Hi
I think this story is of interest, with regard to the SDM failures frequently discussed by many Pentaxians in recent months.
I bought my Pentax 50-135mm/2.8 SDM lens on June 2008, and like most users, fell in love with its excellent optical qualities. A real gem.
A few months ago (needless to say, shortly after the warranty expired…), the SDM mechanism started to fail, as several others described in previous postings. Initially, some coarse movement, then occasional hangs while focusing, and getting worse with time.
When I first tried it on my new K-7, it refused to work at all, and caused an immediate "shutdown" of the battery protection circuit. (It would still work occasionally on my K20D, very poorly though…)
With no warranty, I imagined that repair will be very costly, perhaps not justified, but decided to try anyway.
Living in Israel, I contacted "Karat Israel" , Pentax distributor in Israel, and was referred to Guy Ben-nun, their marketing manager. The lens went first to a local professional repair lab associated with Karat. They confirmed the failure of the SDM drive, and advised that the lens has to be shipped to Pentax/Europe for repair and calibration (the very small Pentax DSLR user base in Israel does not justify yet a complete repair & calibration setup…). This only made things worse. With no warranty, and adding shipping charges from Israel to Europe and back. I thought this was the end of my beloved lens.
But it was not.
Guy contacted Pentax in Europe, perhaps did some magic too
… and to my great surprise and joy informed me that Pentax agreed, as an exception, to exchange the lens, at no charge. A brand new 50-135mm SDM was shipped to Israel and handed to me a few days ago, while my old lens went the other way to Pentax in Europe.
I mounted the new baby on my K-7, and fully enjoyed the smooth, silent sharp focus of an SDM drive of a great lens…WOW.
What else is there to say? Not in my wildest dreams ….
A huge, warm "thank you" to Guy Ben-nun, to Karat, and to Pentax for an exceptional customer service. A very happy customer indeed…
Itzik