My new Rigol Equipment has arrived

[Tabs]

Hi all,

A while ago I was asking for some guidance on the selection of equipment for my new home lab.
Here's the link for anyone interested https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/rigol-new-dg1062z-vs-dg4062/

I ended up ordering a:
DSA815-TG
DS4014
DG4062
DP832

I placed the order on 6th December 2013, with a 2-3 week lead time. I asked for the delivery to be delayed until the first week of Jan because I knew I would be unavailable over the Christmas period. The DSA arrived within a day or so of my order and the remainder took about 2 months to arrive (arrived 27th Jan 2014 - yesterday). I was told that the delay is because most equipment is in short supply due to production backlog caused by high demand.

That being said, the calibration dates are:
DS 8th November
DG 15th November
DP 14th November.
All before my order date so not sure what the delay was actually about.
For completeness:
DSA call date 6th June.
(all in 2013)

The DSA is an ex demo unit that I was able to get at a discount. I actually got quite lucky with the DSA because it came with the EMI option installed at no charge. (probably due to its ex-demo nature).

All items came double boxed with the individual units protected by squishy foam. They were delivered by InterLink Express here in the UK with no observable damage to the inner boxes. The outer box on the DP832 had a dent in it large enough to rip the box. This was the heaviest unit so probably surprised someone who handled the DG4062 first  A tracking number was provided and the web interface on the tracking was only updated as the parcels were checked in and out of various hierarchical delivery hubs. I watched it go from Luton (about 70 miles away) to Birmingham (160 miles away) before going to the local InterLink depot about 10 miles away, where it stayed over the weekend. I wasnt able to pick it up or get it early because the silly InterLink rules don't allow me to pay to upgrade to saturday delivery because the parcel was dispatched on a Friday using their next business day service (any other day or service can be upgraded to saturday delivery).

F/W Versions, assuming these are freshly made, from the factory are:
DSA: 1.05 (The DSA is around 6 - 7 months older in comparison)
DS: 2.00.00.04
DG: 1.07
DP 1.08

I also purchased BNC to SMA & N - type to SMA adapters, some SMA tee connectors and cables all from Farnell. These will be used as the sacrificial connectors on most of the rigol gear to get the most life out of the connectors on the rigols.

A picture of my setup is attached.

For those interested in suppliers:
I limited myself to EU suppliers only. These were:
Batronix in Germany http://www.batronix.com/shop/index.html
Rigol-UK / Telonic (UK) http://www.rigol-uk.co.uk/Default.asp#.UuhnCvnFLZI
Lambda (UK) http://www.lambdaphoto.co.uk/

All three were willing to negotiate, with Batronix setting itself up as the leader (in terms of price) from the start. Rigol-uk wasn't able to match the Batronix price (due to having to compete with euro to £ exchange rates) and offered to throw in some extra equipment for free to make up for it. Since I didn't need the extra stuff I placed them second in the ranking (on price terms, but the security of having a UK supplier was worth the difference). Lambda was approached late in the game and said from the outset that they would beat any offer. They were able to match the Batronix offering for all new equipment. After I tried to negotiate the price down some more, Lambda offered an ex-demo DSA815-TG unit which was only 6 months old at the time. This made them the cheapest supplier.  Since I had better consumer protection from a UK supplier, coupled with local shipping if I needed to use the warranty made them the preferred choice.

I've got no problem recommending any of the above suppliers. Batronix is good if your'e in the European mainland or if you need non-rigol equipment as well. In the UK, Lambda are now my go to supplier, especially if your'e not in a rush. If you can afford it, I recommend having a big shopping list when dealing with these suppliers. It just gives you more buying power.
Also, avoid the payment portals on the suppliers websites. After all, you can't negotiate with a website. Getting on the phone and talking to these guys and getting a feel for right price to ask for is the best way.

I reckon there was still some room to negotiate the price even more, but I'd been haggling for 2 weeks and was getting tired. Once the price reached within my extended budget I was happy. TBH I was comfortable letting go of that much money.

All in all I was left £3050 + VAT (20% in UK) the poorer, with noting to show for it for 2 months. This should give anyone looking to purchase with a ball park figure of what kind of discounts you can get when compared to list prices on supplier websites. + Free delivery (watch out for that one )

Best Regards

Tabs

PS thank you to all who offered advice

[rstoer]

Nice! Good luck with it.

[dr.diesel]

Tell us more about the tasty looking sandwich in the corner?

[rbola35618]

You need to get a Bench multimeter.
 

You have a nice setup and good equipment. You should have tons of fun

Robert 

[pascal_sweden]

Nice setup! Now you can start building great electronic products.

I can only agree, that sandwich looks tasty

[wilheldp]

I love those bamboo back scratchers.  Best 50 cents I ever spent, buying one of those.

[fcb]

Tell us more about the tasty looking sandwich in the corner?

All offset by the 10 teaspoons of sugar in the can of Coke.

[Tabs]

Hi all,

Just been showing my wife some of your replies and we're both laughing.

One of the items that rigol-co.uk tried to throw in for 'free' in order to compete was a 4 year old, 5 1/2 digit bench multimeter from PeakTech.  It wasn't going to be calibrated and I found it difficult to find information on.
Besides, I don't need to measure low level signals in my home designs. If i ever did need to do that, I could get one of the industrial process controllers we make at my company. Their designed with universal sensor front ends which accept any thermocouple, RTD, mA sources etc. I've got the scope for high level measurements and an IsoTech multimeter from RS.

I've got my eye on a Marconi 2022D 1GHz RF sig gen at work which we are about to replace with a 2nd hand 3GHz offering from Rhode + Schwarz. I'm going to try to convince my boss to give it to me. Not hopeful though because its still in working order and is useful as a backup.

The bamboo back scratcher is from Mouser.com. I picked up 4 of them for free from the Mouser stand at a yearly Texas Instruments Convention in Birmingham, UK. I went a year later and picked up some more to replace the ones I lost. I now have 1 on my desk, 1 at work and 1 in the car for when I'm stuck in traffic. The funny this is that both the years I attended the convention, the Mouser stand was the most popular with all the engineers because of these scratchers  . Both times they ran out of supply.

The sandwich is a home made double chicken fillet burger. You need to cut a chicken breast in two and batter them in a mixture of flour, bread crumbs, cajun spice & butter milk. Fry the chicken and serve in burger buns with salad and salsa, wash down with a can of coke or two (if your'e a coke addict like me )
The recipe is made available under the principles of the GNU licence. 

Tabs

[con-f-use]

All three were willing to negotiate, with Batronix setting itself up as the leader (in terms of price) from the start.

That surprises me. I negotiated with Batronix over my DM3068 and a DP832. I gave them a quote from a local dealer here that was 15% under their price. I also gave them prices for used units I could buy that were about half what they wanted. They didn't move even an inch. It was quite frustrating to negotiate with them. I've never seen so stubborn sales-people. What was your angle?

[Tabs]

All three were willing to negotiate, with Batronix setting itself up as the leader (in terms of price) from the start.

That surprises me. I negotiated with Batronix over my DM3068 and a DP832. I gave them a quote from a local dealer here that was 15% under their price. I also gave them prices for used units I could buy that were about half what they wanted. They didn't move even an inch. It was quite frustrating to negotiate with them. I've never seen so stubborn sales-people. What was your angle?

There's no real angle per say, just preparation work & negotiation tactics. I can tell you the way I did it. Other people may have different thoughts and I welcome others to add their tactics/methods.
 
With Batronix my shopping list was as above but with an additional Logic Analyser from Acute (TravelLogic). I had a little more buying power to leverage, so your situation was a little different to mine. That being said I have some recommendations:

Select a few manufacturers to negotiate with and rank them in order of preference. I chose those listed above. In my case, I preferred UK suppliers because of added legal protection and cheaper shipping for support. This placed Batronix last.  I ranked Lambda above rigol-uk because they do a massive amount of test and lab equipment. This made them (in my eyes) bigger than rigol-uk with bigger supply chains. I thought they would have had the ability to buy from their suppliers with a bigger discount which they could pass on to their customers. Start negotiating with the two lowest preferred suppliers first, with the idea of bouncing them off each other.

Most sales companies have an internal reporting structure for financial sales targets or quotas for each sales person (or for the department). In some cases commission is linked to sales performance of the department or individual salesperson. In general, the deadlines stipulated in the reporting structure could be monthly, quarterly or end of year. Therefore to maximise your chance of hitting the end of the reporting period try to buy at the end of the year, if not try the end of the quarter followed by end of the month if your in a hurry. If the department is on target then you are not in a good position. If they are behind then chances are that they will be desperate to make the sale and boost their commission. This is where more buying power from a large shopping list comes in. You can sometimes tell which way round the situation is depending on how quickly the supplier responds and if they ask you when you want to purchase. Allways gave a date that puts you in the next reporting period, wait a bit listen for a reaction and then say you can purchase today if the price was good enough, then wait and listen for a change in reaction. If you hear a sigh (or anything negative) followed by excitement (or anything positive) then you know their on the back foot.

Don't give them a budget until you get the first price out of them (otherwise they will give you a price within your budget). Always keep the budget (min and max) that you tell them under the list price or what ever price they first come down to. In my case my upper limit was £700 below the total list price. I used the mutli-buy list price (Batronix gives a discount on each unit if you buy three or more) [always remember that a distributor will never sell at a loss - Rigol may decide to do that as part of a sales strategy to get their foot in the door somewhere, but never a distributor]. This was valid in my case because of my large order. If you only had two items then use the individual prices.

Assuming there are no hacks available for the equipment on your shopping list, it may be better for you to ask for the higher end models since they will usually contain the same hardware as the base model (and therefore the same cost to manufacture). Doing so gives you a better idea of what the lower limit is (this will be lower than the base model). It also gives the sales person the most room to maneuver. This is only if you are looking for max performance per £ and if you can afford it. It serves to give an indication of the kind of profit margins that are being made. I'm not saying the same margins are made on the base units, just that it gives you an idea of magnitude of the margin.

Once you give them the upper limit of your budget they will most likely refuse to come down to that amount. Deal with this by saying you believe the order is worth £x and no more. Tell them if they want the order, that is the price they will have to come down to or near to. Always keep the ball in their court, make them work for the order, they have to justify to you why the equipment costs more. If they dont come down (or even if they come down in price) always say its still just a little too low on the bang per buck value you have in your mind and that you could be persuaded if they throw in some accessories (bnc cables, connectors etc) If they say yes then good. If they say no then switch tactics and ask if there is anything you can do to help bring the price down. This usually throws them off a little and they may ask you to clarify. Make up a story about having savings that you could go into but don't feel its justified unless the performance / price ratio of the whole order goes up. Offer to give them a bigger order by using your savings if it gives them more room to spread a bigger discount across more products. The goal is to get an official quote from the supplier for the lowest price per product. Once you have this go to supplier number 2.
Repeat the above, wait for the final price. If its not better then give them the quote from supplier 1. Bounce the quotes between the two for as long as it keeps driving down the price.
When negotiating across currencies, make sure not to use google or other currency conversion sites to convert the quotes to your preferred comparison currency. In most cases these sites wont be accurate for your situation. Instead, phone your bank or credit card provider and ask them what exchange rates & fees they will apply to your transaction. There are a couple of different exchange rates that are used (a daily one and a real time one). My banks customer support told me the bank uses the rate which benefits them the most [i.e the bank will use the rate that allows the £ to buy the most euros]. This is one of those situations where the banks interests were aligned with my interests  (This is why Batronix were so tough for rigol-uk to beat).

Once you have the final price and collected enough information about potential profit margins and such, your ready to go to your preferred supplier. In my case Lambda. Follow the same procedure wait for a price and if its higher than the current favorite tell them your budget. This time though reduce your budget to just 1 value which is below the cheapest quote. This is the value you tell them your willing to pay and ask them to justify their price. If they're not willing to come down in price, give them the cheapest quote you have. In my case Lambda beat the Batronix quote by £100 or so. I said I wasn't about price / performance value and if there was anything I could do. This is when they offered the ex-demo DSA815-TG. If I was willing to accept it, they could sell me that at a discount.
There was no visible damage, the unit would come calibrated and with 3 years warranty. It was a no brainer so I accepted. After I got the final quote, I threatened to walk away unless the delivery charge was removed. I asked for free delivery and the price to be rounded down to the nearest £100. They gave me free delivery with the price rounded to the nearest £50.  All in all this worked out at £60.

Hope this helps, and if anyone has other ideas, feel free to share.

Tabs

[tony3d]

*** Mod removed full quote

I see you have a Rat Mouse. That's about the only thing I can afford on that bench LOL! 

[con-f-use]

Wow, that was a loooong reply but thank you. I learned a thing or two.

[lpc32]

Hope this helps, and if anyone has other ideas, feel free to share.

Nice.

[EEVblog]

Nice!
I think it's interesting to note that IMO Rigol is pretty much the value leader in all those categories.
The exception is the bench meter where I think the Agilent is better value than the Rigol equivalent.

[wilheldp]

Nice!
I think it's interesting to note that IMO Rigol is pretty much the value leader in all those categories.
The exception is the bench meter where I think the Agilent is better value than the Rigol equivalent.

Does Agilent offer a competitive product to the DM3058E?  I don't use GPIB and the ethernet/web functionality would have been neat, but not worth any extra price to me.  I think the "E" model is very good value for money.

[EEVblog]

Does Agilent offer a competitive product to the DM3058E?

At that $500 price level, not quite, the U3402A is bit more expensive.
I haven't looked at how they compare.
The 34461A is arguably the best value bench scope on the market, but it's double that price.

[echen1024]

Does Agilent offer a competitive product to the DM3058E?

At that $500 price level, not quite, the U3402A is bit more expensive.
I haven't looked at how they compare.
The 34461A is arguably the best value bench scope on the market, but it's double that price.

The 34461 is not a scope. Perhaps a multimeter?