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Forum: Monthly Photo Contests
03-07-2018, 03:35 PM
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I would like to nominate this photo
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Forum: Monthly Photo Contests
03-02-2018, 12:01 AM
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I would like to nominate this photo.
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Forum: Monthly Photo Contests
03-02-2018, 12:00 AM
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I would like to nominate this photo.
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Forum: Winners' Showcase
03-02-2018, 12:00 AM
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I would like to nominate this photo.
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Forum: Monthly Photo Contests
03-01-2018, 11:59 PM
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I would like to nominate this photo.
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Forum: Monthly Photo Contests
03-01-2018, 11:57 PM
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I would like to nominate this photo.
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
02-14-2018, 11:44 PM
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I use K-3II and 16-85 all the time for hiking and I hike a lot. Weight is not a problem if it's attached to the bakcpack straps.
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Forum: Monthly Photo Contests
02-14-2018, 04:41 AM
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The impressive sandstone monoliths of Meteora in Greece.
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Forum: Monthly Photo Contests
01-05-2018, 08:01 AM
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I'd like to nominate this.
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Forum: Repairs and Warranty Service
12-13-2017, 04:24 AM
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Considering it presented similar symptoms like freezing and on/off switch not working after the next shooting (I think it was the next day after I picked it for the 1st time), I think it's safe to assume that it wasn't fixed or at least not fixed properly.
Egalaxy Cyprus only, after I went to their shop by myself. As always they were apologizing but were clueless about what's going on (or at least that's what they claimed).
Ricoh's aftersale told me that Egalaxy Greece would communicate with me but they never did.
June 13th : Ricoh Imaging Europe responded to my first mail asking how my camera ended up in France and telling me there is an open case from Greece but they have to make sure.
June 14th: Confirmed it is the same case and told me they would find answers by the end of the week.
June 16th: They mailed me that the camera had a "fluid damage" which would be uneconomical to fix consequently the camera was sent back to Greece (didn't say when). Lastly he wrote that they inquired Egalaxy about the case and waited their response.
Didn't hear from them or Egalaxy for the next 20 days.
July 4th : I mailed R.I.EU that I'm still waiting.
They answered the same day that they thought Egalaxy was in contact with me. On the same mail (CC) urged Egalaxy to contact me and solve the issue once and for all (didn't say how).
Didn't hear from them or Egalaxy for the next 8 days.
July 12th : Again I mailed them that no one reached me. I also wrote that their customer service is a joke and that they (R.I.EU) should have solved the issue by themselves and then deal with the --obvious by now-- incompetent official dealer and their service (the case was 8 months old by the time!)
The R.I.EU's employee (always the same) answered the same day in an offended way (!) that they and Egalaxy have a great partnership. He also wrote that he personally contacted Mr. ....... (owner or manager I guess) and he told him things that I had concealed. Like that I was using a loan camera Egalaxy loaned me and that I had never spoken with anyone from Athens before (meaning the two phone calls from Athens I guess)
He also wrote that I never said anything about Egalaxy's offer to keep the demo (how would I if nobody made the offer anyway? Didn't even contact let alone make an offer.)
Naturally I answered back same day quoting the mails in which I had actually written about the loan and the two phone calls. As for the offer I wrote I never got one and that I wouldn't have accepted anyway.
Then I asked the 3 questions I have talked about at the beginning of the thread and he answered the way I explained. He also wrote that he found the offer very generous and it would be the demo or I would have to pay for a new one.
I answered that I have no need for "favors" of that kind and that I wanted my camera back and return theirs.
He answered OK.
It took Egalaxy more than two weeks to send the camera from Athens to Larnaca (usually it takes less than 2 days for parcels to arrive)
I went there dropped the loan and picked mine which would not switch off from the switch any more. Also the buffering was painfully slooow and lastly it wouldn't save the last menu settings (naturally since it does that when it is switched of and not when someone pulls the battery out)
So Steve to answer your comment, yes my complaint was for Egalaxy till I expressed it to Ricoh and they also exhibited unacceptable behavior by wasting my time and basically suggesting me to keep the demo and "shut up".
In case you didn't figure it out, the issue by then was not the camera body itself but two companies disrespecting me and wasting my time. If a week after I got the camera for service the first time, somebody had called me and say that there was humidity in the body, I might had objected, the marketing claims would still be questionable but things would be different.
Aside from this, when a company outsources part of their service and sales to partners, these partners are supposed to keep up to company's standards and operate accordingly.
Whether Ricoh has low standards or doesn't inspect if their partners comply with them is Ricoh's fault and Ricoh's alone.
According to the EU law they don't, at least on first degree. They do have ethical responsibility to people who buy stuff with their name on though.
Especially after the seller's behavior was pointed out.
Chris
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Forum: Repairs and Warranty Service
12-11-2017, 06:30 PM
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The two years haven't elapsed yet (I had the camera for ten months when I gave it,) they will by January 2018. Anyway, wiser how? Financially? I've written off the camera already.
Besides, changing system would cost me more than a beaten camera body would fetch.
So, marketing claims are of the essence only if I splashed it and then tried to deceive them? How about if I used it under rain, or was this your next question?
That's a product primarily made to save you from accidents and extend the one year warranty which for most products is inadequate. It shouldn't be used to absolve manufacturers from fulfilling obligations which are included in the price the consumers have already paid for.
No need to apologize, I'm not here to collect sympathy, take revenge or to express anger. I just want to hear the members' opinion about my arguments and let the community know about my experience with Ricoh's customer service.
Before buying my first Pentax (K-50) this was one of the places I looked for users' experiences. When I want to buy something I always read the bad reviews and I consider that a positive benefit of a forum or site.
Writing to you right now is a positive benefit. What's more healthy than exchanging arguments in a civilized manner?
Naturally not all the reviews and complaints are fair but that's not a reason to disregard all of them.
About Athens. They failed to fix the camera the first time and returned it to me as fixed. The second time, they spent more than two months with no result whatsoever and after France returned it to them they didn't even bother to communicate with me. What's admirable about that?
The claim with consumer protection is over. What they told me more or less on the phone is that the dealer evaded the questions asked by answering about another case after a very long wait.
---------- Post added 12-11-17 at 06:50 PM ----------
I asked if they did and their answer was that they didn't because there is no way to check.
The mount has no seal anyway so by mounting a testing flange it would be possible to test the rest of the camera.
Before voiding a warranty because of humidity in the camera body, shouldn't they start ticking off things?
When they designed the K-3 there were not parameters set about WR that the camera had to comply with?
There are for temperature (-10).
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Forum: Repairs and Warranty Service
12-11-2017, 08:50 AM
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Thanks Paul,
I'm sure they know the regulation.
What I'm not sure is if it weights in how they conduct their customer service.
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Forum: Repairs and Warranty Service
12-11-2017, 03:14 AM
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I don't take anything personally. I'm open to all arguments, especially valid ones. :)
The demo offer looked more like a "we sh%it in our nest but won't admit" solution to me.
Now, even if the damage happened on my possession shouldn't they still test the camera for defects like faulty sealing?
As for their professionalism, their demo was obviously mistreated and had lots of dust (mirror area and on the focusing screen
plus hot shoe cover and sync socket plug missing).
The worst part is that when they returned my camera, it had debris on the focusing screen too!
Which was not there when I gave it to them (i never blow air through the mount for this exact reason and sensor self-cleaning
worked so well I never had to clean the sensor anyway for the time I had it).
If I will go legal the only way according to the law is me to sue the dealer who sold me the body (Egalaxy) and of course my claim
won't be just a camera body. It will be about legal expenses and loss of my time among others.
About the body getting humidity I also have the Pentax aftersales "It's not likely" in writing. Not likely is not
a denial from their part.
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Forum: Repairs and Warranty Service
12-10-2017, 01:20 AM
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First of all,
Thank you all for taking the time to answer this.
About corporates and guarantees now, the fact that many of them use fraudulent marketing tactics
is not an excuse for the rest to do so as well. I know that others do it but the thing is that they should
stop doing it as well.
As for Ricoh Japan maybe I will give one more try but I wouldn't hope much. I reached them the first time
and they just passed my mail to Ricoh Europe who were probably more worried about finishing this for their
dealer than their customer.
I bet that if I hadn't said anything by now they wouldn't have answered even by now. The fact that they loaned
me the demo so I could keep working was great from them.
The fact that they more or less said "you have the demo you should be happy," well... that's bad customer service.
Even more if they tried to cover a mistake (if there was one).
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Forum: Repairs and Warranty Service
12-09-2017, 05:12 PM
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a) I wouldn't know. I have read of other cases with crazy shutters and dead on/off switches and they were replaced.
b) I know there are no guarantees but your product has to deliver what you imply that it does.
There is a reason that they don't have an IP rating and lets be honest, it is a shady one.
c) I still wouldn't keep it on principle.
I bought it cash.
In any case there is no excuse for not resolving the issue in less than a month. Even if their answer would have been the same.
---------- Post added 12-09-17 at 05:19 PM ----------
Yes, I can be very persistent especially when a corporation is taking my money
and then disrespects me about something that costs them peanuts.
I'm not sure that Ricoh is worried about Pentax's reputation.
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Forum: Repairs and Warranty Service
12-09-2017, 04:37 PM
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True but there is a conflict when you advertise you products using images depicting your cameras getting splashed by
a bucketload (other brands don't do that) and then say that if humidity is found in the camera, its the customer's fault de facto.
As for the delay, there is just not any excuse. They should replace the body just for that.
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Forum: Repairs and Warranty Service
12-09-2017, 04:07 PM
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My problems with Pentax started a year ago.
About ten months after I bought my Pentax K-3II, I had an incident in which the camera
presented uncontrollable rapid shooting which didn’t stop untill I removed the battery since
the switch didn’t work.
There were a couple of times that the camera “froze” prior to that, but I disregarded
the incidents, thinking that it was just a software glitch.
I took the camera to the local dealer in Larnaca/Cyprus (EGalaxy) and they sent it to Greece for service.
I think It was the end of October or the beginning of November. The camera came back around three
weeks later. Two days after, it presented the same problem. I recorded the incident
with my phone (video here) and took the camera back.
By the end of January and since there was no progress from the service center (their answer was
“they are looking into it” all the time,) they sent me another K-3II from Greece as a loan which was
apparently a demo. And I say apparently because it looked like it had a hard life with lots of dust
in the focusing screen and the mirror area. Anyway I was grateful to have it.
Two months later I received a call from Athens telling me that they couldn’t find the problem so
the camera was already sent to France for further investigation.
A month later they called and told me that in France they had found traces of humidity on a board (corrosion)
implying that the camera had taken water from outside but not saying it with certainty. That was like 4 months
after I had touched the camera for the last time.
I asked if they had seen any traces of “humidity” in Athens and he told me they didn’t. He asked me if I had
dropped the camera in the water and I told him definitely not. Last think he said was that they would ask for
replacement and see if France would approve one.
After I didn’t have any news from them for more than a month (it was June already), I sent an e-mail to
Ricoh in Japan describing my problem. They pushed my complaint to… you guessed it, France
and the aftersales department of Ricoh Imaging Europe.
From aftersales they sent me an e-mail asking me for the serial number in order to find the case.
I didn’t have it since the box was with the camera.
On June 16th (7 months after I delivered the camera for the 2nd time) they sent me an email from
aftermarket telling me that they had find fluid damage in the camera and since repairing was too
expensive they had sent it back to Athens as it was. He also told me that he mailed Athens about
it and was expecting an answer.
20 days later I was still waiting for an answer, so I mailed aftersales again asking for an answer.
They mailed back that someone from Athens should have contacted me already. He wrote
on the same mail (in a way like “George contact Chris now and resolve the case once and for all”)
to someone in Athens, to contact me and resolve the case immediately and CC the mail to Athens too.
What they were apparently doing was throwing the ball to each other about who would tell
me that the camera couldn't be fixed and that they considered me responsible for the
damage and wouldn’t cover it.
Nobody had said anything by then.
I naturally got annoyed after almost 8 months of this and texted him that they had the
worst customer service I had ever worked with and their delays and lack of efficiency were inexcusable.
His answer was that he contacted the manager in Athens who told him that I had their demo all this time
which I hadn’t told him (1st lie. I had written about it) and that they told him they had already proposed
me to keep the demo (2nd lie) and he thought that their offer was very “generous”.
I answered by rubbing to his face the part of the mail that I had written about the demo.
Then I told him that Athens hadn’t contacted me for 3 months and even if they did now,
I wouldn’t accept the demo anyway.
Lastly, I asked him 3 questions:
A. Why didn’t they see the corrosion in Athens after 3 months of looking for the problem?
B. Did they perform any kind of weatherproofing test to check if their gear actually delivers what they
advertise that it does?
C. How they were sure in France that the board corrosion came from me after the camera had traveled
from Cyprus to Athens , back to Cyprus then back to Athens and finally to France with the plastic mount
cover (no lens) for more than 3 months?
The answer I got was:
A. It took them so long because they were looking elsewhere in the camera.
B. They can’t perform any test because the system consists of the body
and a lens and that both have to be WR?? (Like they couldn’t make waterproof
flange for the mount and test the body.)
C. It’s not likely (exact words) because the parcels were not damaged.
After that I understood that any further waste of my time had no point and demanded my old camera
to be sent back (which again took them weeks) and gave back theirs.
Even though I knew that the case was burned and Ricoh’s customer service was totally useless, I opened
a case at the Consumer’s protection office (which has no legal authority in Cyprus anyway).
They called me 3 weeks ago and told me that Egalaxy didn’t answer them for weeks
and when they eventually did answer it was for another case (a lens I sent to fix decentering which took them “only” 2 months).
So they just played dumb and I finally accepted that a thousand Euro went down the drain.
Any thoughts?
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Forum: Monthly Photo Contests
12-09-2017, 01:19 PM
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A shot of a gerbera with my 50mm 1.7 on bellows.
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Forum: Winners' Showcase
08-02-2017, 12:29 AM
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Forum: Monthly Photo Contests
07-03-2017, 12:58 AM
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Forum: Monthly Photo Contests
02-16-2016, 11:54 AM
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Forum: Monthly Photo Contests
01-29-2016, 01:37 PM
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This is made from 3 images
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Forum: Pentax Forums Giveaways
01-19-2016, 04:30 AM
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With the use of bellows and a good legacy lens with manual aperture you can get into macro photography and have lots of fun on budget.
It can also give you more magnification than a macro lens.
 Pentax with bellows by Chrisostomos Kamberis, on Flickr
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