I’m pleased to see that the new owner of TEN-TEC has now been made public; I’d been asked to keep this quiet until a formal announcement was made.

Many thanks to several Post readers who shared the following announcement from the Ten-Tec message boards.

From Mike Dishop of Dishtronix:

“As some of you may be aware, Dishtronix has purchased the assets (but not the liabilities) of Ten Tec from RKR Designs. I had desired to keep this under wraps until Ten Tec is reorganized, but there is too much speculation concerning the service department to continue without an announcement of some sort.

There is a myriad of things that must be accomplished before everything is formalized. Unfortunately these things must be done before we can continue with jobs that were sent in for repair to RKR. At this time I would ask people to be patient and please do not call or email me about your repair. When we get the phone numbers transferred successfully or new phone numbers we will post them. As we progress with the change, someone will contact you about your repair. When service resumes we will be contacting the repair customers.

As some of you may be aware I have been looking at all aspects of operation of the company and restructuring operations has been necessary. In reviewing the service department accounts, it is apparent that some customers use the service department to diagnose the radio and elect to not proceed with the repair. Unfortunately this open door policy costs the company one hour of billable time to receive, unpack, open, diagnose, provide an estimate and repack a radio for return to the customer.

Effective immediately, all radios including those sent in to RKR, will incur a 140.00 minimum charge to look at a radio, even if it is not repaired. Service time is 125 per hour with the average repair requiring from one to two hours. This means you can expect to pay at least 265.00 plus parts and return shipping for any repair.

For customers who sent radios in to RKR which were not repaired, who object to these terms, we will return your unit to you at your expense.

A second problem in the service department is with the time technicians spend on the telephone that quite often ends up having nothing to do with the Ten Tec product but is some other station deficiency. The problem here is Ten Tec is not compensated for that time, yet Ten Tec pays wages to the technician. When the service department resumes operation, Ten Tec will charge the customer for any telephone call or email that consumes more than five minutes of technician time. That time will be billed in quarter hour increments at the prevailing service rate.

I am fully committed to bring Ten Tec back to a sustainable state. This will take some time. Please give us time to finalize these plans since there are so many business related issues to get through. We will definitely need to rely on you as customers to help continue the Ten Tec tradition of innovative product and cutting edge technology.”

Ten-Tec software engineer, John Henry (KI4JPL), followed up the announcement with this message:

Given the content of the new owners announcement above, I (John Henry) also request that if you can wait a while for your product to get serviced in the Ten Tec service department, please let them alone until they get back with you as he described above. If you absolutely have to have your unit back now, then the service@… email address is still working, and will continue to work. The phones are in transition, so I doubt you will be able to call and get an answer for a while. once phones are set up, the numbers will be announced. Once the website is ready, everything will be on it. Remember, if going to tentec.com takes you to rkrdesignsllc.com, then the website transition has not completed yet.

Given the nature of this announcement, and it will almost positively bring out more questions, again, please be patient. The new owner is working through a lot of business issues, and I myself work a full time day job and consult into the evening, so, answers may be few and far between. Though this announcement is going out to a lot of venues, I will attempt to monitor

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/ten_tec_radio_net/conversations/messages

73, KI4JPL