Renze de Vries
Monday 23rd May 2005, 00:06
Hello (forthcoming) Leica-owners,
Let me tell you about my experiences with the (once?) famous Leica after sales-service.
After reading some horrorstories here and there, I was anxious to try the Leica service out myself as soon as I got the chance. And I did. My Ultravid 8x42 BL, bought in november last year, came with a focus mechanism not altogether to my liking. As reported elsewhere on this forum, the focus wheel of the Ultravid can sometimes be a bit hairy, a bit stuttering. I think it's a consequence of Leica's design philosophy not to use lubricants on the moving parts (and well justified as such, because it makes the binoculars almost immune to large changes in temperature), but anyway, the focus wheel should of course operate sufficiently smooth in normal use to make fine-focussing easy and non-irritating. Well, mine obviously didn't, and it aggravated me enough to have the bins serviced in Leica's headquarters in Solms, Germany.
They came back two days ago and yes indeed, they nicely smoothened out the focussing. They sent me a report of the repair also, with Leica's customer service policy printed on the back. With regard to repair time it says that in normal circumstances (repair parts available a.s.o) Leica will repair things within 3 weeks. Well, my bins came in on 29/4 and were shipped back to me on 11/5.
Then there was another thing I asked them to do. Two weeks after I bought the Ultravids, I cleaned the lenses and accidentily scratched one of the objectives (grain of sand probably, didn't see it, but grrrr: circular scratches on the coating). Although I couldn't see any detrimental effect of the scratches on the view at all, I asked the Leica people to appraise the scratched lens and if they thought it necessary to replace it they should do just that. Again, they did. In fact, they replaced both the objective lenses (they're matched probably?).
Now for the costs. There's a figure on the repair report. It reads 0,00.
Renze de Vries
Let me tell you about my experiences with the (once?) famous Leica after sales-service.
After reading some horrorstories here and there, I was anxious to try the Leica service out myself as soon as I got the chance. And I did. My Ultravid 8x42 BL, bought in november last year, came with a focus mechanism not altogether to my liking. As reported elsewhere on this forum, the focus wheel of the Ultravid can sometimes be a bit hairy, a bit stuttering. I think it's a consequence of Leica's design philosophy not to use lubricants on the moving parts (and well justified as such, because it makes the binoculars almost immune to large changes in temperature), but anyway, the focus wheel should of course operate sufficiently smooth in normal use to make fine-focussing easy and non-irritating. Well, mine obviously didn't, and it aggravated me enough to have the bins serviced in Leica's headquarters in Solms, Germany.
They came back two days ago and yes indeed, they nicely smoothened out the focussing. They sent me a report of the repair also, with Leica's customer service policy printed on the back. With regard to repair time it says that in normal circumstances (repair parts available a.s.o) Leica will repair things within 3 weeks. Well, my bins came in on 29/4 and were shipped back to me on 11/5.
Then there was another thing I asked them to do. Two weeks after I bought the Ultravids, I cleaned the lenses and accidentily scratched one of the objectives (grain of sand probably, didn't see it, but grrrr: circular scratches on the coating). Although I couldn't see any detrimental effect of the scratches on the view at all, I asked the Leica people to appraise the scratched lens and if they thought it necessary to replace it they should do just that. Again, they did. In fact, they replaced both the objective lenses (they're matched probably?).
Now for the costs. There's a figure on the repair report. It reads 0,00.
Renze de Vries