If you are in the UK or the EU and looking at ultrasound probe repair options, the honest question is not whether a probe can be repaired well at distance — it can — but whether the round trip is worth the downtime and the freight if the answer turns out to be no. This page is about how we take that risk off you before you commit to it.
The problem with shipping first and finding out later
The standard sequence is: you ship the probe, it clears customs, a workshop opens it, and a week or two later you learn whether it was repairable. If it was not, you have paid freight both ways, lost the probe from service for a fortnight, and are back where you started but poorer.
That risk is what keeps departments buying replacement probes they did not need to buy.
Send images before you send the probe
Most repair shops find out whether a probe being sent from the UK or Europe is repairable after it has crossed a border. We do it the other way round: send us the on-screen images from your own system, a short video of the fault, and the model and part number. We assess it first.
If we judge it not repairable, we tell you not to ship it. That happens rarely — with this class of probe most faults are recoverable — but when it does, you have not paid freight, waited two weeks, or taken the probe out of service for nothing.
A phone call or an email thread is usually enough. What we need to see: the artifact as it appears on your machine, the probe’s behaviour when the cable is flexed, and any visible damage to lens, housing or connector.
How the round trip actually runs
- Assessment first. You send on-screen images from your own system, a short fault video, and the model and part number. We come back with a repairable / not repairable judgement, and what we think is wrong. Free, and no obligation.
- You ship. Freight to us is your cost. Standard air freight from the UK or Western Europe typically runs several days plus customs.
- Repair — about one week from arrival for most probes.
- Return — free, at our cost. Including the case where we could not repair it. If we cannot fix your probe, you get it back without paying for the return leg.
Paperwork worth getting right
Cross-border repair shipments are routine, but two things cause most of the delays we see:
- Declare it as goods for repair and return, not as a sale. This keeps your own export clean and avoids the most common source of delay at the border. It does not affect what you pay when it comes back — the return leg is prepaid by us, duties included.
- Include the model and serial number on the paperwork and keep them consistent between the invoice, the packing list and the airway bill. Mismatches between documents are the second most common cause of a hold.
Ask your freight forwarder about outward processing relief, or whatever the equivalent temporary-export procedure is called where you are. Rules differ between the UK and individual EU states, and this is the one part of the journey that sits on your side. The return is ours end to end — we book it, prepay the freight and the import duties, and file the paperwork, so the probe reaches your address with nothing to pay on delivery.
Packing
Coil the cable loosely — a tight coil around the strain relief is how probes arrive with new cable faults they did not leave with. Protect the connector with its cap or a rigid box; bent pins in transit are common and avoidable. For TEE and endocavity probes, complete your high-level disinfection before packing and say so on the paperwork.
Which probes are worth the trip
Volume and TEE probes almost always are: the replacement cost is high and the parts that fail are the parts we can replace. Standard linear and convex probes usually are, unless the host system itself is near end of life. Where it is genuinely marginal, we will say so at the assessment stage rather than after you have paid freight.
See also: TEE probe repair · 3D/4D volume probes · cable and connector faults · how we verify a repair.
Frequently asked questions
How long is the whole round trip, realistically?
Repair is about a week. Add your outbound freight and customs — the only leg you handle — plus the return, which we run door to door. Most UK and European customers should plan on two to three weeks end to end, and we will tell you if a particular repair needs longer.
Do you have a European service address?
Repairs are carried out in our own workshop, so the probe travels. That is why we assess from your images first — the assessment is what makes the travel worth doing.
Do you provide a loaner probe while mine is being repaired?
No. Shipping a loaner out and back across borders adds two more customs crossings and more transit risk than it removes, so we do not offer it. What we do instead is compress the window at both ends: we tell you before you ship whether the repair is worth making, and the in-house time is normally about a week. If a probe is your only one and the schedule cannot absorb that, say so when you send images — it changes what we recommend.
What warranty comes with the repair?
Six to twelve months depending on the probe and the work, confirmed with your quote. If the fault returns within that period, we repair it free.
What if the probe is damaged in transit?
We photograph every probe on arrival, including the packaging where there is visible damage, and those photographs go in the report. Insure the outbound shipment for the probe’s replacement value.