Originally posted by rod_grant Right on, regarding DIY repairs. They give warranties with new gear. ou paid for the warranty when you bought the equipment. Why not use it, instead of bellyaching about the problem?!
Oh, be assured I attempt no "repairs"! Just turning dials, flicking switches, performing ritual dances around this camera, that's all. It is going back to SRS and that's that. The problem is I am working in Russia at the moment and can't just pop the camera into the shop I bought it from. Now, in the city I am in the repair people authorised to do Pentax warranty repairs say "you bought it in UK, you get it fixed in UK" being quite rude about it. No amount of waving the international warranty card and all necessary receipts etc. in front of their eyes makes them do anything for me.
GREAT! PENTAX, THANK YOU FOR THE GREAT WORLDWIDE WARRANTY REPAIR NETWORK. Another thing about these "specialists" - what they said when I presented them with my first defective K5 (CMOS stains, obvious to anyone who'd seen them and read about them on this forum, for instance) proved their total incompetence, I simply could not believe it... They were talking out of their ar^e, pardon my French, saying that "the signal from the sensor must be corrected by means of software" probably meaning pixel mapping.
)) THESE GUYS ARE AUTHORISED BY PENTAX OFFICIAL REPAIR GUYS IN A CITY WITH POPULATION OF2 MILLION WHERE THERE ARE US AND UK CONSULATES GENERAL! I mean it's not a remote village in the Russian North we are talking here. This is them:
http://www.photocamera.ru/ Do you think after that I will let them butcher my camera even if they did take it despite it being purchased in the UK.
I expect more from the company that sold me a product spoken about as "PRO" or "semi-PRO" class for which I paid 999 Pound Sterling.
Shipping a K5 body with appropriate insurance to the UK will cost me at least $150 US and I might end up being liable to pay UK import tax (!!! great job, UK customs, rip the little guy off, what can he do? It's much easier than stopping the flood torrents of illicit drugs being brought into the country, for instance) on the blasted thing.
It is cheaper than to fly there in person to take it in, but not by that big a margin, especially taking into account the pain that the UK customs can cause if the camera travels as "goods" rather than around my neck on a plane as a "personal effect"
So the combination of the dreadful Philippines Pentax QC/QA with frighteningly incompetent repair personnel in Russia, and the lack of uniformity of warranty policies of Pentax in Russia/Ukraine and Pentax in the rest of this globe makes one look for ways to make the sh^te product you spent some good money on (plus 150 postage last time it was sent in) work without having to send it to the wonderful SRS shop in Watford where I bought it.
I wrote about this to Pentar (St. Petersburg), a company representing Pentax in Russia, the headquarters. These guys:
http://www.pentar.ru I wrote about this to Pentax Europe. No reply. Here, on the Russian Pentax website:
http://www.pentax.ru/service/policy/qm-show-eq-ru.htm it clearly states that warranty applies only to Pentax gear purchased in Russia and Ukraine, which is in TOTAL CONTRADICTION to what the paperwork for my camera says about repairs under warranty while being outside the UK, as in "go to any of these authorised centres to get wonderful high class friendly and fast service you'd expect from Pentax" or something along these lines, and a list of companies with addresses which includes the blasted Pentar.
Reading stuff here I see many a story about Pentax owners in the US sending their cameras back and forth to warranty repair centres BECAUSE nothing was done first time they sent it in or their gear wasn't repaired properly and the equipment was simply returned to them as if it was OK but failed again very quickly. Well that is a luxury I can't afford.
Each time a Pentax repair company forgets to do something, or does a sloppy job of fixing something in my camera in the UK it will cost me further $150 for sending it there again and cause all the non-monetary bother of sending "goods", "commodities" across state borders.
So off it goes to SRS Microsystems. Another $150 out of my pocket through NO FAULT OF MINE. Another month, at least, without a decent camera.
I guess I'll shoot more film and finally get my lovely Yashica with f1.4 Yashinon properly tested in various lighting conditions at various exposure settings.
If they manage to fix the K5 (my SRS contact said it unlikely to get replacement for this defect, only for stains
)) so as it would be able to take some shots in hands of a prospective buyer - which may be too much to wish for - I should sell it off before it packs up again. Then flog the lenses, leaving a couple for the Kx which is going to the shop too (but this is in Russia, no international worries) to get the selector wheel replaced, damn annoying. But nothing major at least. Just the crap resolution of the LCD spoils the fun of using it. Well I'll leave that with the wife with a couple of lenses. And if I manage to sell the rest of the gear of this (damn you Hoya) brand that caused me so much stress in the last half year, I might be able to buy something less quirky from some other manufacturer whose certified repair engineers in Russia are unlike Pentax's, that is not total tosspots, and whose warranty is, unlike Pentax's, really international.