Originally posted by Kameraten
My concern is not that Kameraservice would not be skilled or service-minded enough; by all accounts they are. Instead, it's the logistics that are the problem: They received my camera yesterday afternoon at the earliest. Given a three-day turnaround time, with JAS I would have been getting my camera back by that time.
Since I cannot depend on just one body in my work, I've ordered another K-01 as backup for now and the future. With very mixed feelings, as you may imagine.
[ edit: actually I can see now from the package tracking that Kameraservice won't get the package before today. So I will get my new K-01 before it's back, anyway.
Well, at least I didn't reward Focus Nordic by getting a K-3, or even the K-01 through them.]
Originally posted by Kameraten
It's even worse than I feared: the postal service is delivering my package to the repair shop only today. So if they need three days and it comes back at the same snail-mail pace I will have the camera back around the 26th of February, almost three weeks after it broke.
Which is totally unacceptable if you work with your camera.
Now, I'm getting another body as a stop-gap. I can do it since it's cheap and delivers about the same quality as the camera being serviced. But you cannot do it if the camera being serviced is high-end and impossible to keep a spare for. This is why Pentax does not succeed in the high-end market – not the pixels, not the AF or the touch-screen. The competition simply offers 24-hour turnaround time in servicing, and/or a replacement if need be. I would not dare to depend on a 654D.
This exatly is the point here. By doing this Focus Nordic is driving the remaining current users away from Pentax and giving another strong sales argument to Canikon. With entry-level cameras they might get away with this, but as Pentax is rolling out several high-end products ( K-3, D645 II, FF ) they are really shooting themselves in the foot.
Originally posted by gazonk
Really? The only of my 6 (including my wife's ME Super) Pentax bodies that so far has needed service, was my LX back in 1983

(it would need a new service now for a growing mirror-stickiness-problem, but I use it so rarely that I have postponed that)
Lucky you! My service record is somewhat different. My current K-5 has been serviced once - after being replaced completely in the very beginnning. The K-7 went to service twice, as did the K-10 before it. In addition to the bodies, the DA*16-50 has been serviced once, and the same with the FA*80-200 .
This is at least an order of magnitude more than I needed in the film days.
Dismal after-sales service may easily be lethal for sales. Had each of the previously mentioned cases taken 4-6 weeks to sort out, I would definitely be shooting with something else by now!