Plus 1 Stories

Many Restek customers have told us how our Customer Service representatives, Technical Service chemists, or others have brightened a day for them. Here are just a few examples:

“…the technical guide is really excellent work. I am impressed with the amount of useful info included in the guide”

(in reference to the Volatiles Technical Guide…)

Dr. Dawen Kou
Hoffmann-La Roche, Inc.

“Restek is a great corp. that keeps us operating on a daily basis with your GC supplies. We really love the new SeCure™ "Y" Connector. It has worked wonders for us.”

Eric A. Lorge
Project Manager, Major Equipment Manufacturer, Environmental Lab

“When first seeking help with application issues it was suggested to me from a friend that I call Restek. His experience was that the support group from Restek was very willing to assist and that they might possibly ship me some phase to try out as opposed to spending a large sum of money on a new column phase that was no better then what I already had been using. After giving Restek a call, the customer support person sent me some CarboFrits free of charge to see if it would benefit my chromatography. I have since experienced many hours of useful consultation that has benefited my organization in numerous ways. On every occasion where I called for assistance it was always followed by a call later to check and see if things were going as planned. Thank you Restek for your caring support group of personnel.”

R. Frank Hart III
Lab Tech, GenApps research facility

“I am the Section Head in a large, international pharmaceutical laboratory and GC analysis is one of my responsibilities. I have always had excellent service from Chromspec, who is the Restek agent in South Africa, but a recent incident really calls for special acknowledgement!

I was doing an urgent analysis of CFC’s and trying to include a training session with one of the senior analysts, when the unthinkable happened—the analyst broke the column when installing it! There was no back-up column and the sales people were screaming for the asthma-medications, which depended on the CFC-analysis…I contacted all my GC-suppliers, but the answer was the same everywhere—usual delivery time: 4–6 weeks!!! I was desperate and called on Chromspec from Restek on Friday afternoon; they worked overtime to deliver it to FedEx in the United States by 19:00 Friday night. It was in South African Customs by Chromspec on Wednesday morning at 08:30.

There should be no doubt that all my GC-business will go to Chromspec in future!”

Mrs. Susan Skead
QC Section Head, Aventis Pharma, South Africa

“The Pinnacle II™ PAH column gives an excellent separation of the 18 target PAHs that we commonly analyze. Column lifetime far exceeded our expectations—after more than 5000 injections, the columns still maintain resolution and peak shape. Other PAH columns typically had lifetimes of 2000 to 2500 injections. We actually had one Pinnacle II™ PAH column last for more than 10,000 injections!”

Norm Farmer
Technical Director, Accutest Laboratories

“Restek is a first class company with excellent customer service. Courtesy is always extended to both my company and myself when communicating with Restek employees”

Rich Whitney
Mass Spec Manager, ProChem Analytical

“The Pro ezGC™ software is another great product from Restek. It is powerful, yet easy to use, for GC method development and optimization. I can readily predict the approximate run time of a given complex mixture. It greatly simplifies the amount of work to establish elution order. Furthermore, the price is a drop in the ocean in comparison with what the software can do.”

Ken Wong
Technical Manager, Scott Specialty Gases

“I wanted to extend my thanks to the fine folks at Restek for being so helpful as I worked through some difficulties with my 60 meter column setup for CLPesticides and PCB congeners. People like Kristi Sellers were not only informative but also so patient as I struggled to achieve results. While still working on getting better numbers, your Siltek® products helped reduce my Endrin breakdown values by 50%. We are fortunate to be using your products.”

Gregory Lull
Katahdin Analytical Services

“We had more than 100 customers attend Restek’s seminar in Budapest and the majority of them stayed to the last minutes. At the end of the seminar they applauded Eric and Tom for the seminar content and for being excellent lecturers.”

Elizabeth Csizma
Lab-Comp. Kft. (Hungary)

“Excellent seminar - good coverage of all material. Would recommend enthusiastically to all GC professionals who want a refresher or a comprehensive introduction to the practice of chromatography.”

Ian MacGregor
Battelle Memorial Institute

“For many years, I have searched the market place for a bonded polar gc phase that delivered the chemical inertness, long term phase stability and practical robustness necessary to meet my operational requirements. Only after an extensive nine month in-house testing programme, can I say that I have finally found that phase in Rtx®-Wax.”

Steve Rowlands
Quest International (Kent UK)

“Ich verwende Restek Säulen seit einige Jahren aufgrund deren Qualität und Zuverlässigkeit. Sehr interessant für mich sind auch die zum Teil genial neuentwichelten GC-Zubehörteile von Restek. Insbesondere die Siltek® deaktivierten Inserts haben bei uns schon manches große Problem gelòst. Die von Restek organisierten Fortbildungsveranstaltungen haben didaktisch und inhaltlich ein durchweg hobes Niveau und sind sehr empfehlenswert.”

(“I’m using Restek GC columns now for years because of their high quality and reliability. Very interesting for me are also the newly developed - partly in an ingenious way - GC supplies from Restek. Especially the Siltek® deactivated liners have helped to solve several big problems with some of our GC/MS methods. Restek training seminars have a high level of presentation and information and I can warmly recommend them.”)

Wolfgang Koslowski
AAI Applied Analytical Industries (Germany)

“Restek has consistently provided high quality chromatography columns and supplies to me for well over a decade. Over the last two years, I have extensively been involved with air analysis, TO-15, etc., and Restek provides the highest quality canisters, mini-cans, and flow controllers in the market today.”

Scott Van Etten
IH Laboratory Manager, EMSL Analytical

“I attended Varian’s GC Workshop and was disappointed that more material was not covered. Subject material covered at Restek’s course was excellent. I’d really benefit from a 3-day course offered by Restek.”

Colleen Wegman
Lab technician, International Paper

“After the disaster of 9-11, Diazald, a highly explosive compound used in Herbicide analysis, was immediately controlled by the U.S. government which made shipment impossible. Restek was instrumental in helping me to develop an isocratic HPLC method that did not require the use of Diazald. This method is not only safer, but it saves us time and money. Thanks, Restek!”

Chris Domaradzki
Organics manager, Environmental Testing Laboratories

“Restek offers a wide range of columns and accessories for the environmental analyses performed in my lab. I am satisfied with the Restek products I have been using for several years—particularly the Rtx-5Sil MS and Rtx-CLPesticides columns and the deactivated inlet sleeves. The quality of the technical support provided by Restek is a plus.”

Michel Letort
Veolia Environnement (Paris, France)

“We enjoy doing business with Restek. Their technical knowledge and willingness to back their products help us to maximize the performance of our chromatography instruments.”

Jean-François Vergelin
Département de Seine et Marne, Direction de l’Eau et de l’Environnement, Laboratoire Départemental d’Analyse des eaux (Melun, France)

“Any time I have any type of chromatography question, I know that I can call Restek Technical Service for assistance. Every time I have spoken to them, they have been extremely helpful, and friendly!”

Carisa A. Kelley
Exygen Research

“Restek has an excellent Custom Standards department. With the help of Mark Badger, we were able to fax over a custom quote, discuss the mixture and have it shipped in a suprisingly short amount of time.”

Bryan Harrigan
GC/MS Manager, Environmental Testing Labs

“Thank you for being a top notch GC Analytical Supply Company that always continues to offer newer products & services.”

John T. Brunette
Chemist, Bausch & Lomb

“for more than 10 years , the Laboratoire Interuniversitaire des Systèmes Atmosphériques (LISA) of Paris XII has been developing GC subsystems for on-board space probe GCMS experiments dedicated to the in situ analysis of extraterrestrial environments. Most of the capillary columns used in these subsystems were and still are provided by the Restek company. One capillary column, Rtx-17011, is currently aboard the Cassini-Huygens mission flying towards Saturn, where it will be used in 2005 to analyze the atmospheric composition of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. Four others, Rtx- 1, 20, 1701 and MXT-UPLOT3,4, have been selected for the next comet investigation Rosetta mission to be launched in February 2004. And some others are currently under study in the frame of the preparation of a Pyr/GCMS instrument that could be part of the payload of the 2009 Mars exploration mission. I would like to mention that all of these columns have been submitted successfully, before integration, to space qualification tests such as vibration, radiation and thermal cycles2, which demonstrated their robustness for space application.

Since the beginning, the Restek company has been more than a manufacturer providing LISA with columns. Indeed, it has strongly collaborated and helped LISA in developing custom-made columns able to meet the requirements of such an unusual scientific goal for chromatographic columns. That is why LISA is very grateful to Restek for being this ideal partner without the help of which the study and development of chromatographic columns for space use could have not been achieved.”

Robert Sternberg
Responsible for the space GC team at LISA (Paris, France)

“Being one of the first labs to utilize the Shincarbon column in a real working environment, I was pleased to find that I was able to do all my permanent gas analysis on one column instead of the customary two. The peaks were sharper than I had experienced in the past and run time was significantly reduced. We are extremely pleased with the performance of the Shincarbon column and will continue to find even more applications for it.”

Bruce Nasser
Quality Control Chemist, Oxygen Service Spec Lab

“I am a happy Restek customer. My organization uses many “custom” standards to meet our own customer’s needs. Restek makes it easy to do this. The Restek website is very user friendly and in almost every case where a request for custom quote has been submitted, the Restek personnel responded within minutes. Each time I found the Restek personnel to be knowledgeable, courteous, and always interested in meeting our needs. The quality product and quick response time is why we only use Restek for our “customized” solutions.”

Anonymous
Project Manager for a large, national laboratory

“Restek's technical support and preparation of our custom calibration standards, as well as their innovative column technology, has significantly increased the productivity of our GC/MS analyses.”

Dan Wright
Laboratory Director, Shealy Environmental Services, Inc.

“I installed Siltek® liners on one of our GCs to replace standard quartz liners that required deactivating daily. I found the results to be excellent, saving many hours of instrument time with no detrimental effects on the analysis.”

Matthew Turner
Laboratory Manager-food contaminants, Global Analysis (UK)

Would you like to share a Plus 1 story about Restek personnel? Tell us about your Plus 1 experience and we’ll post it here, or in our catalog.