We all know in the UK we can purchase the full range of Allen Bradley PLC's from a well known supplier who has sevral branches throughout the country, centring are a new-town with cow statues....I think you get my drift.
Although it is also possible to purchase through suppliers offering "Grey Imports" from other EU countries (single marketplace???) although tales are told that issues may arise with the manufacturers 12 month warranty if a claim is made. Has anybody had any experience of this...good or bad.

Eddy

mysterious indeed. In fact, a bit too mysterious for me to understand the question.

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seriously, if you shock me one more time, i'm gonna isolate you!

Try checking the consumer protection act and you will find that the supplier has to honour the guarantee on the products/goods they sell/supply.....under the terms set out in the act of course. So it matters not where the goods come from.

Regards.

The price of the goods sold in any one sales and support domain usually includes warranty & support for goods sold by the authorised distributors. Buying from outside of the authorised domain to save money may cause problems if there is a manufacturing fault.

An example of what could happen.

I once had to sort out a problem from this country (the UK) where a person in second country had sourced some parts from a third country for shipment to a fourth country. The third country product was undrilled and could not be drilled locally by the user and if it had been possible the warranty on the whole thing would have been invalidated. The undrilled part was therefore unservicable and could not be fitted.

Down time was the result.

The fourth country local distributor had paid the manufacturer in the first country for an exclusive in country distribution franchise and had paid the manufacturer for a warehouse full of imported stock to support the product users in country and had set up a service facility all of which cost millions.

In this instance the local domain distributor and stockist felt and was under no obligation to incur cost and responsibility for rectification for goods they had not supplied and had interest in. The good news was in this instance the local domain distributor did however save the situation and sold the user a viable part with a warrenty and service support.

So its Buyer beware (Latin legal term is: Caveat Emptor)

Eddycurrent, can you give me a better idea of the import supplier please

Go with the best price, the manufacturer is so confident in their product it is them that specify the warranty, but your contract is not with them......

We purchased £42k worth of AB PLC in the UK, for a job in the US.
It was purchased from the "Claimed" legitimate supplier in the UK rather than "grey imports" on the sole basis of support,which the grey importer openly admitted, that was their shortfall.........

The electrics could not be 100% tested in the UK, but upon test in the US it was discovered there was a generic fault with a specific item..........

The company in concrete cow country who "claimed" to offer technical support could not help as they only had 1 man that knew about this product who would never answer his phone and it was "too technical" for their technical support.....
Their best solution was...............Contact AB USA.

BUT!! you have to pay for AB Tech support in the US via an AB or AB Distributor account!!

Eventually after giving personal credit card payment details to a distributor for AB USA to come and look at their own products, AB USA confirmed a manufacturing fault which could be claimed under warranty......But because we had purchased in the UK, we would have to either pay AB USA for replacements or get replacements shipped over from the UK.
The company in concrete cow country eventually agreed that for speed we purchase from AB USA and that they would reimburse us as it was a manufacturing fault an that they would cooperate with AB USA with this matter
On return to the UK, this specific company claimed there were no logs of the phone calls and no log of them agreeing reimbursement.........

The bottom line is that no matter what product you purchase, whether it be a bannana or a bugatti, your contract is with who you buy it from, not the manufacturer.

The company in concrete cow country, claim to be AB tech support in the UK and will not support "grey imports". Therefore you can only buy from selected sources in the UK, those selected sources are the ones that buy from the company in concrete cow country.........

The "grey imports" are the competitors of the company in concrete cow country.

Sounds more like a Propaganda.....???

Although i have used the term "grey import", these products are manufactured in the same factory and there is nothing different, only the place you buy from, they have the same manufacturers warranty, but your contract is with YOUR supplier.

The End...............

If it's a one off then buy from concrete cow

If your doing lots then buy from the far east and just honour the warranty yourself, it will pay for itself

Or if you hate the concrete cow, use S7300/400's and never look back :-)