Keysight (lack of) calibration & other services

[Cerebus]

[Rohde and Schwarz]

Dear rf-messkopf,

we have checked back with our customer support and we did not terminate GLORIS accounts of individuals in general and if we do so, i.e. because the individual has more than one account, you usually get a notification. Please check back with customersupport@rohde-schwarz.com to see what happened and what we can do.

Our customer support also tries to help with any issues that occur in relation to our instruments no matter if the request comes from an individual or a company. They can provide access to an archive of historic documentation and will try to help with expertise if it is possible to repair or provide spare parts. If so, business customers can order this service directly with R&S and private individuals can address our partner Sky Messtechnik or one of our distributors.

Hope this helps to clarify the situation and with your individual problem
R&S Social Media Team

[Rohde and Schwarz]

Dear Brian,

I just replied to rf-messkopf. But just in case you did not see this: we checked back with the customer support and it is not because we deactivate accounts of individuals but there must have been some other issue with your account. Please address customersupport@rohde-schwarz.com with details of the problem and your account so that the colleagues can resolve the issue.

Thanks and have a nice weekend
Rohde & Schwarz Social Media Team

[bd139]

You know it's bad when R&S are more active on a Keysight thread than Keysight are 

I love how latest Keysight YT video caption is "Frank Alandt, Keysight Senior Services Account Manager, discusses how he helped a research center keep their project on track by providing technical expertise and committed turn-around time for support."

[rf-messkopf]

Dear rf-messkopf,

we have checked back with our customer support and we did not terminate GLORIS accounts of individuals in general and if we do so, i.e. because the individual has more than one account, you usually get a notification. Please check back with customersupport@rohde-schwarz.com to see what happened and what we can do.

Our customer support also tries to help with any issues that occur in relation to our instruments no matter if the request comes from an individual or a company. They can provide access to an archive of historic documentation and will try to help with expertise if it is possible to repair or provide spare parts. If so, business customers can order this service directly with R&S and private individuals can address our partner Sky Messtechnik or one of our distributors.

Hope this helps to clarify the situation and with your individual problem
R&S Social Media Team

Dear R&S Team,

thank you for getting back to me in this matter. It is reassuring to hear that R&S is still willing to make manuals and other information available to private individuals. In fact, I had very good experiences with R&S in this regard in the past. I was all the more appalled that apparently this service was no longer available to private individuals. If Sky Messtechnik and other distributors in Germany (Datatec?) can sell the full inventory of R&S spare parts, that would be an acceptable solution.

I will contact the mentioned email address to get my Gloris account back working, and I'll report here about the outcome.

Thanks again for looking into this issue.

Thanks are also due to forum user Rich@RohdeScopesUSA, who helped in the background, and with whom I've been in contact in the past two weeks.

Mario

[maxwell3e10]

I tried to get a quote from Keysight for a fancy microwave generator using company e-mail. Their "Instant quote" feature that I used in the past doesn't seem to work anymore. So a representative contacted me to confirm that my configuration was valid. After another couple of days and e-mails - still no quote.

[2N3055]

Keysight turned around their business since 2014 and more than quadrupled profits. 
There is series of videos from upper management from their "2020  Investor day" (and previous years too), where, in clear language they outline Keysight strategy.
Basically, they are converting from perpetual licenses to software as a service (you will rent software, not buy it), to high profit industries where they don't sell T&M equipment but "provide solutions to industries" where there are high profit margins, and pulling out of low profit areas. They outsource 50% of all manufacturing, and will "optimize" that even more.

Basicaly, they are going the way the IBM went a decade ago (I guess Keysight also made that strategy then, it's just takes time to implement it), where they basically stopped making computers, except some special servers and mainframes, sold Thinkpad to Lenovo, and just do software and integrations..

Their behaviour will follow this strategy. A small bussines that buys one 3000T series device is NOT their target market.

[bd139]

Yep. Look how successful Lenovo are now compared to IBM.

[Towger]

Classic short-term gain. By the time management retiree with their good pensions they will be in serious trouble again.  You need to look after the little customers, they may become big customers and even if they don't the big customer's employees who make decisions may also have once been a small customer.  The type of business does not matter, I have personally seen it happen.  Sales reps blowing their budget wine and dining management to get a big contract, not knowing their companies past sins have ruled them out at the started block.

[rf-messkopf]

I will contact the mentioned email address to get my Gloris account back working, and I'll report here about the outcome.

My Gloris account is working again. Thank you R&S for resolving this quickly.

[The Bootloader]

R&S and Keysight needs to listen up here...
I am a hobbyist by night... but have engineer approval/recommendations in my day job for a major fortune 500 company.

This times 1000000. The electronics industry is a small one. People move around and talk to each other.
Hardware design is hard, we don't need suppliers that make our work more difficult than needed.

Hopefully Keysight can find a solution to properly support all of their customers.
With all the efforts they do in marketing (Keysight University, ...), it would be a waste not to do so.

[bdunham7]

it is not because we deactivate accounts of individuals but there must have been some other issue with your account. Please address customersupport@rohde-schwarz.com with details of the problem and your account so that the colleagues can resolve the issue.

OK, I did that and I got a proper e-mail this time with the explanation that due to security issues, R&S does not permit corporate accounts to register with generic emails (gmail, hotmail, yahoo, etc) and private account holders with such emails would need to provide a model and serial number of an R&S device to reactivate their account.  I provided the model and serial numbers and my account is now active again.  I'm still working on the spare parts angle.  If anyone knows of an R&S distributor willing to take an order for one rear foot (p/n 1096.2493.00 drawing # 5063  "RUECKWANDFUSS 50MM", a rear foot assembly) let me know.

Thanks to Rich@RohdeScopesUSA for whatever went on in the background.

[Rich@RohdeScopesUSA]

Hi Everyone - I'm happy to see the Gloris accounts are getting back up and running.  Thanks to my colleagues in Munich for figuring out the glitch there. 

I think I've replied to all the PMs - I apologize for my slowness in getting back to some of you.  Please don't hesitate to let me know if I didn't get back to you 

-Rich

[TimFox]

So now we need to determine if this is a global thing or something localized to a region to maybe get around some consumer protection laws.

I'm pretty sure that this is either a result of a legitimate interpretation of a boneheaded "consumer protection" law or a boneheaded interpretation of a legitimate consumer protection law.  I don't know which law specifically, but I seriously doubt Keysight is intentionally shunning paying customers just because they don't like them.

My understanding is that it's "a legitimate interpretation of a boneheaded 'consumer protection' law." I believe there are some restrictions around "industrial equipment" [probably not the correct legal term] being sold to non-industrial parties (aka individuals). I do not know the details but @oldtestgear I'm looking into it with Peter.

This reply from Keysight on July 16 seems to be their latest reply.  Does anyone know what the current situation is?

[Cerebus]

[Fx: sounds of stridulation]

[TimFox]

Here in the American Midwest, we have cicadas this year, drowning out the crickets.

[rf-messkopf]

I'm still working on the spare parts angle.  If anyone knows of an R&S distributor willing to take an order for one rear foot (p/n 1096.2493.00 drawing # 5063  "RUECKWANDFUSS 50MM", a rear foot assembly) let me know.

No idea about US distributors, but I heard the other day that someone successfully ordered trim parts from Datatec (https://www.datatec.de/). So far I've only bought new kit from them, but they have been very quick and helpful. Another option in Germany would be Sky Messtechnik (https://www.sky-messtechnik.de/), as was suggested above.

According to https://www.rohde-schwarz.com/us/service-support/service-sales-locator/distributor-locator_253996.html, an option in the US could be ConRes (https://www.conrestestequipment.com/). I actually bought used R&S equipment (ex rental) from them. Sometimes this turns out to be cheaper than buying local, despite shipping costs and import duties.

[bd139]

I think Keysight lawyers must be on holiday 

[Uky]

As a member of the group that handled procurement requirements at the university where I worked,
I was able to have a paragraph included in the rules that clearly stated that under no circumstances should any instrument we purchased
have embedded or application software that had (extra/additional) license costs associated with it. Ie: The features included when purchased should be perpetual
without any need for annual license renewal even if such procedure was free of charge.

[wolfy007]

I know in Australian education sector we definitely look at costs now with tightening budgets and covid hurting income. As I work worked for the Engineering and Information Sciences faculty, I have been asked by and seen many lecturers/supervisors/researchers looking to reduce costs, and having annual 'rental' agreements will definitely hurt a companies options in being picked as an equipment source.

I now work for the Universities central IT group, but once again here we are looking at any cost saving we can make. I know in arts one group that moved from Adobe Photoshop to Affinity Photo in a bid to reduce annual costs as another example.

[Cerebus]

I now work for the Universities central IT group, but once again here we are looking at any cost saving we can make. I know in arts one group that moved from Adobe Photoshop to Affinity Photo in a bid to reduce annual costs as another example.

I used to work in producing commercial software, one of the early (1980s) AI tools. We fully understood the value of "poisoning the minds of the young" as our CEO used to describe it and would offer massive educational discounts to get our products used in a teaching context. Our market was small and niche enough, and the software sales cycle personal enough (i.e. every customer met a salesman) that it wasn't hard for us to track the effects of this. We knew and could prove that educational sales converted into commercial sales as graduates moved on into industry. Any company that forgoes this free sales channel or puts barriers in the way of it (like making themselves too expensive for academia as you've illustrated) is stupid.

[2N3055]

My son at his university has available in labs Rigol and Keysight scopes. He tells me that his fellow students already don't have prejudice and don't think some equipment is inferior just because of name. They will chose Rigol scope if it has measurement that Keysight doesn't (if you didn't buy a license, for instance) with no problem. I think cat is out of the bag already for new generations...
They don't care as long as they can afford it and it does the job..

[Uky]

The lack of freely available support documentation (known as CLIP) with schematic drawings, parts lists, etc is in my opinion another reason to be careful when selecting an instrument supplier. The instruments used at my workplace has to be there for a long time. Thus, the strategy that I implemented was this:

If the instrument did not need to meet any stringent specifications that required a brand new state of the art device, I always purchased old second hand instruments where CLIP was available. Such instruments are quite inexpenceive. As long as they work, fine. If they fail, I was normally able to fix them. If not, the low cost meant that they could be discarded without any "financial pain". If there was a need for performance, the first rule stated in a previous post applied.

[2N3055]

The lack of freely available support documentation (known as CLIP) with schematic drawings, parts lists, etc is in my opinion another reason to be careful when selecting an instrument supplier. The instruments used at my workplace has to be there for a long time. Thus, the strategy that I implemented was this:

If the instrument did not need to meet any stringent specifications that required a brand new state of the art device, I always purchased old second hand instruments where CLIP was available. Such instruments are quite inexpenceive. As long as they work, fine. If they fail, I was normally able to fix them. If not, the low cost meant that they could be discarded without any "financial pain". If there was a need for performance, the first rule stated in a previous post applied.

So you basically won't buy any electronic device ever again, unless it was made before, say, 1980es... ??

[Uky]

Yes we did. We purchased two signal analyzers which both failed following a power cycling after an O/S (Windows) update resulting in a lost calibration, (possibly caused by the FPGA in the LO-module being erased in the process), over their entire frequency range. The cost estimate for repairing them was US $7000 a piece, corresponding to almost half the price we initially payed for them. Needless to say - We rejected the quotation and the plan was to relocate them to a place where we could use them in a narrow band application.