Pentaxor:
Nice ideas there.
An extended warranty, even if it's only on the SDM itself, would be the ONLY way I will ever buy an SDM again until I see an change and even then it will be at minimum a year after that before I buy one...I am hoping the new 18-135 is the test bed for the new system. If it works that will give Pentax a bit of a leg to stand on and build from going forward. In the mean time they genuinely need to address the existing users who, and I fully support them, are not going to be burned again with an obviously problematic in lense focusing system. Offer all purchasers of SDM gear in the past 3-4 years a free inspection AND another 2-yrs coverage on the SDM part of the lense...and hey, for sealed lenses why not have a free inspection to ensure the seals are still holding up replacing them if need be. I am sure there are plenty of referb'd SDM lenses in a warehouse somewhere just begging to be used by someone!!
But they need to do something in a positive direction because thanks to the reported SDM probs, Pentax is losing a lot of customers who would be the very people to buy the advanced lenses because they already have almost every freaking lense Pentax ever built...those are the users to re-build the reputation on...build it and we will come.
Something else to consider is why should any of us buy a lense from HoyaTax that is widely perceived to have failure issues, generally AF, when we know because of those issues the thing loses 50% of the purchase price the day I open the box? Seriously, other brands and even other Pentax lenses either drop about 10%-15% or in the case of many Pentax builds actually appreciate. I mean why buy something that is a dead on loser in terms of intrinsic value when one could buy something else that either holds it's value better or appreciates? For me the appreciation issue was why i decided to complete my three-amigos set in silver. That is one build which, and I am assuming, is not to be had outside Japan, if that...
I have been tracking the FA Ltd's on eBay for a while now and in the past few months they have increased a good 20%-25% in price...yesterday I even found one seller on eBay offering a new MIJ 31ltd for, as I recall, $1699 or maybe $1599...the seller was, of course, in Japan where the lenses are ungawdly more expensive anyway but not THAT much more.
Oh, well, we can just keep after Hoya or go away...I dunno which...the final release of the K-5 is my Mendoza Line (baseball joke in case ya dunno...just google it, the poor guy could never get much over that .200 batting average so somehow he became the mascot for the below average player in the game...hehehehe, he lives on, as they say, in infamy...)