Rigol customer support (lack of?)

[migry]

I wonder what other Rigol owners experience of their customer support is?

I live in the UK, and bought a MSO2302A scope back in 2015. I have been very happy with the scope and it has weaned me off my favourite Tek analogue scopes. This model has the logic analyser, which I have used quite often. The waveform display has some bugs, however I would really like more than 16 channels, this is too little even for a 8 bit processor.

Some time ago I tried to contact Rigol, asking about software updates, no doubt related to my LA usage. This was back in Aug-2019. It was sent to "help@rigol.com". I got no reply. I re-emailed a month later, but again there was no reply. So I forgot and sort of gave up trying to reach out.

I would have also use Twitter to try to contact Rigol, but their Twitter account appeared to be for the USA only. In any case I got no response.

This is a bit of a bug bear, but I am getting more and more frustrated and annoyed at companies that don't provide a decent level of support. That means having a direct phone number for customer support. It's not just Rigol BTW, but some companies in the UK appear to go out of their way to avoid any cost in supporting customers, such as not having customer service.

So has anyone in this forum found a way to contact Rigol?

[RoGeorge]

Have you tried searching with Google for the latest firmware update for your model, first?

https://www.google.com/search?q=MSO2302A+update
https://www.rigolna.com/firmware/

Yours is series 2000, so the firmware for DS2000, latest version ready to download is 03.06.00.00
The corresponding readme file states that that firmware is for any DS or MSO from the 2000 series.

[Karel]

I have been in contact with them many times (last time was in 2017).
I have the email adresses of some technicians but they have moved on to other companies.

Long story short, they can't really help you with firmware bugs apart from relaying it to the head office in China.
That's why I gave up. At work we bought an DS6104 (I still regret that decision!) with all options and the firmware
has lots of bugs and they repaired only one or two.
All the other bugs I reported were acknowledged but not fixed.

Personally I own a DS1054Z. Despite some firmware updates, they never wanted to fix the infamous USB packetsize bug
that renders the scope's USB connection useless on Linux.

So, I moved on and decided never to buy anything anymore from Rigol.
My future purchases will be definitely something from R&S, Keysight or Fluke.

[migry]

Thank you @RoGeorge, I have just finished the firmware update. Thank you for the links.

My reason for contacting Rigol was more than just to ask about software updates, although it would have been helpful to ask if my bug was known and had been fixed.

When I bought Rigol I felt that this company might be a bit more supportive of makers and other non big company owners. Since they cannot be contacted, for example, there is no way to suggest feature improvements to their scope. Of course I can assume that the massive companies such as Tek and Agilent would only listen to the engineers working for companies who are big purchasers of their equipment, and makers to them "don't exist". Apart from the much much higher cost of their scopes it is one reason I would not want to do business with them (although I have happily bought old CRT Tek scopes - but these are 40+ years old).

It's great to be able to chat about products in the Eevblog forums, but I can't help but think it would be great if the manufacturers hosted their own forums for their own products. but it seems like many manufacturers don't want to "get their hands dirty".    For example with many UK companies, I don't feel like a valued customer, despite their marketing BS. Apologies for the rant!

[Adrian_Arg.]

I had a small problem with my rigol ds1054z, when I just arrived, they took a month to answer me, but they helped me solve it. That doesn't mean it's good, but something is something 

[geggi1]

Just contact the Norwegain distributor.
https://www.venotek.no/display.aspx

[Bud]

There is a language and most importantly cultural barriers. Save yourself headache and avoid rigol products.

[Fungus]

There is a language and most importantly cultural barriers. Save yourself headache and avoid rigol products.

Or accept them for what they are: Cheap, cheerful, capable of most jobs, a very useful addition to a workbench.

[Karel]

There is a language and most importantly cultural barriers. Save yourself headache and avoid rigol products.

Or accept them for what they are: Cheap, cheerful, capable of most jobs, a very useful addition to a workbench.

For hobby/maker use, they are ok'ish.

[Fungus]

For hobby/maker use, they are ok'ish.

The difference between being able to see a signal/not is like day/night. Rigol definitely do that, and a whole lot more. Anybody who thinks Rigol is rubbish hasn't lived in a pre-Rigol world where the best you could hope for at Rigol prices was a basic CRO that was so old and unreliable that nobody else wanted it.

(And they're free to spend more money if they think that will help)