Keysight Scopmonth, Taxes when winning. Marketing-Bullshit?

[ProBang2]

As someone who wasn't lucky enough to win one of the scopes I still had fun entering and hoping each day to see my name drawn. To give away 30+ quality scopes is truly awesome. Many thanks to Keysight for going to all this trouble, and especially working with the winners to help them be able to accept the scope. Hopefully this experience hasn't turned Keysight off from wanting to do more contests in the future.

+ 1

A big thumbs up to Keysight!    
(It seems they do it again next year...)

And congratulations to the lucky winners! 

[rx8pilot]

As someone who wasn't lucky enough to win one of the scopes I still had fun entering and hoping each day to see my name drawn. To give away 30+ quality scopes is truly awesome. Many thanks to Keysight for going to all this trouble, and especially working with the winners to help them be able to accept the scope. Hopefully this experience hasn't turned Keysight off from wanting to do more contests in the future.

+ 1

A big thumbs up to Keysight!    
(It seems they do it again next year...)

And congratulations to the lucky winners! 

Yes! The scopemonth had me on the edge of my seat the whole time. For what it's worth to KS, I ended up watching most of the videos and reading a lot more about KS products.

I still have on more chance with the Test To Impress for the 6000 X-Series.
Vote for Carlos A. !!!
I am currently in 2nd place behind a water heater team. 

[CustomEngineerer]

You got my vote, or three. Had been hoping to see you win one of the scopemonth drawings, so good luck with the Test to Impress.

[ebastler]

I still have on more chance with the Test To Impress for the 6000 X-Series.
Vote for Carlos A. !!!
I am currently in 2nd place behind a water heater team. 

I tried to vote, but -- different from your step-by-step instructions -- was asked to log in with a Facebook account, which I don't have. Is there a way to vote without a Facebook login?

[Brumby]

Seems that the engineering thinkers tend to avoid FB.

Kinda cramps the style for objective voting.


It's not even a popularity contest - just a voting harvest exercise.

[ChunkyPastaSauce]

Seems that the engineering thinkers tend to avoid FB.

FB is a social site   

[Brumby]

Yeah ..... There's something buzzing around in my head about engineers and social skills.....


Think it better stay there.

[Carl_Smith]

Yes! The scopemonth had me on the edge of my seat the whole time. For what it's worth to KS, I ended up watching most of the videos and reading a lot more about KS products.

Every time I got an email from Keysight I would hope for a second that it was a notification that I won, then I'd see that it was just another marketing email.  Not that I minded, I'm perfectly willing to read those emails, but it was quite a few times of getting my hopes up for a few seconds only to have them dashed....   

[rrinker]

So, there is no unified tax system in the US? Different from state to state?

BTW: What´s about Tennessee? Why has a winner in Tennessee not to fill the form from KS?
Is KS (or the US-Government) expecting that in tennessee is no one able to read and write?

And last: About "SebastianW", our new iconic german hero (no, that´s just not enough. He is - I must say it - simply "the Man").
He declined? Really? For sure? I have serious doubts.

Why should "the man" delete his Postings at Monday evening (08:00 PM german time) after the contact with Keysight Germany?
(Receiving the same message as ela-ela. Look in the other scopemonth thread.)
Except three: The first posting can´t be deleted, in the other two he looks fine (relativly).
The 15 postings were he is gone nuts are vanished.
I give you four options (feel free to add more, please):

1) He was a troll. In no way related to the real winner.
(A troll delete his postings?)

2) He declined the scope before he knows that he hasn´t to pay VAT.
(And stopped suddenly the whining about his bad fate?)

3) He declined the scope after he knows that he hasn´t to pay VAT. (WTF? Seriously?)

4) After receiving the message from KS Germany he was embarrassed and ashamed.
(And he hasn´t the balls to tell, what´s then going on with the winning.)

Guess, which is my favourite?    

 In the US there are Federal taxes which apply to everyone, State taxes which apply to people living and working in a specific state, which very from state to state )some states have no income tax, but replace it with others, some states have no sales tax but replace it with others, etc), and then there are local taxes for the city or town you live/work in.

 I only say Sabastian declined because that's what Keysight said in the drawing video, though not specifically mentioning him by name, they just said one of the 4000 winners declined so they were drawing a second name. And truly, that's as much as they should say publicly. What exactly went down? We'll likely never know.

 Hopefully they do something like this again next year. So I can not win again - I have extremely poor luck at any sort of sweepstakes like this (as in, last time I won ANYTHING was over 40 years ago when I entered to win a go-kart and ended up with the third prize which was tickets to a race). Which is why I rarely gamble (when the lottery hits a few hundred million, I'll buy a ticket).

[continuo]

On March 25 Keysight gave away two 4000X scopes:

March 25 – Jesse Smith (3000T) & Justin Smith and Dennis Hennigan (4000X)

so one of the three former winners obviously had declined his prize, but it remains unclear who it really was. To think it was SebastianW is purely speculative. It might as well have been either Jacob S. or Erwin H., we'll probably never know 

On a side note, I remember Dave mentioned in one of his vids that his "Special Edition" sccopes are fully optioned up, how about the Keysight giveaways? Was it somewhere mentioned?

[CustomEngineerer]

I still have on more chance with the Test To Impress for the 6000 X-Series.
Vote for Carlos A. !!!
I am currently in 2nd place behind a water heater team. 

I tried to vote, but -- different from your step-by-step instructions -- was asked to log in with a Facebook account, which I don't have. Is there a way to vote without a Facebook login?

I couldn't find a way without the facebook login. I had to get my wife to log into her account (felt so dirty having facebook logged in on my computer) since I've never had one.

[rx8pilot]

facebook login is required to count the votes. The downside is that anyone can make up an account(s) and vote as many times as they please.
Keeping it a fair race is nearly impossible and it has nothing at all to do with the content of the videos.

I have been (practically) begging everyone I know to vote and that is all I can/will do. Nervously waiting out the next 2 weeks. Thank you to all voters!!!

[ProBang2]

Yeah, the inductive heating project was at least nice presented...
But IMO there is really no need for a (further) high bandwidth scope.
Not to mention the most of the other videos...       

It seems: The only real need for a 6 GHz scope is yours.

Therefore I had resurrected my ancient FB account yesterday.
Unfortunately I had to wait 24 hours for log in.     
I will vote for you the next 12 days. Every day.

I wish you luck and the necessary support on the long run.   

[rrinker]

 Got my vote. And I DID watch the videos first - dunno what's up with the water heater one. The guy with the drone and bike is pretty funny, I guess there might be a need with 5.8GHz RF links, but so far of the ones I watched, yours is the most useful, as far as actually needing a scope of that caliber.

[Howardlong]

The guy with the drone and bike is pretty funny, I guess there might be a need with 5.8GHz RF links

I guess you could use it as part of a test setup for the purpose he was after, but I'd say it's probably the wrong tool for the job. For checking circular polarisation and axial ratio you need an antenna range, RF signal generator, reference antenna, a 10dB or so pad, and either an SA or a crystal detector plus an AC millivoltmeter, modulating the RF sig gen with 1kHz AM. I suppose you could use the scope as an outageously expensive AC millivoltmeter, I assume that the DVM function would do that? 

[rx8pilot]

Thank you all! This could be a wonderful turning point for my little business.
I am sharing with all my FB connections, but it is definitely a challenge to get peoples attention in such a noisy social site. Everyone has a charity that needs clicks.....

The EEVBlog is a big hope for me in getting the votes UP! Presently about 232 votes behind the water heater. Definitely need to get the EEVBlog pumped to pull in a win!

Like I said in another thread - I am able to pay the taxes because of huge write offs from my previous years - IE, I burned all my money trying to get to this point. Pushing forward is painfully slow with no money.

If anyone is so inclined - please share in your circles to see if you can encourage voting. Competing with a teenage student is not going to be easy. It will need every single willing participant.

[Carl_Smith]

I still have on more chance with the Test To Impress for the 6000 X-Series.
Vote for Carlos A. !!!
I am currently in 2nd place behind a water heater team. 

Done.  You are still in second place.  I will try to remember to vote every day...

Keysight really needs to hire a new web page designer.   At first I couldn't even find you in the list.  I hate when web sites have scroll bars in a frame on the page, but the frame doesn't even fit on screen, so I have to scroll up and down with the browser scroll bar, then scroll down more with the scroll bar in the frame. 

And you move in the list each time I vote.  Maybe that is an attempt at defeating automated voting?

[rx8pilot]

They are trying to stop automated votes. The real problem is that the majority of people (here in the US) want to vote on their phone. Most of my friends are not in an office (they make movies). The site is not at all mobile friendly, this is especially true for iPhone users. The CAPTCHA does not pop up and they think they voted, but they didn't. I have (conservatively) lost a few hundred votes for this.

If it does not work or it's a PITA, they move on and don't try again. That is a hard pill to swallow, since I took the time to contact people, had a conversation, they agreed to vote - but ran into tech problems.  Ouch!

We are still in the race for sure - I am gaining a voting population slowly by pure brute force. I just walked my neighborhood, literally door to door looking for support.

[Flanbix]

I had a reply from the KS team which told me that they can't give any estimate on the taxes I may have to pay (for legal issues).
But they are happy to amend the document so I can choose any of the scope I want from the InfiniiVision 3000T X-Series range. Probably go for the MSOX3024T, good upgrade compared to my hacked DS1054Z....

[jc101]

I had a reply from the KS team which told me that they can't give any estimate on the taxes I may have to pay (for legal issues).
But they are happy to amend the document so I can choose any of the scope I want from the InfiniiVision 3000T X-Series range. Probably go for the MSOX3024T, good upgrade compared to my hacked DS1054Z....

If, as in previous promotions, they ask you to nominate a distributer/reseller then it would be delivered via that nominated route.  if you choose one in the UK there will nothing to pay.
I won a scope in the touch challenge, I got the scope and just an invoice for £0.00 from my nominated reseller, no tax or VAT was applicable.

[Flanbix]

Well I mention that in my last email. Will see was they come up with.

[rch]

Well I mention that in my last email. Will see was they come up with.

If they reckon they can't comment for legal reasons (which may be misconceived but they're going to accept their own legal advice, not ours!) then it may be worth a gamble going for the most expensive one ordered through a distributor and see if the same thing happens to you.  You can always send it back if they send you a full VAT invoice, but that doesn't seem to be what is happening to others.  I'd go for it!