Importance of Customer Service: TEquipment and Fluke

[blacksheeplogic]

At least you're discussing the issue instead of being on a mission to bash Fluke (except the blessed 17B+), bash TEquipment, or worship the Church of eBay.

I don't see anyone on this thread outside of some of your posts pushing an agenda.

Others reading these threads with similar questions in the future benefit from seeing other suggestions as well as experiences. I do have a 87V but most of the time I prefer my 117 (available locally) which for the described intended use along with the 17B+ are viable options. These alternatives don't diminish or reflect negatively on your choice so just respect those other opinions.

There's always good and bad stories no matter who you deal with. I own a lot of Fluke gear and I have had a couple of issues in the past dealing with Fluke. I've also purchased from TEquipment and for the most part been relatively happy with them. But as others have pointed out there are also other options including some sellers on eBay which do provide good service.

[redg]

Hi nctnico,

In other words, you still have nothing to say about buying multimeters on eBay, and in particular buying a grey market Fluke 17B+ with no manufacturer warranty outside China.

[Muxr]

Fluke meters really aren't priced for hobbyists. The cheap Fluke meters are better suited for electricians and the more expensive "electronics" Fluke DMMs are pricey, and out of the range of most hobbyist I'd say. I really enjoy my Fluke meters but every single one of them was a (2nd hand) Ebay non warrantied purchase.

The price difference makes the warranty a non issue.

[redg]

Hi blacksheeplogic.

This is really simple. I just paid US$387 for a product that has an issue. The vendor and manufacturer dealt with the issue immediately, and it looks like receipt, return and replacement of the product will take about a week.

That kind of responsiveness, because I have better ways to spend my time than dealing with issues like this, is worth quite a lot of money to me.

Others may have different priorities.

I started this thread just to express appreciation for how TEquipment and Fluke dealt with my problem, and to suggest that there is something to be said for working with manufacturers and suppliers with a local presence.

I've now spent much more time in this thread defending that view than it took me to resolve the problem.

Hey, those of you who don't like what I'm saying, and think that buying locally is BS, cool.

[Monkeh]

Hi nctnico,

In other words, you still have nothing to say about buying multimeters on eBay, and in particular buying a grey market Fluke 17B+ with no manufacturer warranty outside China.

And how is buying a Fluke 17B+ any different to buying any other product on eBay?

[redg]

And how is buying a Fluke 17B+ any different to buying any other product on eBay?

I'm surprised that you would raise this question, given that you said earlier that you have been an eBay buyer for a long time.

Let's count the ways.

There are eBay vendors who are authorized resellers whose products come with full warranties.

The vendors of the Fluke 17B+ are located in mainland China, California and New Jersey. They say that their product has a one year warranty, but in fact that warranty does not come from Fluke. It comes from the vendor.

If you read these vendor warranties, what you will learn is that they are meaningless, and are in fact in the sole discretion of the vendor. If you dig a bit deeper, what you will find out is that these vendors are faceless.

Only an idiot would buy a 17B+ from one of these vendors expecting to have any recourse if there is a problem with the meter.

If you are prepared to spend US$120 on a meter that may or may not work, and may or may not be fake, go for it - but don't think that these vendors are offering real warranties, and for sure don't think that Fluke will back up your purchase.

There are a number of people on YouTube effectively promoting these meters, and in my view their failure to fully explain the issues involved in buying one is disgraceful.

[Monkeh]

And how is buying a Fluke 17B+ any different to buying any other product on eBay?

I'm surprised that you would raise this question, given that you said earlier that you have been an eBay buyer for a long time.

I did? News to me..

Let's count the ways.

There are eBay vendors who are authorized resellers whose products come with full warranties.

Precious few, especially in this context.

The vendors of the Fluke 17B+ are located in mainland China, California and New Jersey. They say that their product has a one year warranty, but in fact that warranty does not come from Fluke, it comes from the vendor. If you read these vendor warranties, what you will learn is that they are meaningless, and are in fact in the sole discretion of the vendor. If you dig a bit deeper, what you will find out is that these vendors are faceless.

Only an idiot would buy a 17B+ from one of these vendors expecting to have any recourse if there is a problem with the meter.

If you are prepared to spend US$120 on a meter that may or may not work, and may or may not be fake, go for it - but don't think that these vendors are offering real warranties, and for sure don't think that Fluke will back up your purchase.

You've got plenty of recourse if it turns up faulty, after that, just like any other grey market item (.. like nearly anything shipped out of China..), you're on your own. So.. exactly the same situation as buying any other low cost product from China on eBay.

[redg]

Hi Monkeh,

I'll stick with what I said.

The eBay vendors of the Fluke 17B+ are offering warranties that Fluke will not honour, the "warranty" that they offer is fundamentally fake, the product may or may not be real, the vendors are faceless, and the YouTubers who have effectively promoted these vendors, without highlighting the issues involved in doing business with them, should be ashamed of themselves.

[edavid]

Has anyone ever seen a fake Fluke 17B+ 

[edavid]

Has anyone ever seen a fake Fluke 17B+ 

I think the OP meant fake warranty. Fluke stated clearly that lower end Chinese models (all Chinese Flukes except for F289C and F87VC and similar high priced ones) are not under warranty out of China.
The meters themselves, on the other hand, I've never seen a single fake one.

He said "the product may or may not be real", so clearly he was talking about fake meters.  I've never seen or heard of one either, so I wondered about that.

[redg]

I want to ask something.

The eBay vendors of the Fluke 17B+ all say that there is a warranty, but not one of them says that this is in fact a grey market product that Fluke will not warrant outside China. What they are offering, rather cutely, is a vendor warranty, that if you read the terms amounts to nothing.

What these vendors say about warranties is not just fundamentally dishonest, but intended to lead buyers, many - and maybe most - of whom will not make the distinction between a manufacturer's warranty and what they are "offering", into a false sense of security.

Meanwhile, every one of these vendors is faceless. Unlike Frankey, who is well known here and, incidentally, is not selling this product, at least not currently, they could disappear tomorrow, along with their "vendor" warranty.

Does this not concern any of you, or have you all decided that being lied to by vendors is just a normal part of life, to be shrugged off, and that a real warranty is worthless.

And equally importantly, have you decided that supporting businesses with a local presence, whether manufacturers or retailers, is also not worth it if you can get a cheaper price from a faceless dealer on eBay?

[joeqsmith]

A real Fluke is not suppose to fail anywhere soon, before you will need a better meter.
For the risk of no warranty plus very low fail rate, I would like to take the risk for lower price.

Same.  I also have no problems buying used higher end equipment for my hobby use. 

Then again, after running the 87Vs and seeing how easily they were damaged compared with all the other Flukes I looked at, having a warranty may be a good thing when you consider their high cost of a new one. 

The one thing about the lower end Flukes (101, 107, 115, 17B+) I have looked at,  they have proven to be some of the most electrically robust meters I have tested.   I am not sure why the 87V has been such a poor performer during my tests other than maybe being an old design. 

To the OP's point, they claimed it was for "basic motorcycle maintenance".  I'm on my third cheap meter in 25 years now for troubleshooting low voltage wiring like this.  As I mentioned, the first two failed mechanically.  Nothing wrong with the free Harbor Freight meter for this sort of work.  Get two and you have a backup. 

[amirm]

I am a little confused about the reference to Amazon.  Service from them could not be bettered.  Their return process is automated.  You don't even have to justify there is a problem.  If you are unhappy for any reason, you ask for the return and they not only issue a return unconditionally, they send the UPS guy to your door to pick it up!   You don't even have to create a label for it.  The UPS guy shows up with the paperwork.  Just tape the box closed and you are done.

Then there is the matter of security of the transaction.  With Amazon, you have world class engineers safeguarding your records.  Who knows what is being done when using other e-commerce vendors.

For these reasons, even when I am buying from TE, I buy it through Amazon.  With one-click the order is processed and on its way.  No  having to sign up, login, enter new information, etc.

On the companies themselves, when I bought my Agilent scope, one of the probes was clearly broken.  I asked them for service and they said I had to send the entire scope to them!  No amount of explaining got them to understand that I just had a broken probe so that should be all that I should return to them.  So to this day, I still have the broken probe .  This scope by the way I bought from a local vendor (Fry's).  Big companies and processes can sometimes make no sense at all.

But yes, I do want to buy local if there is not much of a trade off.

[nctnico]

Hi nctnico,

In other words, you still have nothing to say about buying multimeters on eBay, and in particular buying a grey market Fluke 17B+ with no manufacturer warranty outside China.

IMHO you are just raising issues which aren't there so meh.
If you bought your 17B+ with defective display from China through Ebay/Paypal then you'd had the same hassle free return and Paypal covers the return shipping costs. It would just have taken longer (but I already wrote that in my initial reply).

[redg]

I am a little confused about the reference to Amazon.  Service from them could not be bettered.  Their return process is automated.  You don't even have to justify there is a problem.  If you are unhappy for any reason, you ask for the return and they not only issue a return unconditionally, they send the UPS guy to your door to pick it up!   You don't even have to create a label for it.  The UPS guy shows up with the paperwork.  Just tape the box closed and you are done.

Then there is the matter of security of the transaction.  With Amazon, you have world class engineers safeguarding your records.  Who knows what is being done when using other e-commerce vendors.

For these reasons, even when I am buying from TE, I buy it through Amazon.  With one-click the order is processed and on its way.  No  having to sign up, login, enter new information, etc.

On the companies themselves, when I bought my Agilent scope, one of the probes was clearly broken.  I asked them for service and they said I had to send the entire scope to them!  No amount of explaining got them to understand that I just had a broken probe so that should be all that I should return to them.  So to this day, I still have the broken probe .  This scope by the way I bought from a local vendor (Fry's).  Big companies and processes can sometimes make no sense at all.

But yes, I do want to buy local if there is not much of a trade off.

The Amazon return process is good, but I don't believe, if I'd purchased through Amazon, that I'd be on the phone with the vendor, who in turn would speak with the manufacturer, with the whole issue resolved within 90 minutes of receipt, taking up about 30 minutes of communication.

I didn't state this, but the first question was whether what I was seeing was as abnormal as it appeared to be, the second question was whether there was a quick fix that would have made a return unnecessary, and the third question was arranging the return, which was arranged by the vendor, at its expense, within 24 hours.

On the security issue, I would have thought that people would have more sense by now than to leave their credit card information on file with any vendor, including Amazon.

In saying these things, I'm thinking about RevZilla, a Pennsylvania company (where TEquipment is also from) that has built a phenomenal reputation by dealing directly with its customers and that does not do one cent of commerce via Amazon or eBay. It's a pretty interesting company, started relatively recently by some young guys into motorcycles, that is now probably the most successful on-line retailer of motorcycle gear in the U.S. Apart from brilliant use of social media, they've done it through great customer service.

[redg]

IMHO you are just raising issues which aren't there so meh.
If you bought your 17B+ with defective display from China through Ebay/Paypal then you'd had the same hassle free return and Paypal covers the return shipping costs. It would just have taken longer (but I already wrote that in my initial reply).

You do not have the right on an eBay purchase to return an item just because you don't like it or have unilaterally decided that it is defective.

You are right, however, that solving the problem can take longer - indeed it can be highly aggravating, and depending on the vendor's terms, may not have a result that favours you. It will also involve you paying to send the meter, in the case of China and if you are in North America, to the other side of the world to a vendor that nobody, outside eBay, has ever heard of, who is dealing in grey goods, and who can close down tomorrow, re-emerging under another name.

The truth about these Fluke 17B+ meters is that your "warranty" comes from the vendor, not Fluke, and is only as good, as a practical matter, as the vendor says it is. Anyone buying one of these meters should read what the vendor "warrants" very carefully.

Personally, given the choice between dealing with TEquipment, and resolving a problem in 30 minutes, and trying to resolve a problem with a vendor in China, to whom I have to send a meter as a first step, I'll deal with TEquipment.

If you have lots of time on your hands, and are prepared to take the risk of losing what you paid for the meter, plus what it cost you to send it back to China, cool.

[redg]

You do not have the right on an eBay purchase to return an item just because you don't like it or have unilaterally decided that it is defective.

You are right, however, that solving the problem can take longer - indeed it can be highly aggravating, and depending on the vendor's terms, may not have a result that favours you. It will also involve you paying to send the meter, in the case of China and if you are in North America, to the other side of the world to a vendor that nobody, outside eBay, has ever heard of, who is dealing in grey goods, and who can close down tomorrow, re-emerging under another name.

The truth about these Fluke 17B+ meters is that your "warranty" comes from the vendor, not Fluke, and is only as good, as a practical matter, as the vendor says it is. Anyone buying one of these meters should read what the vendor "warrants" very carefully.

Personally, given the choice between dealing with TEquipment, and resolving a problem in 30 minutes, and trying to resolve a problem with a vendor in China, to whom I have to send a meter as a first step, I'll deal with TEquipment.

If you have lots of time on your hands, and are prepared to take the risk of losing what you paid for the meter, plus what it cost you to send it back to China, cool.

The hypothesis does not stand. F17B+ is built like a tank, unless it is DOA, which you can return right after receiving the unit, where your eBay protection still exists. If it survived its first month, it will last pretty much till the day you put 10kV to it, blowing up the meter and you hand.
If you are to buy an unwarrantied $10k gear, think twice and consider doing business with a domestic dealer. For a $100 meter, it does not matter. Getting a F17B+ died after years of use is just like winning a lottery, and even if that happens, you've already recovered more than the $100 you spent on it.
A very good reason to buy test gears from China is that Chinese government pays money (in terms of case or tax exemption) to selected equipments that are essential to the development of economy, so that the users can pay less. Another reason is due to Chinese clones, western competitors have to sell their genuine gears in China at a lower price to compete clones. The two factors sum up gives you very low price. For instance, I recently got a China exclusive Sumitomo T600C optical fiber fusion splicer with core alignment, 100% made in Japan, 100% compatible with same building quality as Type-81 in the rest of the world, for only 40% the price. That's $3000 save that I can not resist.
I have more than $10k worth of gears bought from non authorized distributors, and none of them failed. The trick not to buy shitty things is simple: do not try to buy extremely cheap goods that you know it will be a POS.

Thanks for being forthright in your reasoning for buying goods from China. I understand your reasons, but prefer to make purchase decisions based on other criteria.

That said, your apparent belief that you can rescind any eBay purchase because you have decided that the product isn't what you expected is factually wrong.

[Monkeh]

You will find in virtually any situation, eBay and Paypal will back a buyer if they decide they want a refund (return or not!). Especially for relatively low cost goods coming from shady suppliers in eastern countries.

[redg]

You will find in virtually any situation, eBay and Paypal will back a buyer if they decide they want a refund (return or not!). Especially for relatively low cost goods coming from shady suppliers in eastern countries.

So now we get to the truth.

You promote buying from shady suppliers because, if anything goes wrong, you think you and others, including other members of this forum, will ultimately get away with it.

For my part, I'm interested in working with honourable vendors, and indeed, I figure that honourable vendors will not be disappointed to lose your patronage to the shady vendors with whom you, and apparently a number of others, are apparently delighted to do business.

Meanwhile, I have better ways to spend my time than waste it dealing with eBay, PayPal and some faceless vendor on the other side of the planet over some BS dispute.

[Monkeh]

You will find in virtually any situation, eBay and Paypal will back a buyer if they decide they want a refund (return or not!). Especially for relatively low cost goods coming from shady suppliers in eastern countries.

So now we get to the truth.

Your truth. Which differs greatly from reality.

You promote buying from shady suppliers because, if anything goes wrong, you think you and others, including other members of this forum, will ultimately get away with it.

No, I do not. I am simply stating the facts without prejudice.

For my part, I'm interested in working with honourable vendors, and indeed, I figure that honourable vendors will not be disappointed to lose your patronage to the shady vendors with whom you are apparently delighted to do business.

Where, exactly, have I said anything of the sort? In fact, I completely understand your preference for local vendors, especially with goods of this value.

What I do not understand is your insistence on attacking other members of this forum, putting words in their mouths, and assuming everyone here is after you and your chosen vendor and manufacturer (two of the most popular of each category on this forum, no less!).

[redg]

Hi Monkeh,

This thread started with me relating a very good experience dealing with TEquipment and Fluke, and saying that I believe that I made the right decision buying a legitimate product rather than a grey market product from China, California or New Jersey.

The next two posts also spoke favorably about TEquipment.

What happened after that were posts that attempted to turn the discussion into one about Fluke and its quality control.

This was followed by a discussion about the virtues, or otherwise, of buying grey market goods off eBay, and indeed Amazon.

I want to thank you for inadvertently suggesting that the real issue is the benefits of buying from eBay "shady suppliers". 

I am less impressed with your failure to understand that an honourable vendor, and a local vendor, are not the same thing, nor with your decision to ignore the idea of an honourable buyer.

I have noticed that you have had almost nothing substantive to say in this thread, preferring instead to engage in rehtorical analysis, and in your last post the beginning of an ad hominem attack.

This thread, started simply enough, at certain points turned out to involve some important questions, and I am completely content with what I have said.

I won't be responding further to you, so hey, fire away.

Cheers

[Monkeh]

Hi Monkeh,

This thread started with me relating a very good experience dealing with TEquipment and Fluke, and saying that I believe that I made the right decision buying a legitimate product rather than a grey market product from China, California or New Jersey.

The next two posts also spoke favorably about TEquipment.

What happened after that were posts that attempted to turn the discussion into one about Fluke and its quality control.

This was followed by a discussion about the virtues, or otherwise, of buying grey market goods off eBay, and indeed Amazon.

This is a forum. Discussions move along without you sometimes. People were curious about the nature of the fault - you responded by attacking them.

I want to thank you for suggesting that the real issue is that people who want to purchase from what you describe as "shady vendors" can probably benefit from doing so.

I suggested no such thing, that's come entirely from you.

I am less impressed with your failure to understand that an honourable vendor, and a local vendor, are not the same thing.

Oh, now you want to argue semantics, and once again attack someone.

I am completely content with what I have said in this thread.

Clearly. I suspect you're fairly lonely in this.

[Wuerstchenhund]

You do not have the right on an eBay purchase to return an item just because you [...] have unilaterally decided that it is defective.

As a buyer on ebay, you pretty much do. If you think the item you bought has a problem then ebay will automatically side with the buyer, usually even when some really silly/ignorant reasons are given. As a seller, you're generally better off to just take the item back and make the buyer happy, as any complaint that an item was not as described from a buyer will count against your sales record.

There's a lot wrong with ebay but returns are generally easy and pain free.

[nctnico]

IMHO you are just raising issues which aren't there so meh.
If you bought your 17B+ with defective display from China through Ebay/Paypal then you'd had the same hassle free return and Paypal covers the return shipping costs. It would just have taken longer (but I already wrote that in my initial reply).

Personally, given the choice between dealing with TEquipment, and resolving a problem in 30 minutes, and trying to resolve a problem with a vendor in China, to whom I have to send a meter as a first step, I'll deal with TEquipment.

If you have lots of time on your hands, and are prepared to take the risk of losing what you paid for the meter, plus what it cost you to send it back to China, cool.

You really have not clue how Ebay works don't you? Spending 30 minutes on an issue? No way! Contact the seller with an e-mail an file a Paypal claim if the seller doesn't comply.

Also contrary to your believe most Ebay sellers are not shady at all. They are often big companies with a presence on Ebay besides their business-to-business stores. For example: I buy car parts for prices lower than my local garage can source them because I buy them directly from the European distributors through Ebay.