Well there goes my plan for an used Ten-Tec Patriot Scout. If minimum fixit charge is $265 I might as well buy something else new/with a warranty, or find a closer repair shop that isn't overtly hostile to its previous customers that helped build the company. I mean, the guy has a right to say 'I'm the new sheriff' and the rules are changing. Sure, and you can have that attitude over a bankrupt company in about 2 years. Too bad some hams sort of abused customer support--and I don't doubt that at all, but this seems a bit heavy handed. But again, he can do what he wants, but if the quality ain't there and the service won't be, then it is already doomed. Built a quality product, at a competitive price, and service it well, and you'll make friends for life. Or don't, and go bankrupt (again). Hoping the workers made out on this deal, they shouldn't suffer for management bad practices.
My reading of it is that the service will be there. You'll just have to cover the fair cost for it. If anything, the statements about service costs are the only thing about the Ten Tec saga for the past two years that has made any sense at all. I would assume that any existing Ten-Tec products out there don't count anymore. Why would a company like Dishtronics buy a dead-horse company with a now damaged reputation, and just keep doing the same thing? So we'll just have to wait and see what exciting new products eventually come out bearing the Ten Tec label. Well, the pseudo press release at the OP said that the new owners bought the assets but not the liabilities. The question is, whether any remaining TenTec employees (along with any outstanding pay, benefits, retirement plans, etc) are considered assets or liabilities.
Hi John, Bully for Dishtronix and hope they do well! I'm not certain I would handled the transitional Brand Management as Mike has, but you can be certain it has stirred up a buzz of interest. From the RKR Design end the TenTec Brand Management has further fueled the speculation and arguably from the armchair seemed more interest in cost control than the Brand Asset preservation of their retail Brands. Do Mike's Dishtronix plans include the Alpha line or is there more to the RKR Design divesture story? Or does Alpha stay as is? 73 Steve K9ZW
I read the repair cost justification increasing all minimums costs to $265.....WOW inflation sure hit fast..... The R/R of the most common Peg failure is the PA Finals was $157 repair +shipping! I employ Dishtronix to get all the older TT radio data/schematics, tech-data/notes, and MFG/Repair-adjustment processes into achieve ASAP, as one reason there is so much Tech time waste is due to NO Service manuals offered/sold on older radios. i.e Pegasus/Jupiter. I was promised for the last ten years at Dayton by the TT Eng VP(s) for a full complete schematics and adjustment procedure for the Pegasus - it never arrived (and I'm willing to buy it). 73, Kuby, N6JSX/8 YGroup TenTec-Pegasus Owner I live ~25mi west of Bellefountaine.
I appreciate everyone's inputs. I sympathize with this pain. Dishop intends on keeping a service department to handle repairing product. New products shipped under Dishtronix ownership will come with tbd warranties. (I only marked it tbd because I don't now if it will be 1 yr 2 yr etc as TEN-TEC did in the past) So he dang well plans on shipping quality product. Every warranty return costs the company a LOT of time and money. Quality will be there. For those that want service, service will be there. There is also a big piece of the puzzle/profitability of TEN-TEC that had always been there for TEN-TEC Inc, it is still there for TEN-TEC under Dishtronix. It was a part of the business that was all but cut out by the previous regimes. This business line in itself will help make TEN-TEC profitable again. Which will have great positive cash flow impact to help sustain and carry the ham development. Give it time, there are plans to bring back existing product into production, and there are plans to finish development on a couple of state of the art items that had been in the works, and there are plans on new products, some completely new, some partly based on existing. So, like I said, give it a year, and let's see if TEN-TEC makes it to Dayton 2017, that will be the real proof to me. 73, KI4JPL
I'm sorry for not agreeing with the policies of customer support. I am the owner of a business where customers call for support, when needed. It is beyond belief to think that if I need help on one of my Tentec radios I have to think of cost factoring before I ask a question. You might as well say, " if you got the money, I got the honey," to the buyers of Tentec radios. I thought I was doing right by purchasing an Omni VII, last year, and supporting the company. Big mistake! I wouldn't purchase anything that had any traces of a Tentec affiliation now. So much for American pride. If you people can't produce a product and support it without treating your customer base as a continuous revenue stream, then it's time to fold up the tent and go the way of all the other radio business failures. Maybe future developers will follow the Japanese company examples and be able to pull a success in their product line. Well, I know what I'm bringing to the next flee market to try to unload, while I can still get something for it. John C NI1S
I would have to guess that with all the turmoil surrounding this situation, it will be shutdown in a year or so. I just can't imagine with all the competition from well-known brands, that Ten Tec can even remain financially viable. It would be great to wrong however, when you've lost market share consistently for years, you must have a tremendous amount of innovation and capital with much-desired products that a LOT of people want. I don't see that being the case. Brian/WB2JIX
What makes you an expert on Ten Tec's new business strategy??? Perhaps you should have bought the company since you are well equiped to prognosticate the future.
This Change does not sound good for the Amateur community. Ten-Tec has always been the CW operators friend with great performing rigs AND Service but in recent years, the equipment has become Expensive, Complicated, and now the service of this gear is in question. I have many older Ten-Tec rigs and it seems that I may now have to maintain them myself. Hopefully I will be able to find some of the obsolete parts needed to keep thing up and running.........
There seem to be some brutal comments here. I feel compelled to ask some questions.: How many of you have you been adequately compensated at your job over your career to allow you to enjoy a moderately decent standard of living and retirement? When you went to work, did you get paid? Do the service people who fix YOUR radio that YOU broke deserve the same financial opportunity that you enjoyed? How long would your employer have been able to provide you salary and benefits if they ran their business at a loss? Is it right to criticize someone for requiring you to pay what it costs for what you consume? Prices have increased at the grocery store, for healthcare and at the pharmacy. Do you complain to the grocer or pharmacist about it? Why do you pay every other service including your telephone and cable bills which have also increased, but think everything in ham radio should be free? For a business the choice is to operate the service department so it AT LEAST breaks even, or shut it down. Do you want the option to have your radio repaired? For the person criticizing Dishtronix for having "over priced" watt meters and amplifiers, are you in possession of the product so that you can run a bill of materials to find out what the component costs are? Do you know how many hours of labor it takes to assemble one unit? What then is your basis for stating it is overpriced? What is your qualification to openly criticize someone you do not know when you are not in possession of the business financial reports or other data? Might one reason for not making any statement earlier, before I am properly prepared to do so, be the desire to avoid extremely negative comments expressed by "mature" adult men who should set a positive example for others in the hobby instead of whining like children when you are finally required to pull your own weight ? John Henry is a fine individual who I am glad to have as a valued friend. John has a job with TenTec whenever he wants it for as long as he wants it. There is no way I could undertake this project without John's help and knowledge with which he has been extremely generous. Every person who loves TenTec owes him a debt of gratitude. He has been trying to take care of the TenTec user base by giving you some information so you won't be completely in the dark about what is happening. I put out the service statement so people would not be calling the ARRL as one enterprising individual did and wondering what to do about their radio when we don't answer the telephone on the day of Christmas eve or during the shutdown week between Christmas and New Years. I am a loyal TenTec customer and enjoy my Orion II. It is my opinion that TenTec produced nice receivers that sound good at a reasonable price, and it is my intention to continue that tradition. As to the future, TenTec is not leaving the market. I plan to own and operate TenTec for as long as I am able to physically do so which should be at least the next twenty years. I am thankful for the opportunity to contribute to this fantastic companies future success and to be the newest addition to the TenTec family which is a great bunch of people. I would like to invite each of you to participate in helping TenTec become all it can possibly be. I'm going to do everything I can to achieve that goal. What will you do? Is it too much to ask you to pull your own weight on your repairs? There is a LOT to do in this transition. I can spend my time typing replies on the forums or I can tend to business and get the repairs up and running again sooner and getting radios out the door. What should I do? You are the customer. You tell me. I may not type things in the forums, but I promise you I am listening.
My last post on this for a while..... Lots of work to do, day job, night consulting, etc. Several items need to be done to make it successful. Item one, get products back into production (in process) Item two, service existing products (on-going, check) Item three, work on new state of the art products that customers are asking for (in process) Item four, marketing, PR, etc (well, sorta stagnate, my role may have hurt, time will tell) So, once some of the existing products start shipping again, and they will, even if it is just a trickle, then sustainability will be met, which will fund Item 3 above. which will eventually fund item 4, and then lower the costs for item 2 (this is my speculation) Its that simple. I know a real marketing/PR person would have handled this transition better, my fault, but I hope that my personal intent is seen, and that the direction the new owner wants to take is a positive one that will bring TEN-TEC back from where the last few years has all but destroyed it. I realize I can't sway all of the naysayers, that is just human nature, but there is a LARGE amount of positive inputs coming via email/calls/etc that I myself am convinced that TEN-TEC has a fighting chance at survival. A hard road to go, but there is a good chance it will be here another 47 years. I have commitments on purchasing existing product at the standard TEN-TEC price level, new products at an xxx price level, etc. Several that have said they want to put a downpayment now if that helps. several that want to start a kickstarter fund to help alleviate a lot of the initial cash flow issues that the new owner is bound to struggle with that aren't for seen yet. Regarding service, the goal now is to provide quality service as TEN-TEC has always done in the repair of the rigs. The new policy will eliminate the calls that took hours and hours and it turned out to be improper grounding, or RF, or whatever that had nothing to do with the unit itself. This change in service policy will put an end to those calls. These calls are also one reason that customers rigs take so long in service. There were less than a handful of service techs, and at any one moment in time I could walk by and at least two of them would be on the phone, and most likely either would be for another half an hour minimum or were already on the phone for at least a half an hour and a lot of times more. Of course, if a customer is willing to pay for that time on the phone, then they can trouble shoot all day long. Up to the customer. But I would refrain from that, because it then makes the other rigs in the service queue take longer to get to, repaired, shipped back to the customer. So, let's try to keep those to a minimum. There will still be quick minute or so calls that will just come in, problem stated to the tech, tech gives inputs on what to try, and will sometimes get it resolved remotely and nothing charged. It all depends upon the problem, the time, how many times that customer has called on that same problem troubleshooting etc. and if within minutes the service says he needs to see the rig, it is up to the owner to pay for the service if he so desires. Of course, the policy will be to charge for service phone call time. Heck, look at a lot of the tech giants of today, so many of them you can't talk with someone without giving them your CC, then the clock starts the second you have given them your expiration date. For TEN-TEC, the initial call will probably not be with a tech but with someone taking a message, a description, etc., and arranging a time for a call back. The service tech will probably be shielded from the public until he has a few minutes to think about the issue, then formulate the best way to attack the question/problem at hand, call back, and maybe done in 2 minutes, who knows. But I do NOT want people to have the impression that they can't get service anymore, no, that is not the case, service still exists, and products will get repaired, some products won't be able to be repaired, etc. The only change is that TEN-TEC needs to get paid for their time. And not be a charity business as it has been for so many years. MANY a time I had seen the service department ship a part to someone and not even charge them for it. And the unit was not under warranty, yet it was the "right thing to do". I fully agree that is a GREAT way to treat customers, but it is also a great way to bankrupt a given department. THAT has to stop, and will. MANY a time I have seen techs on the phone for hours trouble shooting a shack issue. THAT has to stop, and will. MANY a time I have witnessed calls that came in and the guy went on and on about how much he liked his Corsair that he sold 10 years ago and wished TEN-TEC would make them again and etc. etc. Those have to stop for now. I still say give them 2-3 mos, if still there and in maybe 3 mos some of the products are beginning to ship, then they will probably make it through the year. If then you begin to see new products available by Jan/Feb/March or so in 2017, then again, I give them a better vote of confidence. yes, it is going to take a while, very small team now, handling Eng and Service and Production. ok, 'nuff said, I can't really add to anything I've already said, other than just ask that you give them time, and if you want to help ensure TEN-TEC stays around another 47 years, well, you know what to do. If you want to go elsewhere now, well, if you want a conventional rig with today's/tomorrow's technologies I really hope you support Elecraft or Flex, both have great products, and both stand behind their products (or so I've heard, don't know first hand). 73, KI4JPL John Henry
Service, What I do suggest, is... If you have an issue that you are not certain if it is a rig issue or a shack issue or whatever, then go to the fine folks on contesting.com, they have a LOT of people there with LOADs of experience in every TEN-TEC product ever made. I bet 85% of the time you will get resolution there, just by asking questions and asking about why you are seeing y instead of z. Then, if the experts there say it is best to send it to TEN-TEC, THEN you can decide whether to use one of the available guys who do repairs, or to call TEN-TEC and get it repaired by the manufacturer, up to you. Sending it to the manufacturer, TEN-TEC will help support the service department so that they can maintain a service department. It's up to you, you figure out how you want to handle your purchase, get a TEN-TEC, how you handle service, check the forums first then contact TEN-TEC if they think it is a real hard failure, etc. The reflector I referred to above is: (I highly recommend this one....) http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/TenTec You can register so that you get emails of updates, There are also other lists that are dedicated to specific products on yahoo. For the OMNI-VII https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Ten-Tec-Omni-VII/info For the Eagle https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/TenTec_Eagle/info For the Argonaut VI https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/TenTec_539/info The general TEN-TEC yahoo group, https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/TenTec/info Rebel https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/TenTec506Rebel/conversations/messages Patriot https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/TenTec507Patriot/conversations/messages A real good group, all kinds of users, dedicated to the on the air nets https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/ten_tec_radio_net/info 73, KI4JPL John Henry
