I’ve written before about how good Yaesu customer service is and again they have surpassed themselves.
My 817 microphone dates from 2001. I bought the set used in 2004. The microphone has been on over 500 activations since 2007 plus being used in the years before I started SOTA. About 18 months back the plastic retaining tongue snapped on the RJ-45. This meant the plug was easily pulled out of the microphone or 817 when the cable was stretched. Eventually I borrowed an RJ-45 crimp tool and a bag of plugs and sorted it out a new connector. That was a nightmare as getting the screened cable into the plugs was fun (it wasn’t really) . But it worked eventually. Job done, go and play SOTA on the hills.
Except I’ve been having reports of intermittent audio. I thought at first it was just my dodgy crimping and some strain relief on the crimp with self-amalgamating tape fixed the issue. Except it didn’t. Extended debugging showed there was a break somewhere in the cable and my crimp was fine. A new curly cable needed because the break was in the curly section.
Are these available? The microphones are, but nowhere is the cable advertised. I looked into buying a cheap mic from eBay but there was no guarantee the shielding would be any good or would be fully wired for the up/down/fast buttons. I could have probably used a piece of ethernet STP but there was none to hand.
So Yaesu customer service… remember that’s the title of this thread! Ring Yaesu. The girl who answered wasn’t sure if you could order the cable alone as they normally come with the microphone. She rang me back at 4.00pm and said it was available, £15 including VAT and a credit card number was given. Life is too short to worry about the cost. She said it probably would be dispatched in the next 48hrs and that was fine.
It took 20hrs from me giving the credit card number till the new cable arrived through my letterbox. 20 hrs! That means that someone at Yaesu got the cable from stock, bagged it, printed an invoice, printed an envelope label and got it in their outgoing mail within minutes of the call.
I’ve dealt with Yaesu several times as a customer buying replacement parts. A times I’ve rung and and they have sent parts free of charge. Every single time their customer service has gone way beyond what you’d expect.
A nightmare, I suspect, Andrew. I used to order spare parts from Yaesu California, and get them faster and much, much cheaper than VK. Never told Yaesu this, but if I was after, say, an obsure, obsolete MOSFET to repair one of my Icoms, I’d first check to see if the same part was used in a Yaesu, and get the part from them.
Similar experience with Yaesu UK, Andy. Last year I asked if there was any chance I could find a very specialised Mitsubishi part that was discontinued in the 80s - the MCU in the FT-747GX. Mostly a shot in the dark as no one would still have such a rare part from a product that is 40 years old, and I needed 2 as I had two radios with the same problem.
Surprise-surprise, 4 pcs. in stock, I send the payment on the 25th around lunch time and on the 26th when I come from work the tiny elusive beasts were waiting for me in the mailbox.
Twice I had an FT726 in to repair (that is seriously old) with the mask programmed microprocessor faulty - first time of asking they had one in stock (last one in existence) which was fine. Some months later I asked their engineering manager if there was any more in the World - I was told to leave it with him. When he replied a day or so later the answer was no - BUT: Yaesu Japan would have two made for Yaesu UK; three weeks later I had the device in my hand and another (very) happy customer.
That is service above & beyond the call of duty or customer service - not something found these days.
It took them 9 weeks to fix blown PA transistors of an FTM-400 on warranty.
Some weeks later it took 12 weeks to send me an FTM-400 XDE as a replacement after the PA transistors blew again.
Rather awful than wonderful service.
I hope so. I’ve dealt with Icom UK for spares once… they had a very helpful guy there who managed to find quite a lot of trim parts for a 28year old dual band mobile radio I had repaired.
