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A letter signed by life (ooops, my mistake - Life)

One of our loyal customers reminded me of a letter he received recently from Life Technologies bringing up a topic dear to my heart – independent service providers! If you’ve been lucky enough to receive this letter too, I would like to take a moment to address concerns you may have.

 

What questions does Life ask you? 

1. Are your service staff certified by the instrument manufacturer to work on Life Technologies instruments, including the high-powered lasers used in Life Technologies instruments?

Believe it or not, yes. Our staff is certified by Life Technologies to provide service and support of Life Technologies = Applied Biosystems instruments, including lasers. Currently we even employ four former Life employees! But since we are in direct competition with Life Technologies, they will not provide any documentation saying that we are certified. Vice versa, they will claim a recertification must be done regularly. And will deny recertify us. Remember - we compete with Life. As a comparison, the only thing I can liken it to, would be Audi certifying Toyota engineers.

The thing is that once you are certified to drive a car (obtain your driving license), you do know how to drive your car, right? And there is no need to obtain a new driving license every other year for your Audi unless you switch to Boeing, do you agree? Not to mention the fact we do have our own proprietary training program…

 

2. Are your service staff equipped with calibration tools certified and tested by the instrument manufacturer? Are your staff also equipped with the manufacturer’s certified diagnostic software and tools to perform temperature calibrations, mechanical and optical alignments, and to diagnose electronic problems?

Long question, short answer. Yes and yes. We utilize all the necessary calibration tools and software. These are originally purchased directly from Applied Biosystems.

 

3. If you are unable to repair my instrument, will you replace it?

We have never failed repairing your instrument. But yes, if we fail … Moreover, we have our own labs and for service contract clients as an option we always offer sample analysis during repair of their instrumentation. Does Life Technologies offer to analyze your samples when the instrument is down? Ask them!

 

4. Do you have all the factory-certified supplies and service spares needed to support my instruments? If yes, where do you have spares from?

Yes – our warehouse in Dobris, Czech Republic maintains an inventory of parts to support your machine. And sincerely, do you ask your car service where do they have spares from? Does this question sound reasonable? If you really need to know, we will tell you.

 

5. Can you guarantee the time to respond max. 2 working days?

For service contract clients we do. In fact, we pride ourselves on it…

 

6. Can you guarantee that my contract price is all inclusive and that there will be no extra fees on labor, parts, and travel?

Absolutely.

 

7. Do you cover computer and software repairs, including the reimaging/reinstalling of software and data transfer, at no additional cost?

Yes we do. In fact, our software services are excellent. Do you want to challenge Life technologies sales rep? Ask, for example, for a quote to upgrade your ABI310 to Windows 7, or even Windows 10. They will tell you it is impossible to do. Then call us and we will do it whenever you like… Ask them to run your GeneMapper 4 on Windows 7. They will tell you it is not compatible. Then call us and we will do it whenever you like… Ask them…
I am sorry, I do not want to bore you.

 

If you have received this list or one similar – send it over and make my day. We’d be more than happy to respond!

 

Richard Nádvorník, richard.nadvornik@seqme.eu

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