It becomes clear that Keysight is completely out of the hobbyist market. Without service manuals, available parts nor any kind of repair or support, if your unit breaks after warranty it becomes a paperweight. I bet there are very few hobbyists willing to spend the kind of money they ask, even for their entry level DSOX1204 for 2 or 3 years of use, with no possibility of repair whatsoever after that.
But, if they really want out of our market, I'm, honestly, not surprised that they don't provide support to individual customers, even if they don't sell to us at all.
The consumer laws in Europe are rather protective towards the private buyer. And, as was previously stated, It means agreeing to potentially unfavourable terms, which include a fixed warranty time and the seller's burden of the proof in proving the cause of failure, amongst other things. On top of that, us amateurs and hobyists are most likely to break our equipment due to improper use and lack of knowledge.
The laws are also going to get tighter for the sellers and manufacturers, so they might be trying to move fast to avoid having to cope with unnegotiated terms and conditions which apply to every private customer, irrespective of what they are buying, how much they are spending, or whether they know or not how to use their equipment.
Besides that, having a registered VAT number, a small company or whatever, is generally painles in most european countries, and doesn't stand as an unreasonable requisite to me. Here in Spain I just have my own ID number as my registered VAT number. A company is also really cheap and fast now.
The point is, I guess, that they just have a general policy within Europe, which is mostly reasonable and a pretty logical choice, but happens to create a lot of problems with the UK legal system, which is not surprising. There are a lot of problems trying to integrate and/or translate regulations, rights, certifications and all kind of legal concepts from the rest of Europe to the English Common Law.
The logical solution would be to change the laws on the UK to make small companies viable, or for Keysight to have a system to differentiate businesses from amateurs irrespective of them legally being a company or not.
There was another point made in the thread before, which was something like "why woul I have to cope with minimum warranty as a company when I can have a longer warranty due to consumer protection regulations?". That is exactly the point I guess. You can get the compulsory legal warranty as a consumer (and they might not want to play with those rules in the consumer market), or the variable proffesional warranty offered by the manufacturer, which will really depend on your position to negotiate with them.