Siglent special offers on the SDS2000X series

[nctnico]

Hi Mr. ntcnico,

You just proved you lied about contacting us in those 5 months.
In the email you on the 25th you talk about that you found a "bug" and no word about major problems... until 5 months later 

Also your last email in 2014 is this and you do not write about any problem at all. 26-08-2014 : 16:49

Bedankt! Ik zie het probleem nu. Ik moet eerst kiezen wat voor licentie het is. Ik had verwacht dat dat ook in de key gecodeerd zou zijn; meestal is dat namelijk wel het geval.


Thanks! I see the problem now. I must first choose what license it is. I expected that would be also encoded in the key; usually that is precisely the case.


So what is your point of bad service?
Your just frustrated you made the wrong decision in the past in how you should deal with the problem.
If you did the normal way ( communicating to me directly ) we had helped you without a doubt.

To conclude and I will not reply after this because there will always be a customer that will be unsatisfied no mater what we do.
In your writing on this blog I can see you know a lot about electronics and show you have a high intelligence but you do have a problem with communicating and you let your frustrations take the overhand.

Please point me to where I lied about contacting you somewhere between receiving the scope and Januari 2015? I never wrote that anywhere so that is just a fantasy in your head.

And now you are complaining that I should have bought a different product?  That is rich! You should have taken the SDS2204 back in Januari 2015 without questions asked because the oscilloscope clearly did not meet it's specifications. There is no way that can be denied because there where too many flaws and missing functions in it to meet it's specification and/or be useful at all. You should have known too that the firmware wasn't ready when I bought it so if I had complained then you would undoubtely have told me to just wait for the next firmware release.

And sometimes it just happens customers complain after a longer period. Every now and then that happens to me too because customers start testing a design after 6 months or more and find an issue or want something changed. I myself buy test equipment long before I actually need it for an upcoming project so problems could stay hidden to me. All in all it is not out of the ordinary to get a (serious) complaint after almost 5 months.

Good customer service is knowing when you sold a lemon for an orange and you should take the product back in order to keep the customer (happy) even though you may not like some aspects of your customers. Please take a course in how to deal with customers (I have besides over 25 years of experience in dealing with customers) and you'll learn that going on the defense is the worst thing to do because it just makes you lose customers and give a bad reputation. Every now and then I do have a decent budget for test equipment or have to buy/recommend test equipment for my customers. If you would have taken the SDS2204 back (or bought it back for a slightly lesser amount) you would not have lost any money and kept me as a customer. How can that not be a win-win for you? A good business man knows that sometimes you need to give in a little in order to gain more. Oh, and rule number one ofcourse: the customer is always right. Rule numbers 2 through 100: see rule number one. Rule 101: if you see things the customer's way you'll also see ways to make money from that customer.

Sure I'll admit my mistake was not to send the SDS2204 back immediately. I already owned a Siglent SDG1010 function generator (and still do) and that worked out right of the box. I just never imagened Siglent would have such a hard time to get the SDS2204 firmware in a state where it was acceptable. Unfortunately it ended up with me getting screwed because I gave you and Siglent almost 5 months to make the SDS2204 work properly.

And be sure I learned from this misadventure! When I bought a GW Instek GDS2204E oscilloscope a couple of months ago I tested the sh*t out of it before deciding to keep it.

[rob-from-perth]

First a disclaimer, I have nothing to do with either party here, I was reading this thread as a person interested in purchasing an oscilloscope.
Also I've been told I should be a more active participant on these forums.. HA!

The art of good customer service is to turn an enemy into a friend.

I've been an advocate for various companies over the years and my greatest pleasure has always been to turn someone that
'had it in' for my organisation.  By talking to them and understanding their issues, it was by far the best way to get them on side.
I have turned the most venomous customers into powerful advocates for the businesses I've worked for.
Reading some of ntnico's earlier posts, he was already strongly advocating for Siglent. Until he had issues which it appears were
never really heard.

Username: Smoking who claims to be a Siglnet Rep/Employee EU Distributor, if it was my company you'd no longer be employed.
It doesn't make any difference if ntnico is telling the truth or stretching it. He paid money to your company to purchase a
product in good faith. He effectively helped pay for your salary and your R&D research and gave his hard earned money up to
your organisation.  Customers no matter how difficult should never be insulted the way you have insulted him on these forums.
Yes he has a strong opinion, yes he publishes what he believes to be factual information. These things are his truth and they have value.

You have shown that Siglent doesn't give a damn because he posted some negative commentary. Any intelligent person will read that commentary
and then form their own opinions. nctnico should not be punished for giving this information, but valued.  Because if he is right, he has just
shown Siglent how to improve their product, something a fleet of engineers seemingly couldn't do. If he is wrong, then make the product
work more intelligently or easier to understand. Often thats where the biggest misunderstandings are, in operational use.

I believe Siglent still should be doing everything possible to help him, even 5-6 months later. Instead of abandoning him. a $3000 (guessing thats roughly the price), is a drop
in the ocean for a large chinese manufacturer that is pushing out thousands of units per month/year.  The goodwill lost on these forums could ultimately cost millions.

Any time a customer of mine has been unhappy for any reason, I've always been quick to refund them, exchange the item, or upgrade them to a better model.
Yes it costs me money and I am only a small when you compare my annual turnover to Siglnet, but it seems my support is superior. I sleep easy at night knowing I've done my best to help someone when they felt that
they didn't get good value for money.

Why do I care about this?  I've been looking to purchase a new scope myself. The SDS2000X looks right up my alley in terms of features and performance.
BUT after seeing the way a customer is treated that has a grievance, I am not so sure I'd look at purchasing that scope.  I don't want to fight with an account rep to be
heard if I have a problem.   In another thread seeing how the Keysight/Agilent rep has chimed in to help people understand a problem / bug , has greatly impressed me.
That is customer service. 

Name calling behind your nickname on an internet forum (talking to you Smoking) is just atrocious behaviour.  I hope you get banned or suspended until you learn some manners.

[Siglent America]

Thank you for your comments.
This person is not a Siglent employee. I believe they are a European distributor but I am checking on this from my end. Regardless of what the customer may or may not have done, we want to always take the high road.

Our European website is located at
www.SiglentEU.com

Thanks again.

[tautech]

@ Rob from Perth
Nice summary but what you aren't aware of is the time and effort behind the scenes that was taken to address the problems Nico was having, even by myself from the other side of the world.
That we couldn't get his DSO FW to a state that satisfied Nico at that time was disappointing and Siglent themselves acknowledged that with a partial refund financial consideration.

Why he has continued to bag many Siglent products when great effort was taken in an attempt to rectify his issues......well, I'm not sure.


Edit
Correction of fact.

[nctnico]

@ Rob from Perth
Nice summary but what you aren't aware of is the time and effort behind the scenes that was taken to address the problems Nico was having, even by myself from the other side of the world.

I'm aware of your efforts and I'm grateful for them but ultimately they did not result in Siglent making any progress with the firmware development and  getting the SDS2000 firmware in a usefull state. The firmware of December 2014 had the following issues:

- High resolution mode absent
- The averaged signal (thin trace) dissapears in 'stop mode' and gets replaced by a 'furry' non-averaged trace; not useful because it doesn't allow to freeze an averaged signal and do measurements with the cursors.
- Protocol decoding only decodes what is on screen. Zooming in on a stream of messages by changing the timebase doesn't work and the zoom function is disabled. This makes protocol decoding practically useless for looking at malformed 'bits' and/or zooming in on parts of a message.
- Protocol decoding doesn't work on digital channels. Having protocol decoding on digital channels was one of the reasons for me to buy the SDS2204 (someone from Siglent confirmed decoding would work on digital channels on EEVblog).
- FFT is not useful without post-processing like averaging to clean up the signal. Also 1024 points are not enough.
- The cursors work terrible in version 1.1.37.2 (they go through the sequence of x1, x2, x1+x2, y1, y2, y1+y2).
- No measurements while decoding
- No zoom for digital signals
- Peak-detect doesn't work in roll mode
- SCPI over LAN doesn't work which makes the LAN connection useless. I tried sending commands over the LAN but the oscilloscope doesn't respond to commands requesting waveform data.
- Sometimes the colors of the 4 analog channels all turn yellow. Changing modes eventually fixes that.
- CAN triggering on message ID not working
- Over all the functions are hard to combine like zoom & digital, zoom & protocol decoding, measurements & digital, measurements & decoding, etc.

That we couldn't get his DSO FW to a state that satisfied Nico at that time was disappointing and Siglent themselves acknowledged that with a partial refund.

Why he has continued to bag many Siglent products when great effort was taken in an attempt to rectify his issues......well, I'm not sure.

Sorry but I didn't get a partial refund! Just a key for the signal generator option which I accepted in order to increase the potential resale value (which it didn't; I couldn't even get half of what I paid for it!). Anyway I needed a working oscilloscope in Januari 2015 and it turned out the SDS2204 was not going to be in a useful state anytime soon at that moment so I had to buy a different oscilloscope to get my work done. It is simple as that. Worse, the SDS2204 wasn't even useful as a bring-to-customers scope either so I had to buy another scope for that purpose as well.

I have had extensive contact with Siglent trying to explain to them what the problems where and they told me they aim towards a 6 month release cycle for the firmware but it ended up taking about 16 months from December 2014 until now to get to a somewhat decent level assuming the firmware Siglent released a short while ago makes the SDS2000 (finally) deliver on it's specifications. All in all you can't really expect people to buy an oscilloscope and wait for about 20 months (August 2014 to April 2016) for it to have all the specified functions -more or less- working?

Again I really really do appreciate your efforts to help me and Siglent should be really gratefull to have you as a dealer but there is no denying that Siglent put a product in the market which did not work according to the promised functions and they where not able to fix it within a reasonable timeframe.

edit: typo

[JPortici]

- Protocol decoding doesn't work on digital channels. Having protocol decoding on digital channels was one of the reasons for me to buy the SDS2204
Jesus christ. what's the point in having digital channels then?

[rob-from-perth]

@ Rob from Perth
Why he has continued to bag many Siglent products when great effort was taken in an attempt to rectify his issues......well, I'm not sure.

This is the opportunity part. Where nctnico can be turned into a friend, instead of being in the enemy camp.

His passion for electronics and products seems obvious.
So put him in the beta program. Send him beta samples, get him to test it and report on it. Get his changes implemented.
Give him a direct line into the engineering department.  Engineers love to fix things and by direct access to customers with
passion, they stand a much better chance of building a better product.
This will redirect his animosity and put it towards something far more useful, better products for everyone.

I watched Dave's video where he speaks to the Siglent CEO. He said a third of (or was it half) their work force is R&D / Engineers.
That is awesome, but if they are out of touch with customer needs, then what's the point?
One company I worked for I had to constantly remind our R&D team, we are making products for customers, not for ourselves.
The products where we had deep beta programs going and took on and processed all the feedback were amongst the most successful.

Companies need to not fear spending money in this way. If Siglent want to dominate, or even just have a better chance in this section of the market, then they need to
talk to and listen to their customers in this section of the market.

[tautech]

- Protocol decoding doesn't work on digital channels. Having protocol decoding on digital channels was one of the reasons for me to buy the SDS2204
Jesus christ. what's the point in having digital channels then?

Which FW are you using?
Please see this post where Performa01 tests MSO decoding with an earlier FW:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/siglent-sds2000-new-v2-firmware/msg835171/#msg835171

And with the latest FW, rf-loops comments:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/siglent-sds2000-new-v2-firmware/msg918937/#msg918937

[tautech]

@ Rob from Perth
Why he has continued to bag many Siglent products when great effort was taken in an attempt to rectify his issues......well, I'm not sure.

This is the opportunity part. Where nctnico can be turned into a friend, instead of being in the enemy camp.

His passion for electronics and products seems obvious.
So put him in the beta program. Send him beta samples, get him to test it and report on it. Get his changes implemented.
Give him a direct line into the engineering department.  Engineers love to fix things and by direct access to customers with
passion, they stand a much better chance of building a better product.
This will redirect his animosity and put it towards something far more useful, better products for everyone.

I watched Dave's video where he speaks to the Siglent CEO. He said a third of (or was it half) their work force is R&D / Engineers.
That is awesome, but if they are out of touch with customer needs, then what's the point?
One company I worked for I had to constantly remind our R&D team, we are making products for customers, not for ourselves.
The products where we had deep beta programs going and took on and processed all the feedback were amongst the most successful.

Companies need to not fear spending money in this way. If Siglent want to dominate, or even just have a better chance in this section of the market, then they need to
talk to and listen to their customers in this section of the market.

I get all this ^^^^ and we sing from the same song sheet  but there will always be some that don't want to engage to that degree. Then there's some that recognise the possibilities of the SDS2000 series (and others) and can't do enough, this is what's happening behind the scenes ATM.

The scenario you propose is much how I'd like to move forward (and I've proposed such) but with the knowledge Siglent has made good progress with all of their FW especially in the last year and with thanks to 2 more branches, more beta testers and the constructive feedback from many members of this forum I hope we can look back and know the recent past were trying times for us all.
In the few short years I've been a distributor, Siglent now has much closer dealings with the end user of their products and I'd like to think that can improve further.

[tautech]

Sorry but I didn't get a partial refund!

Financial consideration is what I was told, not mention of a free option so thanks for clearing that up.
My mistake, sorry Nico.

[salviador]

I just buy this mso , I am quite satisfied.

[tautech]

Latest FW see this post for links:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/siglent's-new-product-sds2000x-series/msg972331/#msg972331