Discussion Category: Sample Preparation
Very poor experience with Tecan Fluent
Online reviews of this instrument are few and far between. Has anyone else had a very poor overall experience with Tecan and the Fluent platform?
We've had terrible technical service experiences, which occur monthly because the instrument itself is incredibly buggy, and inconsistent in it's operability. All of this has continued since 2019, and despite trying to get anyone in the Tecan organization to really step up and do anything, or give us the attention we would like to have, it's been crickets. I had to email a VP I found through linkedin in the org in order to get our sales rep to respond after literally trying to reach them for 6 months. Service contracts are exorbitantly high (approximately $25K/year), and require a preventative maintenance service that they charge separately and ranges from $32K to $99K per instrument, and is required annually to renew your service contract. For all of the issues we've had, the most expensive year for service charges was just over $15K, and so hardly justifies the service-contract/PM price tag. Additionally, having someone trained to use the software is another $4,700 per person, otherwise you'll have to spend a comparable amount of money each time you request their application engineers to program something for you. All of these issues have been going on since before disruptions started due to COVID, and only got worse since then. I know this is sounding like a rant now, but I'm genuinely curious if any other organization(s) has had a similar experience with Tecan and the Fluent system?