Warranty & Repairs

Every clock is covered for twelve months from the day it arrives — the whole clock, not just the electronics. If a tube fails inside that year, the replacement is free and we post it to you.

The tubes are the part that wears out

A Nixie tube is a consumable, and it is honest to say so. The datasheet for the IN-14 — the most common of the Soviet tubes — gives a minimum life of about 5,000 hours, which is less than a year of continuous running. In practice most tubes last far longer: years, and owners report decades.

But every tube in these clocks was made before the factories closed, more than thirty years ago, and a tube that has sat on a shelf since the 1980s can occasionally fail early. That is why most of our clocks ship with a spare tube already in the box, and why the warranty exists at all.

Changing a tube takes about a minute

The tubes sit in sockets. They are not soldered to the board, so replacing one needs no iron, no technician and no tools: the old tube pulls straight out and the new one pushes in, the way a bulb does. This is the single reason these clocks outlive the tubes inside them.

Which clocks carry a spare

• Four-tube clocks — every IN-14 clock and the four-tube IN-12 — ship with one spare tube in the box.
• The six-tube IN-12 in acrylic uses all six tubes in the clock, so no spare travels with it. Tested IN-12 tubes are sold separately.
• The IV-18 clocks use a single VFD tube rather than nixies, and ship without a spare.

If something goes wrong

Write to shop@nixiestar.com with your order number and a photo or a few seconds of video. Email rather than the contact form, because the form cannot carry attachments and a picture is what settles it: a tube that will not light looks nothing like a board that will not start.

If the parcel itself arrives damaged, tell us straight away and keep the packaging — we send a replacement or a refund.

After the first year

Tubes are still available. We keep tested Soviet new old stock and sell it to anyone who needs one, whether or not the clock came from us — see spare tubes. Fitting one is the same minute of work it always was.

If you simply change your mind

You have 30 days from receiving the clock to ask to return it. If the return is accepted we send you a return shipping label and instructions, and the refund goes back to your original payment method within 10 business days of us receiving and checking the clock. Orders shipped into the European Union also carry the statutory 14-day cooling-off period, for any reason and with no justification needed.

The full text is in our Refund Policy.