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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mike F" data-source="post: 3583707" data-attributes="member: 142462">Well, accidents happen. Two days ago I dropped my beloved 20 year old Trinovid 10x25 BCA's. They were in the case and I was picking up a handful of things at the same time. Note to self - your Leicas are worthy of exclusive handling! Anyway, somehow they slipped out of my hand and hit the deck. Removed them from the case for a quick inspection - no visible damage, but - out of collimation! Damn!Today I phoned Leica UK and spoke to Mark Symes hoping to get the address for Leica service, Portugal, so I could send them off. These old Trinovids from 1997 came with a 30 year guarantee, but of course I had no expectation that they would be covered by that! I was right, but I happen to be travelling to the UK next week and Mark suggested that I could drop them in and they could send them to Portugal and ship them back to me free of charge. He also told me that Leica's service and repair charges had undergone a revision (this is not sounding so good, I thought!) and that all charges had been much reduced! What?! This is my lucky day! But there was more. Mark said that he would have a word with David Slater in the service department about the matter and he would get back to me to confirm that they could ship them off for me. He came back 10 minutes later to say that as they were Trinovid BCA's and not gas filled David could do the re-collimation himself and would do it free of charge as a good-will gesture! How's that for service? Fixing accidental damage on a 20 year old bin. If this sounds somewhat gushing, I'll admit that it is. I'm very impressed. Genuinely. But here's the real reason for me posting this experience. I had a chat with Mark about Leica service in general. My experience has only been excellent, but we discussed the fact that this hasn't always been everyone's experience. He was very honest with me and admitted that when the servicing had moved from London to Portugal (where most of it is still done) there was a period when things were not good, and some people had bad experiences. 'We (Leica) dropped the ball', are the words he used. However, he assured me that that was now quite some time ago and that these days Leica are very concerned with their reputation for customer care and service and are doing all they can to ensure that they are on at least a par with everyone else. It's unfortunate of course that if bad experiences in the past have been reported on this forum then they are there for all time to read, but given my excellent experience I wanted to report here that Leica UK are doing all they can to rebuild their customer service reputation.</blockquote>

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