I think it's reasonable to expect they live up to the terms in their warranty, and that they provide some reasonable expectation as to turnaround time.
I've just read their US warranty - and I'm not quite sure how they didn't live up to the terms. It's certainly nice to have an idea of the turnaround time, but I've not found it to be standard behavior when sending things for repair.
Also, they were clearly avoiding the topic of a loaner unit. They would reply to me, but not answer my question about that. This went on for multiple iterations. Since a loaner unit is clearly spelled out in their written warranty statement, I think it's reasonable to expect they live up to that. Had they provided a loaner unit, I wouldn't have cared if it took them 6 months to fix the issue.
Sorry, but you're misstating what it actually says:
"For service that will exceed this time Rigol will attempt to provide loaner units to be used during the repair cycle. Final availability of loaner units will be at Rigol’s discretion."
If you think that guarantees you a loaner unit, well... you've got a lot of heartache coming in your warranty repair future. But I would agree that the Rigol rep(s) should have discussed it with you - even if it was to tell you one wasn't available.
Also, quite frankly, it bothers me that someone else got a 3 day turnaround with tracking numbers and shipping paid both ways. Why were these experiences so different? Should we try and deal with the Ohio service center and avoid these guys in Oregon? That's info that would be useful to have.
Shipping paid both ways is fairly unusual with warranty service - and is certainly not stated in the warranty. But not getting the return tracking number is bizarre (since it certainly had one - nothing worth more than a few bucks is sent without one these days) - that seems like an utter failure of the support staff to relay it to you.
I looked up the warranty before I sent off the unit, and I do not recall any qualifications about the loaner unit. But it is possible that I just missed it. I checked the wayback machine to see if that page was updated recently, but I don't see any changes there in the last 3 months.
I agree about the shipping - but since they sent me a demo unit and asked me to test it on my network, I would have expected them to at least pick up the return shipping cost on that. They could have sent me a return shipping label with the scope. In fairness, they probably would have picked up the cost on that if I had pressed them, but quite frankly, as the "repair" time was approaching 1 month, I was ready to get my scope back and be done with it. Once I determined that this wasn't a defect in my scope, but rather just a bug in their firmware, I really wanted my scope back. After spending several days testing, buying a replacement switch to eliminate that as a source of the issue, etc., I really felt like it was not unreasonable for them to send me my scope back when requested. They were dragging their feet about sending that back, and actually said they were going to keep and do some more testing. I sent the demo unit back to try and force the issue.
Also, I'm pretty sure you don't, but in the interest of full disclosure, please confirm whether or not you work for Rigol.