Two Dead M9s

[charliecruise]

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The following are a few observations made after reading this thread:

 

1. If the respondents of this thread spent as much time complaining directly to Leica as they did in writing their threads, we may have a different situation on our hands.

 

2. Unless you are a significant player in the camera division of Leica, I'm afraid to say that not one of us has a foggy concerning the motives for the release of the M9Ti.

 

3. The fact that Leica appears to have a greater demand for their supply of cameras and lenses is certainly not a problem for their business. As such, and because of this, they could churn out any matter of rubbish and Leica enthusiasts loyal to the brand would still buy it. A truly unhappy customer will cease buying a company's products or services and if this happens on a wide scale, any company will be forced to listen. From my vantage point, if you're not prepared to walk away from the table then you have no right complaining; even if you've spent thousands of dollars.

[ho_co]

Utter nonsense! Between myself and many, many of my fellow professionals of the Sixties we never, ever had a defective out-of-the-box Leica. In fact, I still have six Leica Ms and lenses from the era that are still just fine.

 

Knock off the impressionistic opinions. Get facts.

 

Getting a bit confused there, aren't you?

 

I have half a dozen Leicas and lenses from that era that work just fine as well. But that has nothing to do with your first contention.

 

I worked in a camera store in the sixties and for Leica in the seventies and eighties, and despite the illogical and meaningless construction of your statement, I can say (as I did) from personal experience that there were occasional out-of-the box defective Leicas at that time.

 

My, my, such touchiness! Of course, I may have been further from Wetzlar than you, so it may have been all the shipping that caused the defective units I saw.

 

 

 

... As a matter of fact, very few cameras, other than older models, came in for repair at all. (Except when we started selling Mirandas.)

And with all those glowing reports from Consumer Reports, too...

[ho_co]

... Unless you are a significant player in the camera division of Leica, I'm afraid to say that not one of us has a foggy concerning the motives for the release of the M9Ti....

Charlie, are you saying that you reject all management statements out of hand, or are you saying that you reject Leica's management statements at the photokina Fragestunde (http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-blog/de/2010/09/leica-fragestunde-photokina-das-protokoll/)?

 

Maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree, but I'd have thought any special-edition Leica is generally about additional income or, at a minimum, additional exposure.

 

 

I do agree with you (point 3) that both the argument, "I spent XXX kilobucks on this product and I want better service" and the argument, "For XXX kilobucks, I expect this product to work flawlessly" are egocentric and meaningless.

 

In that regard, a couple years ago, I overheard a car salesman explaining to one of his customers in the service bay, "You can't expect a finely tuned German car to be as reliable as a Toyota Camry."

[NZDavid]

Toyota is a good example of a company that totally ignored its previous record for reliability and focussed on expansion and world domination above all else -- with disastrous results. A dire warning for those companies that think bigger is always better. There are, of course, many other examples of companies that followed the same thinking, most now expired.

 

If you spend more, shouldn't you expect better, more reliable products? Don't see what is egocentric about that at all...or is it just me?

[charliecruise]

Howard, I missed that article (not that I can read German anyway). In any event, regardless of what was said, I rarely take information at face value. I would agree, however, that it surely has either to do with exposure or income. Then again, you might be surprised - some business moves lack a rational explanation at times.

 

If you spend more, shouldn't you expect better, more reliable products? Don't see what is egocentric about that at all...or is it just me?

 

Sadly David it is a falsehood to believe that just because you spend more you are entitled to more. Some of the best companies offer exceptional service and quality for very little.

 

The argument that I'm making is that an educated buyer should do their homework regarding a product before purchasing it. In the case of the M9, it would quite simply be silly to purchase this product expecting perfection when any number of articles show that it's far from it.

 

Sticking with the car examples, if I purchased a Ferrari 458 I would be well aware that there have been numerous examples of it catching fire. Granted, it's a premium car and I should expect more, but the simple fact is that this particular car has a serious fault. As a buyer, I can choose to ignore this fact and still buy the product, or I can take this as a warning to stay clear. Ultimately, the decision is mine, but I don't have the right to moan if the car caught fire after I purchased it.

 

All in all, money is not an indicator of quality; especially when there are stories showing quite the contrary. In addition, ignorance is not an excuse either. Naturally, I think it's bum luck that both your M9's were DOA, but you can't say that this was a complete surprise given the amount of information out there re the number of issues plaguing this camera. Regardless of the reason for this, the simple fact is that as soon as you handed over your cold hard cash to purchase the M9, you signed up to all that comes with it: the good, the bad and the darn right ugly. It reminds me of a marriage, but I'd never let my wife hear me calling her ugly! haha

[Doc Henry]

I dropped my leather bag with my M9 (+ M8+ lux 35mm asph) and with its 50mm Summilux asph from my knees, while sitting on a chair (about a height of 0.60 meters).

The edge of the UV filter is distorted on almost 2 inches. I continued to shoot in Vietnam without problem with my M9 (and M8)

 

I think that for the case of David (2 cameras at the same time,down), the package must have a big shock during transportation, to be damaged as well.

Anyway, transport insurance supports this damage

That is what the dealer will do !

 

Regards

Henry

[ozdavid]

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Hi Henry,

 

The camera packaging was unmarked - in mint condition.

 

The Dealer returned both bodies to Adeal, the Australian distributor. They happily accepted them and have sent them back to Solm at Leica's request where they will be replaced.

 

Regards

David

[Doc Henry]

Hi David,

I think there was a big shock ( package dropped from the aircraft during unloading ) : circuits or other components in the two cameras may be damaged (kinetic energy) .

As a head injury (road accident) we see nothing outside but the shock wave can compress the brain and can cause damage (visible on the scanner or MRI).

Best regards

Henry

[thighslapper]

Hi All,

 

Having waded through all these posts and got progressively more annoyed by some comments there are several obvious points......

 

If other forums are anything to go by it is people with problems that tend to join in an effort to find solutions or confirm suspicions, so I am doubtful about the comment that thousands of disgruntled leica users are out there and remain unidentified.

 

As consumers we are happy to pay 2-4x the cost of a leica on a car and seem unsurprised at the recall/failure rates they have.

 

You can speculate endlessly on poor QC but without the actual numbers and a breakdown of the types of problem you cannot come to any reliable conclusions.

 

You cannot compare a hybrid mechanical/digital device made in low numbers with substantial human input to mass produced electronic devices.

 

Leica has a new(ish) product which is has exceeded its sales expectations with the result that demand greatly exceeds supply and is certainly impacting on QC. There is a knock on effect in demand for lenses and accessories with similar pressures. Once the 'bulge' is over and any recurrent issues are identified and fixed the number of problems will diminish.

 

You can test all you like but until you actually manufacture 1000's of a product you will never pick up the more esoteric potential faults in the process or components.

 

I returned an ex-demo 18/3.4 (exchanged by return of post with a new one!) with a stuck diaphragm at full aperture and focus issues on one side of the frame. I suspect it had been dropped by someone in the shop. The only QC issue was me not having checked it thoroughly enough before I took it home...... idiot.... (and I used it for 2 weeks before the fact that all the pics were at 1/1000-1/4000 sec made me wonder why....!!)

[jaapv]

Jaap, my frustration is with the kind of response I've quoted above. In several earlier posts to this thread, I made what I hope were unemotive, well reasoned contributions on an issue which seriously effects some of us. To have these real concerns trivialised and suggest they are muddled and border on the "imbacilic" is not just frustrating. Quite frankly, it's offensive.

 

It is NOT ok for equipment of this value to have the fail rates that are being reported. It is NOT ok when Leica Customer Services fail to communicate adequately. It is NOT ok when parts are mysteriously unavailable for the completion of warranty repairs, yet at the same time available for newly announced product which plainly will use some of those same parts.

 

I'm a passionate evangelist for Leica - but I don't feel compelled to defend the company at every turn of the road. Clearly, there are or have been some failings in QC and customer service. So I repeat my earlier plea: Leica, what is there to lose in an open and honest conversation with us about these issues? It would help us to value each other more, enable us both to understand these matters more clearly; we may even discover we are unfairly maligning you. You (Leica) and we (your passionate buyers) have everything to gain and nothing to lose from that kind of open, respectful conversation.

 

But I fear it's falling on deaf ears and buried under excuses like dropped cartons and the distance between northern and southern hemispheres.

 

I suggest you read my post more carefully. For instance, I am not saying the concerns are imbecilic, I am summarizing some posts in this thread that suggest Leica is behaving that way. If yours did not do that, my summary cannot include you

Furthermore, there is not one word of defensiveness for Leica in the post. It just provides some rational alternatives in an attempt to bring some balance to the discussion. I do not understand your defensiveness about being down-under btw. I live about ten miles from Rotterdam harbour, the largest container terminal in the world. Sometimes, sitting in my garden I can hear the crash of containers being dropped....

[jaapv]

It's unreasonable to suggest that factory-packed M9's failed under poor handling during shipment. Look at Tina's M8 (http://gallery.leica-users.org/d/178681-2/090917_665_09798.jpg), which is still working despite having had a bit more wear than would be caused by shipping.

 

There's nothing wrong with just saying to David, "Okay, you got two bad ones." It's surprising but not statistically unreasonable.

 

If shipping were the cause, there would be a higher incidence of initially defective M9's the further from Solms their delivery points.

 

Yes, we all wish everything were perfect out of the box.

 

So does Leica, because warranty repairs add to their costs. To imply that management isn't interested in initial defects is absurd, because it hits their bottom line.

It does seem that transocean customes have more complaints than European and mostly German ones. To me that seems to be a transport problem. And from personal experience I know that a hard knock in an exactly vertical direction will produce an shutter fault error and will knock the rangefinder out of vertical alignment.A boxed camera and packaging would not show damage.

As for the M9 rangefinder going out of horizontal adjustment, light aircraft vibrations did that for me...

If I were Leica I would be looking carefully at shipping methods.

Many complaints here are not out of the box, but early failure - It beats me how in-factory inspections can pick those up...

And a 100% agreement with your last sentence

[AlanG]

 

And with all those glowing reports from Consumer Reports, too...

 

It was those Consumer Reports glowing reports that forced us to sell Mirandas despite our better judgment. A year or so after we started selling them we had a big day where Miranda technicians came into the shop and repaired or adjusted customers' cameras on the spot for free. Still, I don't remember any defective camera out of box. (We only sold an occasional Leica, so maybe they had issues back then.)

 

I recently saw a Miranda for sale for $14 in a second hand shop. It was still working fine so go figure.

[Guest]

... Rotterdam harbour, the largest container terminal in the world...

You know more about the world than me, Jaap, but I'm glad Frankfurt's the biggest European airport ( when Heathrow's not partly on strike. )

 

A long time memory here: Rosenmontag mid-seventies, I was a bit hung over and I belonged to the quarter of a class of 17-years olds, who did not attend school that day. But I was in my holiday-job-camera-store, because I had to pay off my 2nd hand Tele-Rolleiflex. Except for me and an older lady, who practically belonged to his familly and was more specialized in dark-room work and portraits, the boss would have been alone that day And he left for lunch.

In came a guy who wanted an M5 body on the spot. And we had one!

I started demonstrating and explaining, while she quietly left to find the boss...

To cut a long story short: the light meter in the cam was DOA and the boss sweet-talked the situation, securing a down-payment also by lending the new customer one of his own lenses.

 

As far as short time memory is concerned: waited for almost two years and got my 2 M8 bodies after lurking on this forum for a long time, and threads like this one were not the main topic anymore.

 

Please correct me if I'm wrong: there were more issues with the first 40k M8, than during the past 12 months' M9. Of cause it's no excuse (nor a post being any help to the OP, sorry, I'd be just as p.off as you). btw there is nothing I have to excuse myself for, since I never worked for Leica.

[stunsworth]

Please correct me if I'm wrong: there were more issues with the first 40k M8, than during the past 12 months' M9

 

We don't know.

 

We don't know the failure rate for the M8, neither do we know the failure rate for the M9.

[chris_tribble]

I've had 2 M9s (one over a year old) - they've never missed a beat. Is this a trend? I think it must be as statistically signifcant as other trends that have been reported around here lately...

 

Hey - I completely agree that new Ms (new anythings) shouldn't fail out of the box - but the fact that this has happened doesn't necessarily mean that the whole Leica operation's gone down the tubes and no own should ever buy stuff from them...

[pico]

It does seem that transocean customes have more complaints than European and mostly German ones. To me that seems to be a transport problem. [...]

 

Are transport planes' cargo areas heated? I wonder if the cameras are freezing during overseas transport.

[barjohn]

This is a general question relative to the QC issues discussed in this thread and the general perception that Leica QC needs improvement. If you were the QC manager/executive at Leica and you read several of these threads (the M8 threads are similar) and you had facts that you could present that could be used to contradict the perception and help to change that perception to a more favorable one would you sit silently and never post anything to help improve the public perception of poor QC?

[pico]

This is a general question relative to the QC issues discussed in this thread and the general perception that Leica QC needs improvement. If you were the QC manager/executive at Leica and you read several of these threads (the M8 threads are similar) and you had facts that you could present that could be used to contradict the perception and help to change that perception to a more favorable one would you sit silently and never post anything to help improve the public perception of poor QC?

 

'Tis better to be quiet and look like a fool rather than to post to the Internet and remove all doubt." == or something like that, and plausible deniability, all that good stuff.

 

You know the rule of PR - put nothing into a public forum and never, never into writing unless as part of a lawyer-approved last-resort legal maneuver likely coupled to a pending bankruptcy notice; you know that's not the case. Ain't gonna happen.

 

Leica is messing up. They know it.

[AlanG]

This is a general question relative to the QC issues discussed in this thread and the general perception that Leica QC needs improvement. If you were the QC manager/executive at Leica and you read several of these threads (the M8 threads are similar) and you had facts that you could present that could be used to contradict the perception and help to change that perception to a more favorable one would you sit silently and never post anything to help improve the public perception of poor QC?

 

On one hand I'd think this would open the floodgates to all kinds of spurious and valid complaints that might be hard for Leica to deal with or answer satisfactorily. (Perhaps this is challenging to their culture.) On the other hand, I've seen some very good feedback from manufacturers. Paul C. Buff has his own forum about his company's flash gear and answers user questions personally. He also posts on other forums. In the past, Canon's Chuck Westfall posted on some forums about Canon gear, and when the Kodak DCS 14n was around, the man who headed that program posted on forums. A rep from NEC monitors posted on the LL forum and I have seen reps from other manufacturers and stores posting in forums.

 

I think the rise of the internet has raised the expectations of users for better communication. I think we can only speculate on why one company provides great communication and another does not.

 

Here is the Paul Buff forum: (Paul posts under the name Luap.) I show it as an example of one of the most open approaches I have seen. Some software companies such as DXO and C1 have similar forums.

 

http://www.paulcbuff-techforum.com/

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[barjohn]

Below is the link for a high end watch forum. The sub forum shown here TimeZone: Hublot is the Hublot forum and JCB Herr Biver frequently posts on the forum, answers user questions, etc. Here is a recent response from him to a new owner:

 

Re: My new Hublot Big Bang Evolution. Sep 22, 2010 - 04:49 AM

 

Thank you for having bought your first Hublot

If you send me via my mail address jcbiver@hublot.com your address and case number, I will send you my personal, handwritten and extended guarantee till end of 2015

 

They are a small company with limited hand made production and frankly, is the model of what I would expect from a premium company. I met him back in the days when he owned Blanc Pain and it was the same kind of deal.