Stay away from Itead Studio! Worst service ever! - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: jadew
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 29, 2014, 11:53:32 am
content: Hey guys,Here's the story:I used Itead Studio in the past, for 5x5 cm boards with snail mail delivery (1 month+) and it was ok. Because that went fine and I was happy with the quality, when an important project came along, I figured I should go with them again - BIG MISTAKE.Week 1, Monday:Send gerber files, pay for DHL shipping.Week 2, Tuesday:I get the order, but it turns out it's not mine, so I write back to them. 3 e-mails and no answer! so I call them and after talking with a girl who could barely say hello and good bye, much less understand the order number, I get an e-mail saying that yeah, they screwed up my order so they have to re-make it.Week 2, Friday:For each e-mail that I sent, the answer came after several hours, so DAYS were lost before they figured I should pay $45 more if I want to have the board before the end of Week 3. I was already behind the schedule, so I paid $45 and was assured that I will get my board in Week 3.Phone calls were also made, but nothing came out of it, it was like talking to a dialup modem (I could only hear gibberish).Week 3, Friday:I still don't have my boards, no call from DHL, so I e-mail them again. No answer again! I go ahead and call them after several hours and this time I talk to a guy who I can actually understand and he understands me. About an hour later, I get an e-mail telling me that they'll ship my boards "tomorrow" and give me the tracking number once they do that.That's pretty much it so far. They messed up my order, they had me pay extra so they would fix it faster, even tho they should have done that simply because they screwed up and after that they screw up the screw up by delaying me 1 additional week by not doing absolutely anything about my order.So... yeah, I will never use them again and if you have anything remotely important, pay $1 or $2 more and have them done somewhere else.Edit:Update, this is "tomorrow":I emailed them early during their work day, asking for the promised tracking number. I didn't get any answer. Now their work day is over.Update 2: The boards got shipped on Monday.

author: Dave
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 29, 2014, 12:04:07 pm
content: Yep, if you just need some boards for hobby purposes, these Chinese fab services are fine. If you need them when you are designing a product, you are better of having them done in proper fab houses. It might cost more to get them made, but you can be sure they won't screw up your gerbers and send you faulty boards (or different boards altogether).

author: linux-works
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 29, 2014, 02:01:25 pm
content: look, the ONLY reason to go to china is to save cost.and, we all know - service is WAY below what most of us expect and want.personally, I would not use a china house for doing boards. when I do boards, I need them to WORK and be done RIGHT. I could never count on that from china. like you found out, communication is sketchy, service is an unknown word there.my business partner handles the pcb's and he sends them to a US place and we never have problems. they are well made, they communicate with us and we can rely on the product.if you can't trust the product or the company, why even GO to china for contract work?fwiw, I bought some arduino nano's from amazon that turned out to be itead branded and they died in a month of use. I am not impressed with that company, either.you get what you pay for. if you want quality, you should never go to china. I thought we all knew that?

author: klr5205
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 29, 2014, 02:14:37 pm
content: Quote from: wilfred on August 29, 2014, 01:55:49 pmWe design and order hundreds of unique boards per year and we almost never have issues with our board suppliers, all of whom are domestic.The only problem I've encountered was when a manufacturer was unable to do a via-in-pad on a fine pitch BGA, but even that was really more our fault than anything else, because someone decided to order from a company who didn't even list that as a capability...

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 29, 2014, 03:03:14 pm
content: We prefer to use Circuit Labs in New Zealand of prototypes. Lower cost than Australia, faster turnaround than Australia, theyspeak clear articulate Englishalbeit with a strange accent, and are highly skilled. I learnt about them after Dave Jones did a review of them. Quality of product has been excellent too. I have ordered 4 layer boards from them on a Tuesday and they have arrived in my hands on the Friday! We have no reason to go elsewhere for prototypes.I see a big risk using Chinese PCB vendors for prototypes and as such won't consider them, even for my own personal PCB's.

author: gxti
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 29, 2014, 03:21:44 pm
content: Quote from: VK3DRB on August 29, 2014, 03:03:14 pm"Accents are completely different! They're like "where's the caaar" and we're like "where's the caaaar""

author: jadew
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 29, 2014, 07:36:14 pm
content: I wouldn't mind a heavy accent, but the women I talked to were impossible to understand.Any suggestions for a PCB house in the EU that costs less than 80 eur for a few days turn around?

author: zapta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 04, 2014, 05:59:32 pm
content: Quote from: jadew on August 29, 2014, 07:36:14 pmI ordered once from PCB Poolhttp://www.pcb-pool.com/ppuk/index.html. They are in Europe I think. Quality was good and you get free stainless stencil.

author: mamalala
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 04, 2014, 07:03:23 pm
content: If you order boards for important projects in China, and on a very tight time schedule, then sorry, but that was just a huge mistake. You see, problems can arise everywhere, and naturally it is quicker to resolve them when the other side is close to you. If something takes about 2 weeks from China to arrive after you ordered it, you simply must calculate a buffer of another 2 weeks in case anything goes wrong.Same applies if you use a local service. If they have an 8 day turnaround, you better order it 20 days before you need it if you want to be on the safe side. Because, well, shit happens from time to time.Also, if you use a very cheap service, you simply can't expect that they employ a "redo for free" service", at least not for shipping costs. You simply get what you pay for (or get not, if you pay very little). That you can't expect a fluently english speaking person in some low-cost box-pusher in China should go without explanation. And since they are so cheap, they have a lot of demand to fulfill. You are not the only one wanting stuff from them, so you just can't expect a quick reply. And don't foget the different time zone.All that is (part) of why such services are usually rather expensive, if you want good service. I fully understand that it sucks what happened to you, but then, you also made a few mistakes here as far as expectations go. Want cheap? You can get cheap, just don't expect anything more beyond bare minimum. Want good service? Expect to pay for that. Want it really quick? Expect to pay a _huge_ premium on top of the already higher price. Going from standard 10-day turnaround for PCB manufacture to 6-day turnaround can easily make it 50% more expensive. And "turnaround" here means the time between after you order and files are checked, up after finishing the final production step. Any back-and-forth communications to rectify problems add to that time. And so does shipping.Greetings,Chris

author: jadew
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 06, 2014, 04:04:21 am
content: Hey Chris, thanks for the reply.For the record, DHL shipping from china to my country takes 3 days, delivery to my door included. That means that they could have built and delivered my board several times in the time it took them to actually send it to the factory.As for "redo for free", it's hardly a "redo", considering they sent me something entirely different than what I paid for, something useless for me. I did not pay for shipping for whatever they felt like sending, I paid for shipping for MY item. If they ship the wrong stuff to the wrong people, it's not the customer's fault and you can't expect single random customers to absorb the damage done by this sort of errors, simply because everyone else is getting a cheap service. No, you have to include these risks into the price and I'm sure they did.Also, rest assured, they are making money on shipping too. Companies with lots of orders get very good contracts from couriers. They are probably charging at least 3 times what they are paying.

author: idpromnut
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 06, 2014, 04:51:12 am
content: Quote from: mamalala on September 04, 2014, 07:03:23 pmI had iTead screw up a board (they forgot to drill the NPTH). I received the bad boards, emailed them about the problem and they re-spun my board (it was their mistake, so no cost on my part, but I used snail shipping, not DHL) and I got the correct board a couple of weeks later. While I agree with all the basic advice above regarding having production of boards in China, these guys (so far) have been fairly classy and have offered reasonable service for such a large time difference and low cost product.

author: Alexei.Polkhanov
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2014, 08:43:42 pm
content: I used iTead just last week for RF board (still FR4) and I am pretty pretty happy.

author: FrankBuss
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 08, 2014, 09:18:52 pm
content: I'm using Itead Studio often, and no problem so far, always the right PCBs and no quality problems. Some examples:http://www.crazycartridge.org/The white board was a more complex 4 layer board and worked perfectly.With snail mail, shipping can be between 2 and 5 weeks, UPS and DHL usually need 2 days, plus 3-4 days for production. Recently they improved their ordering system, now you can upload the gerber files on their website. I guess this will help to better keep track which gerber files and boards belong to which customer.But you are right, I prefer to use a local PCB manufacturer like PCB pool, if I need a guaranteed delivery time, or for larger quantities with special high quality requirements, like my C64 MIDI interface with a bevelled, hard gold plated edge connector. Prototypes were from Itead, the production run, including populating the PCB, is from a local German PCB manfacturer, which I've used for other projects and for which I know that we can talk if there are problems. Could be a problem with my strong German accent and then trying to speak to someone with a strong Chinese accent and sometimes odd Chenglish translations.

author: DavidDLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2014, 10:46:35 pm
content: Same here, I often use Itead with no problem.I want to save and pay the cheapest shipping option, so I don't get mad or desperate because I know it will take a while for the boards to be delivered.David.

author: zapta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 09, 2014, 03:53:32 pm
content: Quote from: Alexei.Polkhanov on September 08, 2014, 08:43:42 pmThe OP complained about the non responsive customer service once you need them.