| K0PJM |
Rating:     |
2023-02-25 | |
| Ok |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
I purchased a ZS6BKW (G5RV) antenna from Palomar. It took a while to get here. The antenna performance was poor, as compared to another wire antenna that I was using. Wire is wire, so I figured the balun must have a problem
I tried to reach someone at Palomar about this. I called several times, nobody ever picked up the phone. On two of those attempts, their voice mail was full and wasn't even accepting messages. I also tried sending them email, but no reply to that either.
Follow Up: I did get a short email from Bob after this was posted, just confirming that the antenna should work the way that I had it setup. I went ahead and opened up the balun, and fixed a bad solder joint. It works fine now.
I changed my rating for Palomar from 0 stars to 4 stars. I found that they were difficult to reach, but they did eventually get back to me. |
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| K4FMH |
Rating:      |
2023-02-15 | |
| Terrific products, great packing/shipping! |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
I've purchased several Palomar products over the years, including an amplifier years and years ago. Recently, I've been buying their baluns and choke products. I've bought these items in other specs from competing sellers as a basis of comparison for my review here.
Palomar has superb quality products. Their baluns, for instance, utilize very high quality connectors, sealed boxes, and are innovative. E.g., the 1:1 choke built into the 4:1 & 6:1 baluns I've bought over the past few months for HF loop antennas (one featured in this month's Practical Wireless magazine).
They sell through HRO but also direct. I've purchased most things directly from Palomar Engineering. Only one item shipped in what I would consider 'slow' but, as I learned, they were in the build process of a popular product. Yea, I could have sulked about not getting an e-mail alerting me to that delay. But it was not a problem for me as manufacturing efficiency requires bulk production lines and such.
I recommend to others and will continue buying from Palomar. In fact, a local ham is about to purchase a balun from them for his HF loop antenna. |
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| KO1C |
Rating:      |
2023-02-15 | |
| Great Service! |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
I ordered a Maxi-Choker MC-1-3000.
Bob communicated several times giving updates, etc.
I received the choke very quickly, it was well packed.
Very pleased, I will use his products again.
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| WU9P |
Rating:  |
2023-02-14 | |
| Atrocious service! |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
| Tried repeatedly to get status on a product by e-mail and phone. Phone mailbox is constantly full. No response to e-mails. Worst customer service I have ever encountered. Guess they are not interested in a sale. Stay away! |
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| KG0LH |
Rating:  |
2022-03-17 | |
| DOA Balun, trying to get it replaced |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
1B-500 Bullet balun, (actually an unun). DOA, wasted probably 4-6 hours trimming my 20m dipole trying to get it to work. I should have tested it before I hung it up in the air. Always got high ohm readings, could not tune to low SWR. Finally took it down and ran some tests that determined that the shield side of the SO-239 is not connected to anything. Z at the balun was over 1000, and when a 50 ohm resistor was attached there was no difference, and no change when I removed it! There is continuity on the pin side, none on the shield side.
Ordered it Jan 5, 2022, received it January 22. Have only had it 2 weeks, never applied any transmitter power to it.
Am currently TRYING to get it replaced but Palomar is very slow responding to emails and the lady I talked to on the phone was nice but not much help. I understand that companies are short-staffed but I always worked or managed companies where customer service was a priority. Obviously not the case here!
Left a voicemail last night Feb 12 with followup email today, waiting for response. Called in early March, talked to Bob: they would be getting the replacement in on March 5th and would ship it out. Finally received replacement on March 10th. Note that there were never any status emails sent by the company, responses were only after several attempts to contact. Phone calls seem the best if you can get someone knowledgeable to talk to, but overall customer service is lacking. |
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| UNICK |
Rating:    |
2022-03-10 | |
| Eventually resolved issue |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
---Update - after the two weeks of no reply and then escalation to a BBB complaint -- I first got a grumpy "Pop" reply from the business notifying a shipping the missing item "again", followed quickly by a nice "Mom" reply apologizing and issuing refund in addition to the shipped replacement. Item and apparently a present for my troubles arrived today.
I just can't be too hard on a mom and pop business in this day and age of giant corporate retailers, once I finally got the reply. Bumped my rating to "OK". :-).
--Original review---
Ordered 6 items, didn't mind much waiting without any order/shipment notification for nearly a month. I like to support small businesses and give them weeks to deliver without worry.
However, one of the six items I was charged for was missing from the order. $20 bucks yo! Multiple contacts over two weeks to contact this retailer have never been responded to.
What can I say? Beyond warning others that this is not at all a good retailer. Plenty of other options exist to order similar or same products. I recommend just avoiding this dishonest retailer. |
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| WA2L |
Rating:   |
2021-11-05 | |
| 9:1 Balun |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
| I purchased a TMC VRA-6 (2-30Mhz) Receiving Vertical Antenna with inclusive matching unit that was housed in a heavy duty cast metal unit. Since it was listed as "receiving" i decided to replace the internal balun (or whatever it was) with a beefy 9:1 balun so it could be used for transmit. i received the Palomar 9:1 Cube UnUn and was attempting to place it in the housing unit and noticed it wasn't going to fit. so, i was going to open the unit to see if it was full of Stycast (epoxy) and it wasn't, just some layers of foam. i scraped away the foam and was able to determine how to remove the innards. i brought out my soldering iron and bent back the lead attached to the center conductor of the so239 connect. as i bent it back the solder joint popped clear of the center (cold solder), no evidence that it had ever been soldered. Again, as i look at removing the dual ground wire (one to ground part of the so239 and antenna ground) i noticed it too had a cold solder connection at the junction. Dear Palomar: a little more emphasis on soldering techniques. |
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| KN6OBP |
Rating:    |
2021-10-06 | |
| Faulty part received, slow customer support |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
I ordered a few ferrites and a patch cable.
The order arrived faster than expected and I was able to kill the RFI noise.
However the patch cable is useless, the shields of the two plugs are not connected!
I send an email immediately, no answer after 10 days.
Updated 05/10/21 from 0 stars to 3 stars:
After 12 days and 3 emails, I finally got a response, they are replacing the part.
So while the customer service is a bit slow, I will end up with all the parts and very importantly no RFI in the shack. |
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| K4GTE |
Rating:      |
2021-10-04 | |
| Never Had a Problem |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
| Never had a problem with Palomar Engineers. Multiple purchases, as advertised products, fast shipping, and great customer service. |
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| KE7FD |
Rating:      |
2021-10-04 | |
| Never a problem |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
| I have ordered various parts from Palomar over the years and have never had a problem with the parts nor with any aspect of the order. On one occasion when I needed additional information, I made a phone call and someone picked up, we had a good conversation and my part arrived shortly thereafter. I suspect that if those who are having difficulties with customer support, maybe calling them either at the wrong time of day, or you may need to check your spam bucket if by email. I suppose not hearing back from them could be any number of reasons outside of their own customer support, while the customer is making every effort to make contact with them. It seems unlikely that someone would have a five-star experience and someone else has a zero star experience without anything in between. I'm holding in my hand a pair of ferrite bead suppression chokes I ordered from them a short time ago in preparation for another antenna project. Once again no problems. I would really suggest that if you're not getting responses from an email, pick up the phone and call them. While I admit I've only had to speak to them once or twice over the years because frankly, I've never had any real problems, but I understand if someone else has, then really the best thing to do is to call them. I could see where if they had ratings ranging from zero stars all the way to five with lots of stuff in between that would indicate a very inconsistent customer service department, but when you have five stars and zero stars and nothing in between there's something else in play here. |
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