Pricing Policy Matters

How we ensure fair pricing for everyone

Of course, at LRS UK we always offer what we deem as fair pricing without affecting the following important aspects that we know any customer really wants:

• Safety  aspects: Every single piece of equipment that we sell meets rigorous safety standards. For example, including a mains power supply that meets every UK standard that it legally has to is common sense. But all equipment we sell meets the approvals such as CE, EMC requirements and even RoHS requirements. While some of these certifications and tests might mean nothing to the average buyer, they certainly are necessary to ensure that equipment is made to a standard and is safe. Unsafe equipment can kill someone!
  
  
• Frequency compliance: Where any transmitting equipment is supplied for a particular need the equipment has to meet stringent and highly accurate specifications. Our equipment typically uses a frequency allocated by OFCOM (the UK controller of the radio spectrum) that is 459.100MHz and completely legal for the UK and Southern Ireland. Having paging equipment that is not operating on the correct frequency for your country can interfere with numerous other services such as frequencies that are for medical use.
  
  
• Power output: As part of those OFCOM and other spectrum controllers requirements, the maximum output power you can use for any given use is specified. In the case of paging systems it's 2 watts. Higher power can be used for special use such as hospital crash systems but we do not sell those sort of solutions. However, any communications solution needs adequate power to be effective for it's purpose. Low power output when you need 2 watts output may well not be any use for your needs regarding coverage. But making high output products costs more money because the components have a higher cost at manufacture time. Our power output's are always commensurate with successful communications for the tasks that the systems are made for and always completely legal.
  
  
• Price consideration: As a company, we in fact do have a price policy that we apply to every sale. We have no problems in actually beating any paging system or other communications products pricing 'THAT ARE LIKE FOR LIKE' in quality, features, warranty, service and support that our products provide.
  
  
• Power Supply: We only supply fully approved power supplies with our systems and we can provide all the necessary documentation of the approvals and the laboratory testing. We have a high regard for all products where safety is concerned.

 

But what about those other suppliers?

We hear from many customers about other companies selling 'paging systems' (as an example) for really low prices - one as low as £99.00 for a 20 pager customer paging system. We can confirm the price is low!  But as we have indicated, the lowest price of a complete solution is not always what a customer might actually want; and what becomes perfectly clear as you read below in reality the lowest price (especially where Far East products are concerned) is probably the biggest mistake that anyone could make when choosing these types of communication systems. Let's examine why:

• Safety: In the case of approvals (that help keep people safe) such as CE approval there has been a massive tendency for Far East manufacturers (mainly China) to mislead customers in to a false sense of security. Examine the CE mark below:
  
  
  You will immediately notice that the mark on the left is an official CE mark that confirms CE approval (along with other documentation), however, the one on the right is designed to mislead prospective customers in to believing that the product bearing the 'China Export' logo is somehow assumed as CE approval. Wrong! and the result might be a dire consequence regarding safety of users of the offending equipment. We could virtually guarantee that if you are being shown this for the first time then you might well be shocked.
  
  

  Each one of these is an illegal CE mark.

  
  Is this pager CE approved? You decide! because
  there is ZERO documentation to prove it is. The
  supplier never supplied ANY documents!
  
  Or worse, you might literally be shocked when you use that cheap price conscious product that is not CE approved and is a danger from the mains power. The consequences could be horrendous for your company. Here in the UK and Europe there is legislation called the Corporate Manslaughter Act (and amendments) that if there was to be a fatality then your company's directors most likely would go to prison for a long time. Furthermore, there are fines up to £12M pounds for the company.
  
  It's absolutely no joke when you buy some of these cheap Far East and Chinese products and you are actually gambling with your company's future and the lives of people whether staff or customers. Don't compromise on safety to save a few pounds.
  
  In fact, examine this document from Trading Standards that shows the complete illegality of selling this sort of bottom end Chinese products that do not meet safety standards. Trading Standards document.
  
  

  Examine how the Chinese System worked when someone checked its operation recently. It IS concerning!

  
  
• Frequency: Those cheap Chinese systems sometimes do operate on frequencies that are legal for the UK. But there are also many that simply ship products on any frequency that might come from production and not necessarily legal for your country. So what's the problem? The problem is, that as the operator of the equipment, its not the seller that is liable to OFCOM, its your company! Even if you had a license from OFCOM, it would be useless if the equipment is made to operate on the wrong frequency for your country. There are financial penalties and immediate confiscation of equipment by OFCOM if you get caught.
  
  But worse, imagine operating a customer pager system that is operating on exactly the frequency of a customers pacemaker? What could happen? At best it might well interfere with the pacemaker and at worst, you will be charged with manslaughter for operating illegal equipment. Nothing here is intended to be misleading or funny in any way. Use illegal equipment and carry the consequences.
  
  

  Take a look at the 433.97MHz frequency - sold in the UK and confirmed with OFCOM that it is completely illegal to use above 10mw. And see just how good a fully compliant product operates.

  
  It is possble to check a frequency for UK approval from OFCOM. Simply click: http://static.ofcom.org.uk/static/spectrum/fat.html and enter the specific frequency of the equipment. In this case enter 433Mhz as a start frequency and 434Mhz as the end frequency.
  
  You will notice from the results that ALL the frequency allocation within that range is either defence, government or satellite specialist communications. Interfering in any way with those sort of services will get you in to serious trouble. The system we purchased as shown has been reported to OFCOM. However if just 10 milli-watts then that system is probably legal. The range is a different story with so much low power.
  
  
• Power: We see cheap Far East equipment from time to time and if you actually check the output power what you might well find is concerning. Most often the cheap equipment has a very low output usually of just 10 milli-watts and is suitable for very short range. Even 1/2watt (50 times the power) costs much more money to make because of the components. Its one reason that most of those really cheap systems do not perform well, especially if you operate it in anything with walls. In fact they perform really badly where range is concerned. Walls reduce range and those cheap systems are generally such low power (because of price) that can only give a very short range especially if the signal has to go through any walls.
  
  Examine the details of a system we recently checked from a Chinese company with a UK office:
  
  Click for larger view
  
  The above is generally shown in dBm but most people might only just understand the output shown in Watts. Below is a conversion of the specification of the cheap Chinese product output converted to watts:
  
  The actual output is just 10.77 Mw (milliwatts) or just
  10 thousandths of a watt. Typical quality systems
  have output from 100 mw (milliwatts) to 2 watts. A
  system with this 10mw will have serious range issues.
  
  But worse, we have seen some of these systems (at higher price) with outputs of around 5 watts. The legal limit of 2 watts is being broken by those systems. You might assume that's OK? Unfortunately, its not because linked with maybe an illegal frequency as discussed above its a recipe for someone to get seriously injured. If a purchaser of those illegal systems has a complete disregard for the output power then one of two things may well ensue. They will either call us because their system from China has no range (low output), or you might read about them in the national news because someone got injured or killed (high output).
  
  
• Price: There is most likely no way that any prospective buyer could actually (in general) understand the above simply by looking at a product. But often the sources of the product tend to give away clues as to what you are really buying. Cheap communications systems like those you see most often on eBay and Amazon and are shipped from either China or some house address are highly suspect. No buyer actually wants any of the bad things listed here to happen to them, but focus on price alone could almost guarantee that there will be problems ahead. Don't assume simply because one of those suppliers says so that their equipment is actually legal in any way.
  
  
• Power supplies: Often the worst thing about many Chinese imported communications solutions are the power supplies. As supplied by some of those manufacturers, the power supply is 'just another component'; but a power supply can be lethal. From our experience, power supplies are the most dangerous supplied component of the whole system; and certainly the most lethal device.
  
  We asked the supplier of our eBay purchased system for CE approval documentation for the Chinese system shown on this website and received no reply whatsoever... and that supplier was a UK based company operated by a Chinese owner selling on eBay. Later, after we posted negative feedback because of no CE certification the seller asked us to remove our negative feedback for what amounted to a £10 bribe. Needless to say we declined and reported the seller to trading standards.
  
  This example power supply clearly shows a 'CE' mark,
  but it is highly suspect that this power supply is NOT
  CE approved. Note the label text is completely wrong
  and that the label forms part of the CE approval? It's very
  unlikely to be either approved or safe.
  
  Those power supplies are so dangerous that Trading Standards in the UK (responsible for CE compliance) target the power supply when examining paging systems; its at the top of their lists when looking for CE or other standards abuse, because PSU's can be low quality devices and can be so highly dangerous. If someone does not get killed, you might want to prepare to arrive at work tomorrow to see what's left of your burned out building because the power supply caught fire, or was the cause of a fire; it had been left plugged in all night.

So what is the answer to this conundrum? Its actually quite simple really.

• ALWAYS buy from a reputable supplier and learn all about the real manufacturer of the product.
  
  
• ALWAYS ask for a copy of the CE documents AND the accompanying laboratory test documents and EMC tests and laboratory supporting documents. What if they never arrive? They don't exist so DO NOT BUY!
  
  
• ALWAYS take a close look at the warranty and whether you have to send your system back to China or the Far East when it breaks and it will!
  
  
• NEVER assume that what the seller says is the truth especially if the seller is beyond the Law of your country. eBay and Amazon are NOT the seller and as such when there are problems, the seller who may well be based in China, has no liability to answer to UK law. Its one reason why the CE marking as shown above is so abused. The sellers generally don't care. The saying 'Caveat Emptor' or 'let the buyer beware' has never been more applicable. But of course if someone gets injured then you will be liable and completely without any defence.
  
  
• NEVER buy the cheapest products out there, it makes sense to protect yourself, your staff and your company.
  
  
• NEVER buy products with very poor warranty. Communications equipment gets a tough life and bad warranty is a sure-fire way to trash the system because it can't easily be fixed. Buying three or four systems a year is not really the best way to get value. On the other hand, buying a system from Long Range Systems UK Ltd has a three year warranty against defects.
  
  

If you buy any paging system or other products from us, we can supply full documentation about every aspect that we have discussed. Long Range Systems has been making paging systems since back in 1993 and the UK office goes back further as a UK operating company celebrating 30 years in business in 2019. While price certainly does matter, make no mistake of having the price that you pay from others could cause loss of life, break the law or result in you ending up in prison. When you buy our equipment you can be completely sure that you are getting the best equipment there is, meeting all standards and from a company that stands by its customers offering three years warranty for UK and Southern Ireland customers.

Trust Long Range Systems UK Ltd to deliver what you thought you were buying from others.