[Raven_bc]

I went to Henrys today to replace the camera, as it was within 21 days they replaced it without any issues. I checked the sensor in-store and everything looks fine even though it was in the same serial number range as my old one.

I was pretty happy with how easily and quickly they changed it for me.

[janneman]

So Here no lucky people with speckled sensors K5.
You guys in the States are lucky.

Sorry, quite a few reported overhere as well, but they are all from a group who managed to get a deal with a store to buy K-5's as a group, get them early and get them cheap.. No spotnews on later sales yet.

[Class A]

I contacted Amazon and although the camera was 2 weeks beyond the return date they agreed to a full refund. So I sent it back and decided to buy a new one from Abe's of Maine. It will be here tomorrow.

?
Amazon went out of their way to achieve customer satisfaction and you thank them by buying somewhere else? I don't understand this at all.

[glanglois]

?
Amazon went out of their way to achieve customer satisfaction and you thank them by buying somewhere else? I don't understand this at all.

A few days ago, Abe's was underselling Amazon by about $100. Perhaps that was an influence?

I don't think I'd take that tack - Amazon had already replaced one so I would be confident that they'd take the right approach and I like to reward good behavior. The alternative is that users keep sending cameras back, good cameras or somewhat defective cameras, as they find a better price. That's not in our long-term interest at all.

No knock on Abe's, though. I've never needed anything special from them.

[telfish]

?
Amazon went out of their way to achieve customer satisfaction and you thank them by buying somewhere else? I don't understand this at all.

When I ordered this camera all that was available was the kit at $1770 plus tax. In total it came to $1990.00 I did not really need the kit lens but ordered the kit because that was all there was. I expected Amazon to offer a direct replacement and I would have been happy with that. However they did not do that and offered a complete refund. I asked whether they would be sending a new camera and was told that after the 30 day period all they could do was refund so that did open the opportunity to shop around.

When I came to re-order Abe's of Maine were selling the body only for $1460 free shipping no tax. Plus I could get an additional 3 year warranty for $169.00. Amazon does not do an extended warranty So all in all a far better deal considering the issue I and others are having with the camera.

My wife and I put a lot of business Amazons way. I am a Prime member and have spent over $9000 this year. Most of the stuff you see in my sig was bought at Amazon. However I shop where I can get the best deal at the time and I am not going to spend a lot of extra money and go without the extended warranty just out of loyalty to Amazon.

They replaced my camera out of their exchange period because I am a good customer of theirs, I will continue to be a good customer of theirs but I will also shop wisely.

[dgaies]

FWIW, I got a replacement body from Amazon last night. It also had the "string of pearls" on it, but it was less severe and in towards the corner of the frame. Overall it's an imporvement over the first body I had which had a much darker set of defects just north of center of the frame.

[xGene]

Serial 3858xxx, received 3 weeks ago from Adorama. Sensor absolutely perfect, nothing to report. ...and I tried pretty hard...
Am I the exception?
Gene

[MrPetkus]

What are you going to do - keep or return? My replacement will be arriving today from Amazon. Hoping for the best.

FWIW, I got a replacement body from Amazon last night. It also had the "string of pearls" on it, but it was less severe and in towards the corner of the frame. Overall it's an imporvement over the first body I had which had a much darker set of defects just north of center of the frame.

[dgaies]

What are you going to do - keep or return? My replacement will be arriving today from Amazon. Hoping for the best.

Not 100% sure yet.

Certainly between the two bodies I would keep the newer one as the "stains" on that sensor would have almost no impact on just about any real-world image. But still, I was hoping to beat the odds and get a clean sensor on the 2nd try I'm just not sure it's worth the time and effort to keep going through new bodies right now so there's a decent chance I'll just hold tight with the second body (S/N 3883xxx) and see how it all plays out.

[NaClH2O]

Serial 3858xxx, received 3 weeks ago from Adorama. Sensor absolutely perfect, nothing to report. ...and I tried pretty hard...
Am I the exception?
Gene

According to the poll you are in the 40%. It' been fairly steady at ~60% yes and ~40% no. Acutually right now 57% yes and 43% no. So you are one of the lucky ones but not unique.

NaCl(just checked the numbers)H2O

[nulla]

JP ... When I started the poll thread I asked that people only answer the poll after proper testing and post their serial and photos of their stains and keep the discussions to one of the threads that had already been started.

Sadly it was turned into a debate by a few who are lucky enough not to have problems (or even a K5d) and seem to think it's ok to be confrontational with those of us who are experiencing problems.

I think it's good to have a poll thread, a discussion thread and a solutions thread or else this would turn into a massive clusterf*** of a thread.

Just my 2 cents worth of course, your mileage may vary.

Pat

I was hoping that the Poll thread would be able to show through serial numbers posted if this problem is random and ongoing or isolated to a batch.

I would also like to see country results....

But agree that the poll thread did go astray.... Mods where are you?


cheers

[jpzk]

JP ... When I started the poll thread I asked that people only answer the poll after proper testing and post their serial and photos of their stains and keep the discussions to one of the threads that had already been started.

Sadly it was turned into a debate by a few who are lucky enough not to have problems (or even a K5d) and seem to think it's ok to be confrontational with those of us who are experiencing problems.

I think it's good to have a poll thread, a discussion thread and a solutions thread or else this would turn into a massive clusterf*** of a thread.

Just my 2 cents worth of course, your mileage may vary.

Pat

Pat:

Yeah, I did ask the same question to the Mod's and I was told that one single thread would turn into a big mess.
So, you have a good point and I see/agree how this thread, and the others as you mention, should be all separate.

((By the way: do the poll results show a "trend" in the K5 serial numbers this far?))

Cheers! and thanks for the reply.

JP

[jpzk]

+1 on this we need to keep separate A: what is the problem? B:who has the problem and who doesnt (ie problem distribution) and finally C: what can we do about it?

NaCl(otherwise it gets all mixed up)H2O

Agreed!

I just thought it would have been easier in one "large" (and potentially messy) thread, but ... obviously not!

Cheers!
JP

[Stringmike]

As I do quite a bit of statistics for my job, I've given my opinion in a couple of places on the likely incidence of this problem. The poll here will grossly overstate the problem because of self-selection.

A number of the reported problems appear to be dust, but if we assume that about 60 of the reports are correct out of around 200 reports, then we have a high estimate of around 30%. As a low estimate, Pentax has sold at least 80,000 K-5s, which puts the demonstrated incidence of the problem at less than 1 in 1,000.

My best initial guess would put the percentage of affected units at between 3% and 10%. That's still a lot of cameras (a 5% incidence would affect over 4,000)!

Mike

[dgaies]

As I do quite a bit of statistics for my job, I've given my opinion in a couple of places on the likely incidence of this problem. The poll here will grossly overstate the problem because of self-selection.

A number of the reported problems appear to be dust, but if we assume that about 60 of the reports are correct out of around 200 reports, then we have a high estimate of around 30%. As a low estimate, Pentax has sold at least 80,000 K-5s, which puts the demonstrated incidence of the problem at less than 1 in 1,000.

My best initial guess would put the percentage of affected units at between 3% and 10%. That's still a lot of cameras (a 5% incidence would affect over 4,000)!

Mike

Except that the problem is not really obvious if you're not looking at it. So it's not necessarily that the thousands of people who haven't replied all have clean sensors. More likely they don't know and/or haven't checked to see if their K-5 is affected. The poll most likely represents a sample of people who went ahead and checked their sensor for the issue and then reported back. The act of checking the sensor is not self-selecting. If this was a problem that was more obvious where users didn't have to actively check for it, then the process of reporting bad copies would certainly be more self-selecting.

And I have no doubt there are some false positives; people mistaking "normal" dust for a stained sensor. This will undoubtedly bias the results a bit.