[JimmyDranox]

This Canon ad made me think about this thread...

Canon: Support Matters

Wouldn't it be great if that's the way people thought about Pentax service?

First, I don't want to think about Pentax cameras as a ''second raw '' cameras. If Ricoh think in this way, .... I don't wanna say..

So, I hope that Ricoh service will be much better.

The next year will show us everything. I hope. Not for my sake, but for Ricoh, and Pentax name.

[desertscape]

As was mentioned above, things have changed since their 6x7 was the flagship model. Years ago, Japanese companies would fully vet the products for performance, reliability, maintainability and quality in the development phase, before gearing up for production. By the time the customer received the product, there were no major problems left to discover,or at least very few. In general, when a camera has many instances of problems (shutters) in the customers' hands, it is a sign that management was in a hurry to get the product out the door as a means to assure their return on investment. All this begs the question- was there a prototype phase in which the bugs could be addressed? I'm betting there was but it lacked the rigor to really prevent problems in the field. So, the rigorous prototype phase is being done by the customer, with the results being what Royce has described above. Once a brand has a tarnished image, it is very difficult to change that perception.