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Forum: Pentax K-30 & K-50
01-25-2021, 11:26 PM
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I decided to put my money where my mouth was and put a dab of car paint on my green solenoid. Just as I suspected, my camera works perfectly now with the old solenoid. I guess that means I have two white solenoids I can sell now.
I am not here to make money or try to force anything down someone's throat. I thought I just offered some advice based on science and measurements. I figured some people don't have a lot of money to spend or don't know how to solder, so I offered some suggestions that might work. Non-destructive advice that can be undone.
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Forum: Pentax K-30 & K-50
01-10-2021, 05:11 PM
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Hi all - first off, great work with this solenoid fix. When my original K50 had this issue and I had it replaced under warranty, I knew it was just a matter of time before it would break again. It seems since then, you all have figured out what's going on. I replaced my solenoid and this is the feedback I have so far.
I think people are focusing on the plastic as a red herring. I looked at the horseshoe part of the solenoid and found the green solenoids had a much flatter surface than the white solenoids. This led me to believe that the cause of all the issues is this seemingly benign change they made to the solenoid part. For those of you that have taken physics, inductance is related to the gap in the magnetic path. The larger the gap, the *less* the inductance. In addition, a reduction in magnetic hold strength. If the junction between the horseshoe part of the solenoid and the magnetic side is slowly smoothed down, reducing the gap, the inductance increases and the magnetic hold strength increases. This is where the manufacturer messed up. They made the surface too flat and/or made the plating too weak, causing the gap to slowly decrease with time.
Through your testing, you have already found that the pull force needed to extract the green solenoids is higher than the white ones. You've also found that the release time is much longer. This is directly related to the gapping between the solenoid. Here's the experiment you can run - place a piece of paper/plastic cut to the right size so it stays in the hole but only creates a single layer gap in the solenoid. Replace the horseshoe portion. You'll find the inductance has decreased, the pull strength has been cut, and the release time reduced. This is what magnetic designers do when they are designing custom magnetics and I have tested this with the green solenoid.
Now that you've learned all this, what am I recommending?
- Replace the solenoid with the white ones - that's the most reliable way
- For those of you with a white solenoid, but are afraid of soldering, try just replacing the horseshoe portion, I found on my testing the inductance followed the horseshoe part
- For those of you without a white solenoid, try adding a gap to the solenoid by inserting a single layer of plastic/paper into the solenoid holes. I'd suggest tape, but that has a way of shifting and leaving residue. Alternatively, one could paint a single layer of paint/superglue/epoxy at the end of the horseshoe. Choose a paint that will withstand thousands of impacts between two metal objects. Make sure this paint is non-magnetic because we're trying to create an additional gap with air or some non-magnetic material. We're only talking paper thin here. You might even want to use tissue paper as it's thinner than regular paper. This method is least destructive and can be undone
- For those that really want to try, put a notch at the end of the horseshoe. Alternatively, one could just sand the end so that it's no longer 90 degrees. This may not work very well depending on the properties of the ferrite material the horseshoe is made out of
Thanks to everyone in this forum. That's what I like about my Pentax - all you out there that realize it's not about the most shiny and newest in technology. It's about having a well built camera/lens that stands the test of time.
In the process of replacing my solenoid, I have some extra white solenoids (two came out of the camera I used as the donor). Does anyone here want one for $20? I'll only be shipping the solenoid and within the US (it gets too expensive to ship internationally).
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Forum: Pentax K-30 & K-50
07-31-2016, 11:36 AM
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Camera PENTAX K-50
Shutter Count ~8,221
Manufacture Date 2013:10:02
Purchased Aug 2015
Failed Feb 2016 - Aperture control
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Forum: Pentax K-30 & K-50
05-22-2016, 11:55 PM
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I definitely hope the camera you sold never has problems, but you're right that it is a higher than normal occurrence. There's two things I want to say to console you. 1) Look at reviews on this camera and you'll see they're very high (4.5/5 stars). If the problem was dramatically worse, the reviews would show it as angry people are much more vocal than happy customers. So you're probably at a 90% chance nothing will go wrong. 2) You're only as good of a friend as your actions. Warn him of the potential issue and offer to take the camera back. Or tell him if the camera breaks, you'll give him his money back or help him get it repaired/replaced. Basically, do what you would want someone to do to you.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
05-09-2016, 12:55 PM
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I'm one of the (hopefully) few people who had an aperture failure within a few months of having the camera. Despite the warranty service being horribly bad and how early the item broke, I am still on the "recommend" boat. The main reason is because the price/performance tradeoff is great. It takes as good of pictures as many more expensive cameras, and the weatherproofing is great. I've taken photos in downpours without a worry. Dust or sand? Psh. Having a good yet (relatively) inexpensive camera that I can use anywhere is such a wonderful feeling.
As for people suggesting extended warranties, I recommend you look at your credit card before you purchase a 3rd party one. My visa signature card doubles the 1 year warranty for free, so effectively I have a 2 year warranty. Is it worth the money to extend the warranty one more year beyond that? That's up to you. :)
P.S. Some may ask if my abuse of my camera led to it's early failure... and my comment is I don't think so. The warranty service found the camera had no water or physical damage and this failure is a very common issue (with respect to types of failures).
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Forum: Pentax K-30 & K-50
04-18-2016, 06:42 PM
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Can we add to this a tip to ensure the viewfinder is covered during the test? Or at least that the camera is in live preview mode? I've mistakenly taken a photo with a bright light behind me that messed up the exposure control and wondered why things looked so dark.
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Forum: Pentax K-30 & K-50
04-18-2016, 04:32 PM
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Sounds like yours is doing what mine did. The aperture control is messed up and the camera is shooting with the smallest aperture. Mine broke less than 6 months after purchase. I had to send it in for repair. Problem is, they seem claimed to be out of parts and estimated mine would take months to send back. I had to escalate the issue to get it back to me sooner than that.
Good luck, I hope it gets fixed quickly!
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Forum: Repairs and Warranty Service
04-07-2016, 07:28 PM
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Hi all! I just wanted to do a final update saying that I received the replacement camera today. Only 3 days from when they shipped it.... from the Philippines. I guess for whatever reason they thought it would be better straight from the factory. It makes me wonder why it takes a month to get replacement parts to repair a camera and only 3 days to ship a whole replacement camera.
I still think Pentax designed a great camera and Ricoh for the most part is a good company. Corporate needed a little kick in the rear to understand long warranty repair times is not acceptable, but overall, they were responsive once they understood the issue.
Anyways, I'm excited to take lots of photos again and try out this new lens I bought but never got a chance to try out since my camera was broken. Thanks again to everyone for your advice and support. Happy shooting! :)
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Forum: Repairs and Warranty Service
04-06-2016, 01:12 PM
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When you complain through the BBB, it tracks all of the messages sort of like email. It will say something like, "Customer said: xyz". Then another message will say, "Business said: abc". Within my complaint, it said something like, "Business said: Due to long repair time, we have shipped a replacement to the customer. We have emailed the customer the tracking information." The email from the BBB with the response and Ricoh's tracking email came within hours of eachother, so I think they're related.
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Forum: Repairs and Warranty Service
04-04-2016, 11:22 PM
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I have been following the thread but did not reply for most of it because I did not have an update and thought I couldn't provide anything useful to the conversation. Today I do have some good news. Ricoh finally responded to my complaint to the BBB and have sent me a replacement camera! Tracking says it will take a week or so to get the camera, but that's a lot faster than the month that was expected to get the parts to repair the camera. (Let's not forget the repair times after getting parts, plus shipping time to send it back to me). Thanks to everyone for their good wishes to get my camera back quickly and all of your feedback on the situation. I'm looking forward to be able to take nice photos again, especially with spring coming up and all the flowers blooming.
I know everyone will have different opinions on what happened, but my personal main takeaways on the situation is: more than 1 month of warranty repair time for a common camera is not a reasonable time. If you are in no rush and willing to wait, then that would make it easier for Ricoh for you to do nothing. If you feel that it is too long for you, then you do have options to complain. Complaining directly to Ricoh may help or they may ignore it. Complaining to the BBB seemed to do the trick for me as they were very fast at responding to my issue and forwarding my request. Ricoh seemed to respond to them much more quickly than they did to me.
I did also complain to my state's consumer protection, which may or may not have been overkill. According to Consumer reports, you should "try complaining to the Better Business Bureau and to your state attorney general or consumer protection office." They seemed to be slow to me, but I think they want to get this information because "Consumer complaints provide valuable information that our office uses to identify patterns of unfair or deceptive practices that may warrant enforcement of the Consumer Protection Act."
For all those other people who think I overstepped my bounds, I do want to point out that it is federal law that a "warrantor must as a minimum remedy such consumer product within a reasonable time". What's considered reasonable? I don't know. All I know is that my state's attorney general's office wrote to me this: "The complaint you submitted to our office regarding Ricoh Imaging Americas was reviewed and determined to be appropriate for the informal complaint resolution services offered by our Consumer Resource Center."
Anyways, I really hope this information is helpful for people who are frustrated on long warranty repair times. I'll let you guys know when I get my camera and if anything new pops up. Thank you to you all!
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Forum: Repairs and Warranty Service
04-01-2016, 06:49 PM
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I'm sorry, but I think you're wrong in this. Ricoh has restricted us to one place that is allowed to repair the camera (in the US). If you look at reviews of other repair houses before Ricoh limited us to Precision Camera, you'd see people were happier. These other places probably charged more, which is why Ricoh took them off the approved repair houses. Why else would Ricoh take off a repair house people were happy with?
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Forum: Repairs and Warranty Service
04-01-2016, 03:13 PM
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I think that I may be leaving a bad impression on people by being honest and saying what I plan to do, instead of saying what I have done. I have not demanded my camera back or threatened to sue anyone. I have:
- Kindly asked Ricoh how long it takes to repair my camera and agreed that 3-5 days is an acceptable amount of time - they said I need to send it to Precision Camera and I paid out of my own pocket to send it there
- Kindly waited to receive my camera back for weeks
- Received a notice from Precision camera saying the part is back-ordered and won't be available for several weeks (that does not include additional repair time)
- Kindly spoke to customer service who agreed that the expected date is unreasonable and customer service asked me to send a webmail so he can forward it to corporate
- Sent a webmail stating my situation and that I found more than a month of repair time is unacceptable. Please provide one of the following: a repair in 1 month, a loaner camera, a replacement, or a refund. If they believe I am unreasonable, please contact me to let me know what they believe to be a better solution
- Patiently waited a week for a reply but heard nothing
- Requested advice from forums to see what is a potential remedy that might be a better alternative than what I've already thought of. Learned that many people have had experiences that it will take up to 6 months to receive the camera back despite what Precision Camera promises.
- Requested support from the BBB and the state consumer protection to please have Ricoh respond to my email for what I can do to move forward with this and not just sitting and waiting
- Patiently waited for almost another week without a response
I believe there is a lot of misconception on what the BBB and consumer protection can do and who they are. They are arbitrators and not legal services. They forward requests and ensure people are not making unreasonable requests. They also make that information public so people can see how the business responds. If Ricoh responds well and explains the delay, then it builds on their character and reputation - publicly. If they dismiss it without response, then that shows they may not be taking my complaint seriously. Regardless of what Ricoh does, they will not do anything other than listen and say party A is being reasonable or not.
If Ricoh comes back and tells me something like, "We're really sorry for the troubles, it turns out that this part was manufactured poorly and we've had a recent uptick in a failure of this part. We're currently back-ordered because we purged the suspect parts and are trying to rebuild stocks to replace all the bad ones." I would immediately thank them for keeping me honestly informed of the situation. I understand those things happen and please do what they can to fix it as soon as possible. I could tell people on the forums to be on the lookout for this failure and expect longer than usual repair times. It is not Ricoh's fault as their supplier had a bad batch of parts.
If Ricoh doesn't reply to me, I can't do anything but speculate. I can only read the forums, hear that Precision Camera takes their sweet time for no reason, and no one knows what to do to make it go by any faster.
I will reiterate that I think highly of Ricoh. I believe they are a good company that has designed a good product. I do like the K50. That's why I want my camera back (or an exact replacement). Otherwise, I'd be asking for my money back.
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Forum: Repairs and Warranty Service
03-31-2016, 04:42 PM
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No new updates for now, as I didn't expect much to happen for this week. But I have been following this thread and feel I should comment on some people's remarks.
First, I am not hoping to move in front of the queue or say I'm more important than anyone else. My intent is to tell Ricoh that it is unacceptable to have people wait 2 months or more to repair a camera that broke because they did a bad job making it. If Precision Camera is backlogged with a lot of cameras to repair, then maybe they can hire more people. If they are out of parts, do better at planning for shortages and order more parts to have in stock. How do any of you believe 2 months is acceptable when it takes 2 weeks to ship something from China.... on a boat.
A lot of people here also assume that I will have the camera repaired in less than 2 months. Given the experience from others in this forum, it could take 6 months before I get the camera back. Should I start the complaint after 6 months? As stated by some people, it takes weeks for government to respond. I'm starting my complaint process after 1 month has already passed to prevent it from extending well past 3 or 4 months. See what I did there? I planned ahead. Exactly what Ricoh/Precision Camera should be doing when it comes to repairs. "I expect 0.1% of cameras to break in the warranty period, the most common failures have historically been part X, therefore, I should have a stock of X part to cover that 0.1% of cameras that I think will break."
Ricoh themselves have stated that 3-5 weeks is excessive in getting repairs done. They told me that repairs normally take 3-5 days upon receipt, especially for common cameras like this one. Rare products that are expensive are more likely to have a part shortage because it is harder to predict when they'll need a repair with fewer of them out there.
Some believe that Ricoh is not at all responsible for the delays. I tend to think highly of Ricoh, but still believe they are partially responsible. Why don't they stock the parts in a warehouse in the US? Why are they shipping these parts from who knows where to Precision Camera?
Why do I believe that consumers should complain when companies do bad actions? Because otherwise they won't know they did anything wrong. Businesses are constantly trying to cut costs. One cost cutting they may have done is to do less testing for bad parts. If it costs $1 to test this part that fails 0.1% of the time, and we sell 1 million of these cameras, that's $1million in savings. We'll only get 1000 failures and it only costs $50 to repair it, then that's a cost of only $50,000. PROFIT! But guess what? It pisses off those 1000 people who had the failed part. Maybe the company can spend $100 per repair to have it repaired quickly? Less profit, but it'll make the customer happier. Or how about if the repair is taking longer than expected, I give this customer a replacement and sell the broken one as refurbished? There are lots of ways to make wait times shorter. I'm not telling them how to do it, I'm just telling them that 2 months+ is unacceptable.
All this being said, I do appreciate all of your feedback. If anything, it gives me more to think about and realize that I may be acting like an arrogant jerk, but I do have my reasons and am not doing it out of spite or anger.
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Forum: Repairs and Warranty Service
03-28-2016, 06:34 PM
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Yup, I did contact them over the phone and they informed me that they cannot escalate this over the phone. Any issue that is to be escalated must be in writing through their web form. That is the only way they can forward it up the management chain.
---------- Post added 03-28-16 at 06:46 PM ----------
Thanks for keeping me in check. At this moment, I have only officially filed a complaint with two places: The BBB and consumer protection. Neither are able to take any legal action and they are only able to forward requests to Ricoh. In addition, they will record these incidents in case they see a pattern and will take action only if many people have the same complaint. They will not do any legal action for me personally. The only thing they can do is a class action lawsuit and this is only if a lot of consumers complain.
At this time I have not threatened any lawsuits or engaged in their legal department. I have only made a formal complaint. This is basically the same as if I wrote a bad review on several websites. Do you believe I have gone too far doing this?
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Forum: Repairs and Warranty Service
03-28-2016, 05:16 PM
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Just to update some of you on the progress.
I contacted my local consumer protection agency and they say they can't do too much except contact the manufacturer with the complaint. However, they still want us to files these complaints because it builds up a case. If they see it happening a lot, they'll file a class action lawsuit with the attorney general.
I also contacted the Better Business Bureau and like with the consumer protection agency, they have no legal ability to do anything. But they were happy to take my complaint and forwarded it to Ricoh in a few hours. I'm not sure if it went out via mail or email, but it's on its way to corporate. If Ricoh doesn't reply, then they get a ding in their BBB rating, but I don't think that does much to deter consumers or encourage them to do better.
I contacted my credit card and they told me I have a legitimate claim and I can file a chargeback. The only issue is that I can't use their online form and need to call the claim in because the original date of purchase was more than 90 days ago. In any case, they can and will help. This would be the fastest way for me to get a refund so I can purchase a new camera and get to shooting photos. I'm reluctant to go this route as I'm afraid it will take the money from the retailer and not impact Ricoh at all. I will wait a few days before going this route.
If I do not file a chargeback, then I may file a small claims lawsuit. I realize it will take a long time and I'm likely to get the camera back by then, but at least it will be hit by their corporate lawyers and force them to take a serious look at the situation.
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Forum: Repairs and Warranty Service
03-28-2016, 04:07 PM
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The camera has been received by Precision for 3 weeks. It took them one or two days to determine the camera was broken and needed parts, at which point they "ordered the parts". It took 2 weeks after that for them to determine the part was backordered. I completely understand they cannot do repairs until they receive the camera. Once they have the camera in hand, that is when the clock starts. As for "nothing Precision or anyone else can do", there is plenty they can do. How about they send parts with a faster shipping courier? How about keeping better stock of what parts were used for repairs and order new ones before they run out?
I did contact Ricoh several times. The first time was in order to get information about where to send the camera for repairs. Ricoh advised me repair times would be in 3-5 days as it is a very common camera and they always have parts for a common camera in stock. They only have long repair times when someone sends a unique camera that they would not normally carry the parts needed for repair. I contacted Ricoh again after learning it would take 2 months for repair, and they said I had to send a request via their Web Form as they cannot forward a complaint to corporate via phone or email. Ricoh corporate has been unresponsive for more than a week.
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Forum: Repairs and Warranty Service
03-28-2016, 02:21 PM
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Thanks for the feedback. I try to stay reasonable in my expectations and was ok with having a camera break within 6 months of purchase. It's hopefully rare, but it happens. In the event the item is broken, it should be repaired in a reasonable time. Is 1 month reasonable? 2 months? 6 years? I also think it's not a good idea for consumers to just sit back and let companies just screw them over with slow repairs and non-communication. So we need to speak out against that, even if it means poor reviews on websites, talking to consumer protection agencies, etc. Otherwise, the company will think nothing is wrong and continue giving poor service.
If anyone has any tips on how to be the most vocal and make sure we're heard, I'd love to hear it. Otherwise, I'll try to find my own path and let you guys know what happens.
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Forum: Repairs and Warranty Service
03-28-2016, 12:52 PM
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Hi all,
My K-50 aperture control failed less than 6 months after I purchased my camera so I talked to Ricoh and they said I had to send it to Precision Camera for warranty repair. I did that and waited for a few weeks until they sent me a notice saying the part needed is backordered and won't be available for a few more weeks. I contacted Ricoh saying this is unacceptable and would like one of these resolutions since the camera was found to be defective due to poor workmanship:
1 - Repair and return the camera to me within 30 days of receipt
2 - Send me a loaner camera until the camera is repaired
3 - Send me a replacement body
4 - Refund me the price I paid
Ricoh has not responded to my email after yet another week, I'm tempted to take the next steps in escalating this. My options are: file a complaint with my credit card company and see if they'll do a chargeback, file a complaint with the BBB, file a complaint with the local consumer protection agency, or file a small claims lawsuit.
What do you guys think would be the best thing to do? I think it's wrong for a 6 month old camera to take 2 months+ for repairs under warranty. I'm patiently waiting for it to be repaired, but I am not going to wait indefinitely or be jerked around. Has anyone had this problem before and taken any steps to let Ricoh this is unacceptable?
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