Steve Arlow
Well-known member
I purchased a brand new Wimberley MKII tripod head from WEX at the beginning of last year and all seemed fine. It has not had extensive use, mostly for trips and long weekends which account for roughly 12-13weeks in total.
I began to notice problems in October on Scilly where there was a stiffness to panning left, resistance to the motion. This worsened, pretty bad in Israel where it was juddering to the left but not the right. I thought that it may have been to tight so adjusted the tension and this seemed to work for few days before returning to the same issue.
It got to the point that it was really interfering with photography and using my scope so I contact WEX from whome I bought inly for them to be unhelpful and advise that it was now out of warrentee (by about a month) and I needed to take it up with the manufacturer, who is in the states. I get the impression with WEX, not the first time I may add, that once they get your money out them they have no interest and fob you off to somewhere else and provide no post customer support.
Anyway after contacting Wimberley and the problem being diognosed as probably internal washers being cracked I was sent replacement parts which I struggled to replace. In short this solved nothing and the issue was in fact made worse. I put the original bits back and it was the same as before I switched them over but a few days later the head is again all but unusable and with phone call or further contact from Wimberley.
So I have an expensive £540 paperweight, a lack of support from WEX and may have to send the offending item to the states at high cost to get repaired, for which there is minimal amount of overall use, for some internal fault that would not be of my making.
I am not impressed with this head but I'm now stuck with it so is there anywhere in the UK who can fix these things. Has anyone else had similar problems.
I began to notice problems in October on Scilly where there was a stiffness to panning left, resistance to the motion. This worsened, pretty bad in Israel where it was juddering to the left but not the right. I thought that it may have been to tight so adjusted the tension and this seemed to work for few days before returning to the same issue.
It got to the point that it was really interfering with photography and using my scope so I contact WEX from whome I bought inly for them to be unhelpful and advise that it was now out of warrentee (by about a month) and I needed to take it up with the manufacturer, who is in the states. I get the impression with WEX, not the first time I may add, that once they get your money out them they have no interest and fob you off to somewhere else and provide no post customer support.
Anyway after contacting Wimberley and the problem being diognosed as probably internal washers being cracked I was sent replacement parts which I struggled to replace. In short this solved nothing and the issue was in fact made worse. I put the original bits back and it was the same as before I switched them over but a few days later the head is again all but unusable and with phone call or further contact from Wimberley.
So I have an expensive £540 paperweight, a lack of support from WEX and may have to send the offending item to the states at high cost to get repaired, for which there is minimal amount of overall use, for some internal fault that would not be of my making.
I am not impressed with this head but I'm now stuck with it so is there anywhere in the UK who can fix these things. Has anyone else had similar problems.