Agilent U1253A OLED display fading problems after five years.

[Kiriakos GR]

One fellow from Argentina posted this problem at Agilent forums this week.

Hello,
I have a U1253A multimeter that I bought in 2009.
A couple of months ago, I noticed that the brightness of the OLED display notoriously decreased up to a point that the readings can be hardly seen at a normal indoor light condition.
I can try to adjust the brightness to mid or maximum level, but there is not any noticeably change.
In low level, the display brightness is really low, and not usefull in any practical situation.
I would like to know where can I send the DMM to get it serviced in Argentina.

Personally I believe that U1253A shares the same display with all Agilent OLED meters, therefore it would be nice to find out how Agilent responds in such a scenario.

http://www.home.agilent.com/owc_discussions/thread.jspa?threadID=37888&tstart=0

[Kiriakos GR]

This story received further exposure even by other Blogs, and today there is interesting news about it.

As soon this Argentinian man followed my advice regarding targeted pressure to Agilent so to acquire / buy the specific spare part,  and after several communication attempts, Agilent responded with one unexpected way.

1) They informed him that : Agilent's policy is not to sell electronic modules of its instruments as spare parts

2) They offered to him one U1252A (the one with standard LCD display) as replacement for free.

The point is that the offered  U1252A meter as new or refurbished, it does take some pain away from this user,
but the transmitted message to other Agilent customers is rather blurry.
They are saying that they are not obligated to offer spare parts for their equipment, and that they have an internal policy about this.

By following Agilent for some years,  I am aware that about the U1272A they do have listed an replacement LCD display at a price of 20$ on their website.

I bet that all readers of this story will have mixed feelings all ready, and even me I am totally confused.
These Bold words of three years warranty today does not sound as good enough when the average expectation of most users is their tools to come with a life cycle of ten years.

 
Agilent in 2014 is obligated to make any of their policy about their handheld tools in the form of a front page Announcement, instead of sharing them within the company, and consumers to not be aware of them.
 

[giorgos]

By the way, the phrase "our policy" which many companies use, nowdays is unacceptable according recent theories of marketing science.

[Kiriakos GR]

What realy bothers me with modern Agilent is that their management thinks more as stockholder than a consumer.
And I can almost feel what happens from inside, many high quality executives capable to deliver solutions and  fresh ideas are chained down in a boat that hopes to minimize operational cost, by forcing central management.
Even their change to Keysight Technologies did not helped at all the Agilent HH division to win back their freedom so to manage their division with tested good practices followed by other competitors.

 
Even medium size companies like BRYMEN they do offer some spare parts for their multimeter today.
Therefore for people with my own mindset the Top three today are HIOKI FLUKE BRYMEN, and all the others are below them.

[Kiriakos GR]

Just spotted in a forum a second incident with a Agilent U1253A and damaged OLED display.

Agilent acted again negatively about offering just the spare part.
But they did accepted to repair the meter in their repair facility with out mentioning the cost.

My golden suggestion that I am following too in the Agilent U1273A,  set the display brightness to the lowest setting as boot-up preset.
And boost the brightness only when needed.