the ongoing saga of my miserable m8 purchase...

Good Corporate citizens

Good Corporate citizens

raid said:
.....Stephen and Tony are good businessmen, and they should be applauded for trying to assist Leica to get their act together. .....
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A successful Corporate raider is a good businessman, Tony Rose and Stephen at Cameraquest are good Corporate Citizens and I applaud them for stepping up with offers of assistance. It has long been said that the problem with American business is the Quarterly Report, i.e. satisfy the stockholders/bankers today with a good profit report and let tommorrow worry about itself. I know that Leica is a German company, but the Quarterly profit report thing has gone Global. There are fewer good Corporate Citizens every year. It is a sad state of affairs concerning how we treat each other as people. This mess should never have happened and would not have if someone in NJ had said, "How would I want this issue handled" and acted accordingly. How much bad PR has this generated todate and it is not over yet? Customer complaints cost money to resolve. Everytime an employee "looks into" this issue it costs Leica money, everytime, everyday! After more than 30 years in manufacturing, I have learned that it is cheaper to minimize customer complaints than to cut corners and invite them. The accountants will disaggress with me, but my experiences support my beliefs. Leica can not afford to dig too many holes like this one, if it is to survive much longer against the competion.

My heart felt condolences on the loss of sleep over this situation. Perseverance is your only course now. Stay in the fight until you either get satisfaction, or Leica says, "screw you, you are only one customer and we have too many to worry about little ol' you."

Life IS uncertain. Eat dessert first.
John
 
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Al Patterson said:
At this point, it is almost always cheaper tp replace rather than repair. A sad state of affairs really. And where do you take the laptop for recycling when you get the new one?
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Not really, one of mine was seriously damaged, I sent it to a repair shop and it returned within the week. The only thing was a puzzled telephone call about the cause of the damage (it was crushed under an Aurochs jawbone).
 
It sounds as though you are on track to getting this resolved. Please let us know how it turns out.

I would only buy new from any dealer if I could get the gear back to him for attention.

There are horror stories about all sorts of products that you would expect to be better. A friend of mine here in Australia has a very expensive (= complicated) new Mercedes-Benz that kept stopping unexpectedly. The local dealer, although he had been delighted to receive $150,000 for the sale of the car, wasn't up to the task of keeping it going. In exasperation my friend contacted Mercedes in Germany, the Complaints Department (I love the directness of that title- no "public relations" waffle). A part was flown to the end of the Earth within 24 hours and the dealer got a big serve from head office.
 
Again, condolences...

Again, condolences...

Really sorry to hear about your problems. How frustrating!

I guess I was lucky - I had a bad charger, silver filter when I wanted black, and a wrong size filter sent to me. Tony @ Popflash OVERNIGHTED replacements, not even asking that I return the originals until AFTER I got things right. My camera was ok, but I have no doubt he would have done the same with it had it been necessary.

I also got a few CV lenses from Stephen @ Cameraquest. The 50 1.5 was backfocusing. I sent it to him, he checked it out, then replaced it with a new one, all within a few days.

I guess the moral to the story is to buy from a dealer that will take care of you. Even if it costs a few more bucks....
 
"No doubt, the launching of M8 must have been a strain on a trimmed-down organisation."

I think my ordeal with Leica occurred before the M8 was launched.
There really are no adequate excuses. It is a BUSINESS. They treated me like i was an unwelcome relative asking for money. Fact is, i was polite through the entire mess, while they had both my money and my lens.
 
infocusf8@earthlink. said:
First let me say that I completely sympathize with your situation. I work at a small camera store that is also a Leica dealer and we have 100% backing from Leica to exchange any defective cameras and send them to Leica. We, the dealer handle the problem not our customers, so I do not understand why you didn't go to your dealer first to solve this issue. You do not say who your dealer is or that you tried to contact them first even though you say it was past the return period. Out of the half dozen M8's I've sold only one had a problem and it was debris on the sensor that I saw when the customer brought in some prints to show me. He wasn't even aware of it until I mentioned it and although it was past our return policy I gave him a new one off the shelf and sent his back to Leica. I hope your situation improves but I have to say that if you were dealing with a reputable dealer then this situation would have been done with a long time ago and it certainly isn't the norm nor a reason for others to stop buying Leica products.
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i was dealing with a dealer... the camera arrived in montreal via new york. within the first few frames it became very apparent there were vertical lines appearing in most of the frames. i contacted my dealer and said i wanted it replaced and i didn't want to pay to ship it back and forth. to make a long story short they said they would NOT pay for shipping so in essence the sold me a defective product and were not willing to eat the incurred cost to rectify the situation. i said this was NOT ACCEPTABLE and called leica... leica new jersey, in specific robert fisk said "no problem, we'll take care of it" at no cost to me. i sent it off to leica usa (new jersey) and... well here i am. no m8. as mentioned numerous times before, and discussed at length, kurland photo gave ME the impression they were not at all interested in helping me out. thus my call to leica.
really, the ole "hindsight is 20/20" comes to mind here. leica usa said "we'll take care of it" and even stated they would return the camera the following week! with no further cost to me. i just dropped every penny i had on the camera so all in all this seemed like a GREAT solution.
it also seems that this is not an isolated occurence. sure folks will have oodles of great experiences with their respected dealer BUT what happens when the dealer is no longer part of the loop? how about a year or so down the road? what if you relocate (as i often do)? leica most CERTAINLY DOES have a very serious issue with customer service and i am sure there are a few folks (beyond those who have echoed here) who would agree. i have owned a leica product in some shape or form for a very long time now and i am terribly dissapointed with this experience! so much so that i would be loathe to by another new leica product ever again.
 
I am still waiting for my M8 and a lens to be returned so can not really comment about the quality of service (6 weeks and counting). The real issue is that there is no technical service in the Uk so everything has to be sent to Germany. Although I said my repairs were urgent, my camera sat in Leica UK for 2 weeks waiting for a complete consignment before shipping. The lens whent faster as they had a nearly full load of these ready to go! Unfortunately I am not sure if the two will be reunited and I particularly wanted the focussing of the M8 checked with the lens!

I think the service is too slow however good it might turn out to be. But the real issue is that there is llittle,prospect of hiring an M8 as there are relatively few in circulation. I am fortunate that I do not need my M8 professionally, but If I had to rely on a caera to earn my living it would not be my M8.
 
Richard Marks said:
I am still waiting for my M8 and a lens to be returned so can not really comment about the quality of service (6 weeks and counting). The real issue is that there is no technical service in the Uk so everything has to be sent to Germany. Although I said my repairs were urgent, my camera sat in Leica UK for 2 weeks waiting for a complete consignment before shipping. The lens whent faster as they had a nearly full load of these ready to go! Unfortunately I am not sure if the two will be reunited and I particularly wanted the focussing of the M8 checked with the lens!

I think the service is too slow however good it might turn out to be. But the real issue is that there is llittle,prospect of hiring an M8 as there are relatively few in circulation. I am fortunate that I do not need my M8 professionally, but If I had to rely on a caera to earn my living it would not be my M8.
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If you had to rely on the M8 professionally, you would have at least two, like you would have at least two of any other brand of camera....
 
emraphoto said:
tony, that's a mighty fine offer from you. the problem is when i returned the m8 to leica i sent everything. boxes, cd's, battery, charger, manual, strap etc. i had done a little research on the "vertical line issue" and came to the conclusion that it most likely would be a replacement affair. thus i sent everything. i noted on the weigh bill that it was the complete package. what i recieved in return was a body and someones sd card. that's it. i can't send the camera back to anyone but leica at this point as it is a totally different serial number than the one i purchased and i have nothing but a box with a body in it. nothing else at this point.
a very very fine offer indeed and i think the world of you for offering. at this point i think i must wait for leica to open on monday and start calling again.
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I know they have all the goodies in NJ for your camera. It has happened more times than I can remember when Leica NJ has failed to return all that was semt them. We are here to help if you hit a brick wall. I want you to be TOTALLY assured you will be taken care of when it comes to this matter. You can Email me a Popflash@gmail.com if need be.

TR:)
 
Buy Local

Buy Local

i contacted my dealer and said i wanted it replaced and i didn't want to pay to ship it back and forth. to make a long story short they said they would NOT pay for shipping so in essence the sold me a defective product and were not willing to eat the incurred cost to rectify the situation.

I've said it before, I'll say it again BUY LOCAL, SUPPORT LOCAL, THEY WILL SUPPORT YOU.
 
It is not uncommon for dealers not to pay for shipping an item back to them that is deffective. Some do it. Others don't. It's a nice bennie when they do it. It's hard to know what to do. For the cost of one return ship you probably could have avoided all the hassles or headaches that ensued. Was it worth saving that $15? (I'm not blaming you, BTW. As I said - it's hard to know what to do. In retroepsct, of course, things are much clearer.)

/T
 
I know this is a little off-topic, but this is a scary story, and the reason I'm foot-dragging over the M8. 38 years of Leica, and the company seems to have... well, you know, lost its soul.

It wasn't so long ago that a pro could call New Jersey and they would send a camera to you to use BEFORE you sent yours in. Well, maybe it WAS a long time ago.

I hope this works out well for you.
 
$15
you really think i went through this to save $15?!?!
how about $225
shipping there, shipping back.

i contacted the LOCALS and they informed me they didn't have one in stock. thus i went the ny route.

anyhow, thanx a million tony. i hope i don't have to email you... but i will if it ends up a fruitless endeavour calling leica.

"If you had to rely on the M8 professionally, you would have at least two, like you would have at least two of any other brand of camera...."

well my friend that's a very good theory however i do use my cameras to make money. i don't have two m8's but i do have an m8, m6ttl and a r-d1s. i had planned two m8's yet at this point all that has changed... even with two m8's this would be a totally unacceptable situation.
 
Just out of curiosity, why did you not just buy locally from Jean Bardaji at Camtec Photo? Jean most certainly would have looked after the situation.
 
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