[Elecraft] March/April NCJ

[Dr. William J. Schmidt]

I had a similar thing happen after purchasing an antenna switch of well-known brand.  I didn't try the switch before it went to the top of the tower but I quickly found that one position had a bad relay.  I was able to use another position to get the thing working.  I posted on eHam and rated it below average in quality because I expected a switch... something so simple... to work out of the box.  I quickly received an email from the manufacturer berating me, suggesting it was my fault for the switch failing for being just another dumb ham (yes, for a simple 12V switch), and that my review would "ruin his business".  This went on for some time, but I did not bend to such rude tactics in favor of the truth.  I also commented that the kick-back diodes were, in my opinion, at tower end where they are not easily serviceable after static discharge (this was not the problem causing the box to fail).

Evidently this has become common-place.


Dr. William J. Schmidt - K9HZ J68HZ 8P6HK ZF2HZ PJ4/K9HZ VP5/K9HZ PJ2/K9HZ 

email:  bill at wjschmidt.com


-----Original Message-----
From: elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net <elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net> On Behalf Of Wes
Sent: Saturday, March 13, 2021 12:53 PM
To: elecraft at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [Elecraft] March/April NCJ

I bought a European made tri-band Yagi antenna from a friend who had never installed it. (I won't mention the manufacturer)  It was still in the unopened box after sitting in my friend's garage for some time.  The pieces of tubing were shipped inside each other (graduated metric sizes have a lot of clearance between sizes) and when I extracted them all I found two pieces for the same element were very corroded.  I used my household lye/vinegar method to clean them up and assembled the antenna. It worked fine and I decided to write an eHam review.

Based on the QC issue I rated it a four stars. I almost immediately got an email from the company in which I was accused of improperly storing the antenna and all sorts of other things.  It was also claimed that anything less that five stars would ruin their business, etc.  I sent photos of the tubing and heard back that this was impossible, it's never happened before and so on and so forth.  I got so much grief about this that I wrote the reviews people at eHam and asked them to pull my review, which they did.

Wes  N7WS

On 3/13/2021 10:37 AM, David Gilbert wrote:
>
> I agree that a preponderance of 5 ratings are from people 
> congratulating themselves on their choice, and the text often goes 
> like "this is a fine rig" or "met all my expectations."
>
> And out of roughly 2,200 eHam ratings I once profiled just for grins, 
> almost all of the ratings of 1 star or 2 stars were for service or support issues ...
> which tells you nothing about the rig itself.
>
> I also agree about the need to look for trends in the comments to find 
> any worthwhile insight ... which is why the NCJ article that used only 
> the summary average ratings is borderline useless to me.
>
> 73,
> Dave  AB7E

______________________________________________________________
Elecraft mailing list
Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
Post: mailto:Elecraft at mailman.qth.net

This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to bill at wjschmidt.com 


-- 
This email has been checked for viruses by AVG.
https://www.avg.com