Products > Test Equipment
A broken 34470A and Keysight's terrible customer service
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rsjsouza:
It matters if your Tier 1 customers are backed up by the sheer amount of service. Design and testing activity has been high lately, therefore there is a chance the customers may be puling out inactive equipment from their inventory or just running into more issues due to overuse.

I am old enough to have seen quite a lot of these scenarios in the industry: when the ability to support your Tier 1 dwindles for any reason, let it be unexpected demand, cost cutting, past RIFs, etc., hard decisions like these are taken.

Sure, all this is speculation (I don't work at KS to know for sure), but large customers have preferencial service for many reasons, including the potential to bring a more stable revenue flow to maintain the cal/repair labs.
J-R:
I've been following this thread a bit and during my research I ended up watching most of Dave's 5-part John Kenny interview which has some relevant info about this I think.

Publishing schematics has its challenges, from keeping them up to date to intellectual property theft concerns.

Repair guides also require significant effort to produce and maintain.  You need to cover a lot of failure modes.  There is the concern of someone getting over their head attempting repairs by following the guides.

Providing repair parts is a challenge as they place large orders for components for the number of units being manufactured at that time.  Keeping extra spare parts sitting in a warehouse or having to buy them later in small quantities costs more money and just isn't cost effective.

While we like fixing stuff here, in the economy of scale for a large company it is far more "efficient" to produce a replacement board and swap it or replace the entire unit than it is to pay someone to attempt repairs.


There is some really interesting information in the videos and it shows that from the outside we may not fully appreciate all the factors that go into a company's decisions.  And John states there have been times he fought decisions and sometimes he won and sometimes he lost.


Out of curiosity I contacted Keysight and purchased a 1 year "KeysightCare Assured Renewal" for one of my devices that was out of warranty.  They specifically asked me if I was a business or professional and I stated I was a professional.  I only had to provide my name and address to proceed.  I purchased the item a couple years ago from their ebay store.
floobydust:
No way to spin it- looks like a shit policy for OP and Keysight UK, and the no-communication says plenty :-//  I want a job where I can just stick my head in the ground, do nothing and get paid. Hey PR dept and exec get off the golf course already.
In a corporate environment I won't buy equipment from manufacturers that are known to discriminate or screw over customers. Sure Tier 1 can afford all the drama, delay, breakdowns, shipping etc. and I would not be personally affected much, but for small guys this PFO can be devastating.

I notice both 34470A MCUs are obsolete for some time now, unobtainium. DMM MCU TI LM3S1D21 and Front Panel MCU ST SPEAr320S-2 (BGA) also obsolete. FPGA Lattice LFXP2-5E-5TN144C is active.
I'd wonder if the product is end-of-life, how many MCU's are stock-piled. This kind of component issue makes board swaps extra expensive and rare, if the supply is low.
Cerebus:

--- Quote from: floobydust on August 29, 2021, 10:30:32 pm ---I'd wonder if the product is end-of-life, how many MCU's are stock-piled. This kind of component issue makes board swaps extra expensive and rare, if the supply is low.

--- End quote ---

Based on past experience HPAK used to be quite good at reacting to "Last chance to buy" notifications from semiconductor suppliers and stocking up for potentially decades ahead. They were chugging out new 3458As well after some of the op amps and comparators used in the design had become vague memories at semiconductor stockists. Whether they are still good at this post the shitshow that  Carly Fiorina generated is open to question.
MadTux:
Guess I'll stick with the 50-20year old HP/Tek&Keithley stuff for the rest of my life.
Unmatched quality with schematics and THT that is easy to solder.
Never had much trouble fixing HP3456A or a Keithley 2015/196, why would I want a new Keysight piece of shit that I can't even fix myself???

A few Tek7000 mainframes and some 7A13/7A22 is more than enough to work on audio amplifiers, variable frequency drives or welding inverters..... Who cares about GS/s and MSamples of memory, doesn't benefit me in any way in these applications. 7A22 can handle abuse, new Keysight DSO likely can't and becomes expensive brick.

And since I got that great letter from Keysight a few years ago, where they threatened me about some devices that got sold on ebay instead of being scrapped, they can kiss me where the sun doesn't shine.....
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