[time-nuts] R&S XSRM Rubidium Standard

Dr. David Kirkby (Kirkby Microwave Ltd) drkirkby at kirkbymicrowave.co.uk
Sun Sep 17 08:07:32 EDT 2017


On 15 Sep 2017 10:45, "Scott McGrath" <scmcgrath at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Precisely my point,   But when purchasing i expect to pay for a
calibration at a minimum.

I have on occasions requested sellers to send an item to the manufacturer
(Agilent or Keysight) for calibration *before* shipping it to me, offering
to pay the calibration cost, but stating that I expect a full refund if the
item fails the calibration.

If a test equipment dealer is confident that something is working well,
they should not object to sending it to the manufacturer for calibration,
as long as the buyer is willing to pay.

Of course if a seller knows little about something,  they are not going to
do this,  but the item should be appropriately priced.

One UK seller (grace1403) declined to send an Agilent N9912A FieldFox to
Agilent, because "Agilent were too fussy"., failing items for trivual
issues.   But he did agree to send it to one of the cal labs he uses. I
thought it was a waste of time going to one of the less fussy outfits,  but
bought it anyway. It was then clear on receipt that it was faulty. (The
spectrum analyser functionality was ok, but it didn't work as a network
analyzer).  He took it back,  but then advertised it on eBay 6 months
later. When asked, he said nothing had been done to it.

eBay rules about who pays the return shipping charge for an item that is
"not as described' keep changing, and may be different on different sites.
But on a heavy item shipped internationally,  the postage cost can be
comparable or exceed the calibration cost.

Dave.


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