Message Center manufacture sells product then out of business - parts?

[amer28]

Greetings and thanks for any help. First off, we did not sell this message center, merely trying to help a new customer that bought one and now seems to be stuck. I figure that this must be happening across the country so maybe this will also help others. If there is a thread already addressing this please direct me.

Got a call from a church that their message center was not operating properly. When Tech arrived said only labels he could find were "AS LED" and "Alcon Technologies". Looks like AS LED is the manufacturer of the message center (or maybe they just slapped their label on) and Alcon is the manufacturer of the transmitter and receiver. Does anyone have a contact number for these guys or a source for parts if in fact they are out of business. Of course already looked on line with no luck (found an Alcon company but they dont know what were talking about).

More importantly, with all the message center start ups and then they go out of business, is there anything to do besides tell the customer "sorry, you got screwed and now you need to buy from a Dactronics or Watchfire, etc"

Thanks for any help.

Lance

[Deacon]

The problem here is a company decides they want to be a reseller of EMCs and they get into the business not really knowing or understanding what they're doing. They do a trip (maybe even two) to China and get their egos so pampered they feel like experts after a few factory visits. They start buying the cheapest systems they can find and putting them up, attempting to match the USA industry-standard 5 year warranty (sometimes they go with the Chinese/Korean 3-year warranty). Everything looks good until year 2 when systems start having problems. They go back to the manufacturer who says, "Send us the bad parts to China, we will fix them." They didn't plan on having to pay to ship things back to China. They start shipping parts to China and pulling parts from inventory. Soon the demand for parts exceeds their inventory, China STILL hasn't returned the parts which were shipped a month or two prior and the company who felt so great bringing-in and selling cheap product w/out support ends up financially strapped w/out the ability to sell anymore and lawsuits piling up. At this point, they close their doors and head out rather than live up to the warranties or deal with the lawsuits and this results in situations like your customer's.

Unfortunately a lot of businesses are in this situation and I've seen a new "fix-it" business emerge from dealers who have some connections with the off-shore component providers and experience enough to fix the systems without having to know who the actual manufacturer is/was. The customer should have bought American (Vantage LED, Watchire, Dak, Yesco, anyone other than some unknown front for an offshore manufacturer), not many people know much about the systems though and there was very little information out there. I'm working to change this with the blog I write (click here to view the blog) but change is slow and there are lots of people out there in this situation.

There are a few companies who are familiar with the Chinese systems and have gone out to repair the systems time and again to help customers (as these businesses can rarely front the money for another investment in LED Signage). I'm not sure who you could call in the Delaware area, but you could give Aaron Patterson of HiLight Electronic Displays (FL-based company) a call and if he doesn't know someone in the area, he might be able to source parts and help your techs out remotely (I'm sure you could work out some arrangement). He's a very knowledgeable guy and his family has been in the LED signage businesses long enough to see a lot of companies come and go (and they've always been there to help clients out). http://www.hilightdi...om/contact.html

I hope this helps your client out. It stinks seeing someone put up that much money and ending up holding the bag when things go wrong.

Edited October 24, 2012 by Deacon

[anthonyk]

HA Watchfire down

Edited October 25, 2012 by anthonyk

[anthonyk]

Lance,

After talking with you it seems like you just need to get some wireless devices to re-enable communications between the computer and the sign.

You have the right idea to test the theory. Get a long Cat5 cable that you can run from the computer directly to the receiving card in the sign. 300m is the longest length of cable that will work. Power the sign and computer off and back on after connecting the cable. If you get a signal on the display you will know that the only issue is the communications devices between. Let me know what you find out. If you need further assistance, you have my numbers. Hope that helps.

Link to what I believe is the Alcon devices manufacturer. In India and Taiwan.

http://alconwireless...in/wireless.php

http://www.alcon.tw/home.htm

Link to the vendor that I have used for wireless communication devices. These are an alternative if you cannot match the ones in place. They are true outdoor antennas.

http://www.caymanwir...71876-ns2l.html