Greetings All,
Just thought I'd share my recent service experience with Rohde & Schwarz when my RTB2004 suddenly died earlier this month. [...]
They arranged for prepaid FedEx shipping to their Maryland shop and total turnaround time was about 2 weeks. [...]
I just saw this. That's great you had such a trouble-free experience, I wish I had the same. My experience had some of the typical signs of big companies and the small-time customers that get a lower level of attention. When I had a warranty claim R&S support was very good responding to my issue. After they concluded it should be sent in and handed me off to R&S Service they told me this:
"I was able to pull this up and it looks like the unit was purchased through test equity.
You would need to go through them to have the unit sent in for service, as we are unable to set up accounts for a single person.
I hope this helps and I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused."
My vendor was actually Tequipment so I dealt with them. RMA was approved and I had to ship the scope to Maryland on my dime. Deciding how to do that was stressful because if the scope never makes it there then I just lose my scope, end of story. As small as that chance is it's a scary possibility. So do I insure for the launch price? The current $3700 sale price? What if it arrives physically damaged by the shipper and there's a drawn out process that ends with R&S denying the warranty and the scope is back to regular price by then? I'm looking at shipping choices ranging from about $80 to $180. That's real money to someone like me. I end up opting for $3000 insurance and crossed my fingers.
I don't hear anything for a while. The R&S RMA status page shows service complete. R&S Service won't tell me any information other than it was already shipped (because Tequipment is their customer on file, not me). I find out from Tequipment that it was shipped to the address on the original order 3 years ago rather than my updated account address, and tracking showed it was delivered over a week ago. Did I mention it was stressful? Fortunately I still had a way to contact the people that live there now, and they were honest people, and it was only an hour away. In total it was about 5 1/2 weeks beginning to end. For their part Tequipment apologized and said they would review what happened, they were supposed to confirm my shipping address in writing. No, it didn't make me feel any better about it. Everyone makes mistakes, and for the agent that handled the RMA I'm sure it was a very easy mistake to make on autopilot, but man what a nightmare it could have been for me.
And now seeing that perhaps I didn't have to take on the risk and cost of shipping myself if I had dealt with the right people pours some salt in the wound. Or maybe it's a policy difference between the US and Canadian markets. I'm not blaming R&S for what happened, they didn't make any clear mistakes. But their choice to be a step removed had a contribution and made room for more human error in the process. And if they had been willing to deal with me directly there's greater chance the old address could have been caught before the new scope shipped.