Kowa after sales - good, bad or indifferent? (1 Viewer)

The 883 is one of three scopes I am considering buying, but never having had any Kowa products I have no experience of their after sales performance. Through personal experience I have found Swarovski are very good and Leica a bit more hit and miss. If I'm forking out over £2000 on a product I'd like an idea of what to expect if something goes wrong.

Anyone got any experience to share?

Cheers

Craig,

I've thankfully only had to use their services once, when the zoom eyepiece started to get black flakes appearing at just one magnification - it got so bad I had to return it. In the end, it took about 3 weeks, but they replaced it with a brand new one, so from that one experience I'd say good!

Cliff.

Craig,
I think people in different countries may have different experiences if there are local service companies.
My experience with the German Kowa service was not too great: my Highlander needed recollimation, and my local optics shop sent it in to Kowa. After 4 weeks, I started asking about news. In the end, the optics shop placed probably a dozen or more calls until it got an acknowledgment that the bino was still under inspection. Finally, I got the Highlander back after about 7 weeks, and collimation is now okay (not perfect, though). So the service quality was perhaps acceptable, communication from Kowa was appalling.

I too experienced the paint-flakes in a zoom eyepiece, and i returned to the retailer (CleySpy in Norfolk) and showed them the problem. I also asked if this could be cleaned, rather than replaced, as i didn't want it to happen again with another item.
I was expecting a wait of about 5-6 weeks (CS kindly lent me an eyepiece), but it was back in 3, with no problems since.
However, try as i might, i couldn't find a serial number on the eyepiece, so it's difficult to say if it was cleaned or replaced!
In short, my experience of Kowa's service was very efficient.