Advanced Circuits — Local services in Aurora

We had Advanced Circuits fabricate a few simple PCBs for us in the past and everything went well. However, the last PCB we had them make led to an awful experience and thus this review.

In this particular case, the PCB was a 4 layer board with a few small fine pitch components. We requested an expedited 4-day delivery for 12 PCBs. A few days later we got a notification from Advanced that the order was going to be 3 working days late, due to Advanced having issues and having to remake the boards.

We finally received the boards and there were quality issues on more than half of the boards (no finish on some pads). We immediately notified Advanced of the issue, but we had no alternative but to use the boards that did not exhibit the quality issues, due to the boards being late.

Advanced took it upon themselves to send us a new batch of boards at no additional charge, which we receive ~2 weeks later. To our amazement, the newly received boards had the same quality issues as the last batch. In order to fulfill our need, we again repaired the bad boards as best we could and assembled the balance of our run using the repaired boards.

We ended up having to rework 4 of the 12 Assembled boards due to the PCBs issues and was able to get all but 1 working. Overall we spent a great deal of time repairing and reworking the bad boards as well as being late with our delivery in the process.

After all the smoke had cleared, we asked for a refund for the cost of the boards. Advanced said that they could not do this and the best they could do would be to offer a credit for the difference between a 4-day turn and a 5-day turn and credit for 2 PCBs (we are returning blank 10 PCBs that we did not use).

This has been one of the worst vendor experiences that we have ever had and needless to say we will not be using Advanced...

I've been using Advanced Circuits for almost 15 years. Everything from simple 2-layer to extremely intricate 24-layer boards. Recently their quality and customer service has taken a noticeable downturn.

Over the past year, each order I've placed has been consistently delayed by a week or more. Despite raising my concerns with our account manager/customer service, their response is limited to reassurances of "it should ship today," a claim that typically extends for 5-7 days before the actual shipment.

They have also made it impossible to work with anyone on stack-ups and controlled dielectrics. It used to be a simple e-mail with the same guy to verify accurate trace widths for controlled impedances. He left the company roughly two years ago and now the board is always placed on hold immediately after being ordered to make adjustments. Our account manager has told me she cannot provide a new contact from this department and that any of these questions must go through her but I have never gotten a response back when I've reached out.

While Advanced Circuits remains a cost-effective choice for high layer count or RF boards using Rogers materials, it comes at the expense of compromised quality and unreliable timelines. I would caution against choosing Advanced Circuits.

UPDATE: Tried giving Advanced one last chance. Placed an order with 2 week lead time on June 10th. Logged in to check on the progress of the order today (June 19th) and they never actually placed the order. Reached out to account rep and they state they have no idea what happened on their end for it not to go through.

IF TIME OR QUALITY IS AN IMPORTANT FACTOR IN YOUR DESIGN DO NOT USE...

I keep trying to like this company and keep my business in North America, but they make it impossible.

You have to enter everything exactly perfect in their website when you order, or you can’t move to the next step. It can get hung up on the stupidest thing. It often just says “An Error Has Occurred” and not only do you have to reenter everything, but you must log in again.

When I try to talk to people that work there, they just seem uninterested. The default for any email question seems to be not to reply. Something simple like asking for a copy of the invoice so I can expense it because their website keeps crashing just gets ignored.

After a decade, my last transaction with them was my last. They were over 8 days late on a 4 day turn and no one would talk to me during the week delay to tell me anything. Back to...