Page 2 of 2

Re: Agilent repair service contract

Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2019 2:36 pm
by James_Ball
Alex3001 wrote:
BostonFSE wrote:
Typically a service contract, one annual PM with unlimited visits and repairs costs around $5000 per year for one HPLC stack with one detector.

Is it labor only or the $5K include all parts cost replaced during repair or PM? Because just one UV lamp about $1,000. If chemists uses heavy mobile phase(salt, high pH, etc.) you have to replace some parts pretty often.


It might include one lamp or cell per year, but since lamps, seals, and flow cells are considered consumables if they are replaced more than once per year I believe you get charged at least for the parts.

The main thing covered beyond the once per year PM is things like circuit boards and pump motors on HPLC and vacuum pumps on MS and motors, circuit boards, heaters and flow solenoids on the GC.

Re: Agilent repair service contract

Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2019 2:41 am
by Ian_R
We have 4 Agilent instruments. 2 single quad LCMS systems,single quad GCMS
and a QTof (6530) No contracts on the single quads and I'm fine with that. They're really reliable and most problems can be fixed by a capable operator.
The Qtof is a different animal though. Contract on that is expensive (34K) but I don't think Agilent have made any money on it the last few years! Amazingly capable instrument but it's had a few spectacularly expensive problems. Service has been excellent overall. No complaints.

Re: Agilent repair service contract

Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2020 6:42 pm
by labtechjer
Thearubigena,

Very late but third party servicing comes with many benefits over signing with the manufacturer. Agilent, as you know, charges excessive amounts for simple services. In addition, the wait times can be weeks to get a technician onsite and every visit is from a different tech. The main advantage you get from a manufacturer's service contract is unlimited parts and consumables, however the prices they charge are far higher than what you save with parts.

Third party servicing delivers quicker response times, closer relationships, and a higher quality of service all for about half the price of a manufacturer's service contract. As you may have guesses, my company provides third-party laboratory support on a range of analytical instrumentation. If you are ever in need of assistance, we will be able to help with any of your laboratory problems. If interested, please contact me at jmonroe@aasystems.com.

Best of wishes,
Jeremy

Re: Agilent repair service contract

Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2020 7:53 pm
by Consumer Products Guy
We didn't have service contracts on our Agilent instruments at R&D, and we had about 5 GC units, 3 GCMS, and about 7 HPLC stacks; cost would've been very high, and we could typically switch over to a similar unit while I repaired the down instrument. In 4 decades, starting with HP5830 GC, I found HP/Agilent to be pretty reliable with high uptime.

However, manufacturing had fewer units, and had to be up and running with little down time for the cGMP pharmaceutical analyses, so manufacturing sites had service contracts on all their instruments.