then I will keep the community updated on how things unfold.

After much internal debate and research I settled on the handy to help me navigate a temporary libido difference with my wife as we start a family. See my post history on reddit if you are curious. One of the biggest things I was worried about was noise from the device so I watched a lot of videos from Ohdoki as well as individual users and I was excited to observe that on slow speed settings the device was very quiet, and that is what I was looking for. I finally placed my order on Tuesday and paid for the fastest shipping as I have a trip coming up on Sunday and into next week and I thought that would be a great opportunity to get to know this thing a bit. Needless to say I was excited to receive it and gutted to realize it would likely need replaced.

I received my device yesterday at about 4pm in the afternoon local time. I unboxed it, plugged it in and turned it on. It immediately started making a very loud audible clicking sound that only escalated as the speed and the stroke length were increased. I am smart enough to know that sounds like that coming from a device with moving parts is not a good thing. I powered it on one more time to take a short video and decided to reach out to Ohdoki support, I am sure they will make this right quickly, right? I get an auto responder saying I will get a response in 24-48 hours… bummer.

I am still interested in trying this thing but I don’t want to make the problem any worse so I went to the handy community on reddit to make a post, 2 users immediately validate that there is way too much noise. Here are their actual replies:

  • Yea, that noise definitely isn’t normal. Mine, by comparison, is very quiet.
  • Definitely not normal.

Great, that tells me what I likely need to know, I have a device that is not behaving optimally. 10:30pm local time, my post was deleted by u/theHandy-ModTeam stating it is a service ticket. No, not really, looking for feedback from other users but OK.

Here is their generic copy and paste message.

Hello,

All supports inquiries should be sent to the support email, contact@thehandy.com, or visit our help center at Ohdoki Help Center and use the chat bot in the bottom right of the page.

What’s sort of funny is you would think instead of just deleting my post and copy pasting a generic message about contacting support they would show the slightest bit of interest in the issue. u/theHandy-ModTeam check this out, I don’t even need an AI bot to write this:

Hey Dominushunt! That really doesn’t sound normal, the fastest way to get your issue resolved would be to reach out to our support team by emailing contact@thehandy.com, or visit our help center at https://intercom.help/ohdoki/en and use the chat bot in the bottom right of the page.

I check my email because surely I have a reply there? Nope. I guess the Handy support team checks for negative press before they reply to actual support issues. I go to sleep annoyed.

I woke up this morning to a response from Ohdoki, not very helpful. Here it is in its entirety. This response was almost 4 hours after they deleted my reddit post. Again, goes to show you what the real priorities at the office are.

Thanks for reaching out and sending over the video — that’s really helpful.

To fully assess the issue, could you also record a short video of it running at the highest speed, making sure the LED status is visible as well?

Once we have that, we can check with our technical team and advise you on the best solution.

Kind regards,

Dela

Ohdoki

I replied back immediately, I understand this company is based in Europe and I was able to reply while it was still early afternoon in Oslo. I will not post my entire email as there are personal details in there but I essentially explained that my concerns were validated by other users, if my unit was noisier than average I do not want to troubleshoot it, I just want a new device. The reality I explained is after researching multiple devices like the Handy, the OSR2+, the SR6 etc I went with the Handy because of the ‘ready out of the box’ advantage they so happily tout. I did take another longer video for them with the LED light as they requested and despite there being more than enough hours left in the day to give me a reply or let me know a new device was on the way, I am now left hanging with the reality that I will likely not receive any ‘support’ until Monday at the earliest. The vibe of their support email makes me feel like I am going to enter into a really annoying game of “try this, can you send us another video of x, y and z?”. I don’t want to do that, I paid for a brand new device that showed up wrapped in cellophane. I want to take it out of the box and use it, not play hand job robot technician.

So here I am, Friday morning in the USA with a $200 paper weight that clicks and grinds when it is plugged in playing a game of 48 hour email pong with a customer service team who deleted reddit posts before they service actual customer issues and apparently we are lucky to get one reply per day.

What am I supposed to do come Sunday, pack a broken jerk off machine on my trip with me so I can continue to ‘troubleshoot’ and send videos to their support team? Give me a break I bought a jerk off machine, I want to use it to jerk off, not trade videos and emails with a tech support team.

Here is the longer video with LED light I sent to Ohdoki this morning if anyone is curious. Not quiet at all. Sounds horrible. Even if they can walk me through ‘fixing it’ I want a new one, no way this thing will last as long as one that shows up working smooth and quiet.

I tired to post this same post on their reddit today and they have my account banned from posting. Again, more interested in hiding defects than addressing customer issues.

Any similar or different experiences with the Ohdoki support team?

Any recommendations on what I should buy when I get my refund on this piece of shit? Should I give it another chance?

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Maybe not a lot of followers on this thread but in case anyone is wondering here is an update on my situation.

As predicted I got no love on my service issue through the whole weekend. I received a message on Monday that a new device was being shipped to me with no acknowledgement of the painfully slow reply. Would have just been nice if they got the device shipped on Friday instead of waiting until Monday. They had plenty of time in the day to get it resolved on Friday even on Euro time.

The device arrived yesterday, full week after I should have had original device. I plugged it in and I kid you not, just as loud as the last one, which they already acknowledged was an issue.

Am I just getting lemons here? Maybe a whole bad batch of handy’s in the warehouse?

updated video, one on the left is the ‘new device’ one on the right is the original one it was supposed to replace.

Oh also when they told me they were going to replace the device and I could throw out the old one, I spent some time setting it up and connecting it to wifi etc just to learn the ropes before the new device showed up. The hands free cup fell apart as soon as I threaded it onto a camera mount. Again, customer service acknowledged that it shouldn’t happen and they sent me a new one… maybe that gets here next week? Who cares now.

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Needless to say I am frustrated. I ordered the device over a week ago, customer service has been a slow frustrating game of email pong with no substance to the replies. I have never received more than one email a day from the customer service team, they do not work at all on weekends and give minimal obviously template replies to most every question.

At this point I have asked for a full refund, my enthusiasm for the device has all but disappeared. Two broken units and the hands free cup never even saw any real action before taking a dive. I find it hard to believe other users are having as bad of luck as I am.

I would appreciate any recommendations if there is a different device that I should be looking into.

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I have had 3 The Handy devices, and 3 hands free cups. The hands free cup is an absolute useless accessory, and 2 of the 3 have broken on me. It’s extremely bad.

However, the Handy device is not. All 3 of my devices (bought replacements due to throwing away 2 in panic over the course of 3 years) were quality, despite the cheap build quality. I think I had two of them for 2 years each. Zero maintenance, zero issues, zero sound issues. My second device, which was the shortest living one, was significantly more silent than the other two, but the other two still weren’t noisy (I live alone most of the time so I don’t mind the noise - the nature of the device means it’ll never be silent, and it’s making as much noise as I expect).

I have checked, after writing my entire post, and I do have the same noise as you have on my current device. I have just never noticed it. I use a noise cancelling headset and a Quest 3 now, so I don’t hear anything anymore. But this wasn’t always the case, and I have not been bothered by the sound.

I’ve done a lot of research, and the handy is the most popular device, and it’s very easy for plug and play. I would advice you to get The Handy 2, which is a much more premium product, and you don’t need the handsfree cup (one of the worst quality products I’ve ever bought). Other products seem to require a lot more setup and maintenance, but I have no experience with them.

The Handy 1 is good enough for me, it’s an incredible device. When I bought it I spent a couple of weeks to get used to it and make it hands free etc. But once I made it work, I was surprised at how different the experience was compared to the old fashioned way. I added a Quest 3 to the setup and it’s virtually as easy to use the handy now as it is to using the old fashioned hand.
I bought the handy 2 pro out of curiosity and I am excited to see if it improves the experience significantly.

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Morphz,

Appreciate the reply and the information. I did have a nice weekend with one of my very loud handy’s where I managed to use it 2 times. The first time literally took half the day because a lot of trial and error with set up, hands free, controllers etc.

I can already see the value but I think I am just feeling a little burned on the Handy experience for now. For me I think multi axis is more important than I thought it would be so I am back to looking at SR6 and OSR2+. I understand they are much less user friendly and a little more finicky but I think I am OK with that if I can get the result I am looking for.

I will likely try the Handy 2 eventually but I think given the launch is 6 months away I might try something else in the meantime.

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