[slip]

In Canada Sigma offers up to a 10 year warranty. What is the issue with Pentax?
If they claim to offer the best equipment around, why doesn't the warranty reflect it?

Any and all opinions welcome!

Thanks

Randy

[MJL]

In Canada Sigma offers up to a 10 year warranty. What is the issue with Pentax?
If they claim to offer the best equipment around, why doesn't the warranty reflect it?

Any and all opinions welcome!

Thanks

Randy

Duration is one consideration. Efficiency is a totally different issue.

My local Nikon & Sony depots resolve problems within 3 days.
Tamron Depot (Amplis Foto) service responses within a week.
Zeiss in Germany did it within 2 weeks with great communication.
Pentax Canada (before Ricoh) takes ~ 2 weeks.

Sigma Depot (Gentec)? Last time it took me 4 phone calls & 3 months to have my lens calibrated & returned.

[vonBaloney]

My experience with Sigma customer service in NY was excellent.

[VisualDarkness]

Pentax limits warranty to a minimum, Canon limits warranty to a minimum, Sony limits warranty to a minimum and Nikon limits warranty to a minimum.
Tamron increases warranty and Sigma increases warranty.

It's simply a case of OEM makers not needing it to sell lenses and third party ones taking advantage of that vacuum it creates.

[indy]

In Canada Sigma offers up to a 10 year warranty. What is the issue with Pentax?
If they claim to offer the best equipment around, why doesn't the warranty reflect it?

Any and all opinions welcome!

Thanks

Randy

Because people still buy what they produce for any number of reasons: brand, no other option if they want weather sealing, some artistic notion of pixi dust, blindness to poor engineering (sdm), resale, etc... Actually the resale angle used to make sence to me, but I have purchased enough used glass to learn that great lenses (regardless of brand) hold value.

Sigma has it figured out. They used to build budget lenses with acceptable preformance. They are now working hard to compete in all aspects - $, image quality, and warranty. Oh; and lets not forget the usb docs for tweaks and future proofing. Admittedly this is in its infancy, but it promises great things! When they add WS they will start taking an even bigger chunk of the lens market. I believe they are doing all of this because lenses are their business. Digital sensors are so good now that there is no room for poor lenses or poor warranties.

[bdery]

Sigma and Tamron do offer better warranty than most but they don't offer 10 years on all their lenses. And here Pentax offers 2 years, still better than, say, in the US. It's a feature of the product, and it has a cost like any other feature.

[monochrome]

A Warranty is a Liability of the company. It has an actual cost that must be revealed by the issuing company in public reports. A credible reserve for potential future claims must be carried on the Balance Sheet. Credible means the potential future claims must be estimated in a reasonable fashion and that estimate must be replicable by a disinterested outside observer.

A reserve represents Capital that cannot be used for current profit-making purposes. That lost opportunity to earn current profit is represented as a cost of manufacturing the item, reducing its profit at time of sale or increasing its List Price.

In order to reduce the amount of the reserve a company might change its manufacturing process to reduce faults, It could increase its testing to prove its calculation is more credible. It might use different designs or quality of materials. Etc. These decisions also raise cost.

There is a delicate balance between cost, price, current profits and capital reserves that each company makes when deciding on Warranty terms.

It isn't quite as simple as a Product Manager just deciding to offer a three-year warranty as a marketing point.

Note that certain countries require a minimum term for consumer product warranties so for instance a lens sold in Canada might have a longer warranty than the same lens sold in the USA.

[vonBaloney]

Sigma's current USA warranty is 4 years for all products (including flashes, etc). It used to be 4 years for EX lenses and 3 years for non-EX lenses.

[MichaelP]

I have pentax lenese over 45 years old and still work perfectly. I have some "m" lenes not quite as old as that and they all work perfectly too. The new digital lenses certainly don't seem as robust but we'll have to wait and see - can only notch up 4 years with those but they don't look like they're about to fall apart