Buying RIGOL DSO - from Hongkong / Support ?

[TinkeringSteve]

Hey there.

I see there on ebay, a seller with good reputation called "lotusdechine2006" who's known to sell all those china scopes from Hongkong.

I actually bought my Hantek there years ago.
But since the thing didn't have any defects so far, I never had to deal with support, either from that seller, or with a chinese oscilloscope maker of moderate to good reputation, product wise.

Now I've been annoyed multiple times by only having 2 channels and low memory depth, so I've decided to upgrade, or more precisely, to get one of the lower (but not lowest) new style Rigol scopes, with ultravision blah and 4 channels.

The mentioned ebay seller sells those for a good price. Buying from usual electronic sellers in Germany, it would cost ~ 27% or almost 150 EUR more than with the honkong guy.
(Note, as stated by the guy, there will be no extra cost like customs, since they are sending it from Honkong to London, then further into europe - apparently there are special rules. I didn't pay customs back then for the other scope either.)

So now I'm hesitating, this is some more dough than for my hantek back then.
Does anyone here have experience with support from the seller or/and Rigol ?
Does Rigol have a support base in Europe, or would I have to send defective gear to China? Which would be quite expensive I imagine.

- regards

[TomThomas]

Hey there.

I see there on ebay, a seller with good reputation called "lotusdechine2006" who's known to sell all those china scopes from Hongkong.

I actually bought my Hantek there years ago.
But since the thing didn't have any defects so far, I never had to deal with support, either from that seller, or with a chinese oscilloscope maker of moderate to good reputation, product wise.

Now I've been annoyed multiple times by only having 2 channels and low memory depth, so I've decided to upgrade, or more precisely, to get one of the lower (but not lowest) new style Rigol scopes, with ultravision blah and 4 channels.

The mentioned ebay seller sells those for a good price. Buying from usual electronic sellers in Germany, it would cost ~ 27% or almost 150 EUR more than with the honkong guy.
(Note, as stated by the guy, there will be no extra cost like customs, since they are sending it from Honkong to London, then further into europe - apparently there are special rules. I didn't pay customs back then for the other scope either.)

So now I'm hesitating, this is some more dough than for my hantek back then.
Does anyone here have experience with support from the seller or/and Rigol ?
Does Rigol have a support base in Europe, or would I have to send defective gear to China? Which would be quite expensive I imagine.

- regards

Hi,
Rigol has a branch Office in Europe / Germany, where they can do the support. But this is only valid for Rigol Instrumentation which was sold within Europe.
So in the worst case... if you have an issue, it could be possible that they refuse and you have to send it to Hongkong.
I personally would go and buy at an official Rigol reseller from Europe. I did it that way..
BR
Tom

[rob77]

and exactly those concerns were the reason why i did buy my Hantek here in a brick-and-mortar shop (100-150Euro more expensive than china/ebay/whatever shops).
i got 2 years of warranty and i don't have to worry about anything.. if it breaks down, i'll just  return it to the shop - and they WILL HAVE TO take care (and arrange the repair/replacement within 30 days) .. so it's worth of the extra cost - i'm happy