Boy, this one was a doozie.
I sent my beloved Nikon Fieldscope II ED into Nikon USA for service. I am the original owner - the scope was bought for me as a grad school graduation gift from my folks in the early 90s.
It has been very well used over the years, but still works amazingly well. It took a tough fall at the Point Reyes lighthouse last year when someone I was letting view through it managed to knock it over on its Bogen tripod and hit the concrete deck, resulting in a healthy dent in objective ring (this did not affect performance).
I figured it was time for a full service, including internal cleaning - it does have some dust and one stray hair(?) inside.
I sent it to Nikon, and received an initial email that said they were replacing the scope with a brand new Fieldscope III ED. In a strange way, I was sad about it, as I am really attached to my scope and didn't want to lose it, but it's hard to pass up a brand new scope, esp. the Fieldscope III which is still a classicly built unit.
The following week I received another email that said I wouldn't be getting the Fieldscope III, but instead would get a $1700 Nikon credit. Considering the used prices on the Fieldscope, that seemed great, but led to a very strange evolution.
The reality is that though an array of Fieldscope IIIs are listed on the Nikon site, none of them are actually available. I had about four emails back and forth with Nikon about that.
Really, nothing else in sport optics appealed or made sense. The EDG scope has a bad reputation and looks like a piece of paramilitary gear, and spending over $1,000 to upgrade to that didn't make sense. Essentially at this point Nikon either has bottom or mid range sport optics, or top optics that don't perform best in class.
So I spent a bit of time considering a camera, with the idea of reselling it and using the $$ to buy a mint used Fieldscope III. After finding a good choice for that, Nikon said I could only use the credit for sport optics.
At this point I got very frustrated, as I really just wanted my scope cleaned. I asked them to fully clean the scope including the interior and return it.
At that point, maddeningly, I was told that Nikon would only do the work if it could be returned to "as new". Thus the bent objective ring became an albatross - they couldn't bend it back so that the threads could be used, they didn't have a replacement ring, and thus they wouldn't do anything to the scope at all. I wrote a frustrated but appropriate email, which wasn't responded to, and they returned the scope without comment to me.
After all that, I happily used the scope last weekend with my niece and nephew on Umtanum Canyon, where we viewed amongst other things Chats, Lazuli Buntings, Prairie Falcons, and Bighorn Sheep on a lovely, windy spring day. I guess some things are simply meant to be.
I sent my beloved Nikon Fieldscope II ED into Nikon USA for service. I am the original owner - the scope was bought for me as a grad school graduation gift from my folks in the early 90s.
It has been very well used over the years, but still works amazingly well. It took a tough fall at the Point Reyes lighthouse last year when someone I was letting view through it managed to knock it over on its Bogen tripod and hit the concrete deck, resulting in a healthy dent in objective ring (this did not affect performance).
I figured it was time for a full service, including internal cleaning - it does have some dust and one stray hair(?) inside.
I sent it to Nikon, and received an initial email that said they were replacing the scope with a brand new Fieldscope III ED. In a strange way, I was sad about it, as I am really attached to my scope and didn't want to lose it, but it's hard to pass up a brand new scope, esp. the Fieldscope III which is still a classicly built unit.
The following week I received another email that said I wouldn't be getting the Fieldscope III, but instead would get a $1700 Nikon credit. Considering the used prices on the Fieldscope, that seemed great, but led to a very strange evolution.
The reality is that though an array of Fieldscope IIIs are listed on the Nikon site, none of them are actually available. I had about four emails back and forth with Nikon about that.
Really, nothing else in sport optics appealed or made sense. The EDG scope has a bad reputation and looks like a piece of paramilitary gear, and spending over $1,000 to upgrade to that didn't make sense. Essentially at this point Nikon either has bottom or mid range sport optics, or top optics that don't perform best in class.
So I spent a bit of time considering a camera, with the idea of reselling it and using the $$ to buy a mint used Fieldscope III. After finding a good choice for that, Nikon said I could only use the credit for sport optics.
At this point I got very frustrated, as I really just wanted my scope cleaned. I asked them to fully clean the scope including the interior and return it.
At that point, maddeningly, I was told that Nikon would only do the work if it could be returned to "as new". Thus the bent objective ring became an albatross - they couldn't bend it back so that the threads could be used, they didn't have a replacement ring, and thus they wouldn't do anything to the scope at all. I wrote a frustrated but appropriate email, which wasn't responded to, and they returned the scope without comment to me.
After all that, I happily used the scope last weekend with my niece and nephew on Umtanum Canyon, where we viewed amongst other things Chats, Lazuli Buntings, Prairie Falcons, and Bighorn Sheep on a lovely, windy spring day. I guess some things are simply meant to be.
