AlanJW Posted June 7, 2007 Share #21 Posted June 7, 2007 Advertisement (gone after registration) The thing that bothers me is the lack of transparency. Before I sent in my TE and 50 'cron for coding I called to see what the schedule would be -- knowing that it was not something I could hold them to. They told me 3 -4 weeks. When the repair orders came back, they said 4-5 weeks. Its now 5 weeks, and as of a few days ago the answer was " we have no mounts and we just don't know". I am leaving for Europe in 3 weeks and thought I had plenty of time to get the TE back, having given them 8 weeks. That turns out to have been a bad bet, and had I known, I would've held off ---assuming that the promotion were extended. All I asked for was a straight answer and unfortunately that was not possible. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted June 7, 2007 Posted June 7, 2007 Hi AlanJW, Take a look here 6 BIT Backlog ..out of Mounts. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
Joe S Posted June 7, 2007 Share #22 Posted June 7, 2007 Maybe someone should send Leica contact information for John Millich! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
marknorton Posted June 7, 2007 Share #23 Posted June 7, 2007 This company... Weller-Feinwerktechnik is part owned by ACM who own Leica and it's clear that they make Leica components - that brass object on the right is a barrel from a Tri-Elmar. Maybe they make the lens mounts too... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
charlesphoto99 Posted June 7, 2007 Share #24 Posted June 7, 2007 Leica is fast becoming an "amateur" camera company. My sentiments exactly. It's a shame. When they work, the cameras are an amazing tool. Anyways, I have a Leica logo tattooed on my forearm so I guess I'm stuck with them for life! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jsjxyz Posted June 7, 2007 Share #25 Posted June 7, 2007 This prove that Leica should give Lens choice in the menu just like Nikon D200 in the next firmware update. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
LichMD Posted June 7, 2007 Share #26 Posted June 7, 2007 My sentiments exactly. It's a shame. When they work, the cameras are an amazing tool. Anyways, I have a Leica logo tattooed on my forearm so I guess I'm stuck with them for life! Charles, I wonder what you mean by your "amateur" comments. I may not make a living with my camera, but I shoot daily and take my photography seriously. Labeling a bunch of us as rich doctors and lawyers and inferring that Solms is catering to this amateur crowd by requiring coding for their lenses is incorrect. As Sean Reid has implied a number of times this coding necessitates the use of Leica brand lenses to assure appropriate software compensation for vignetting and AWB. This is a revenue play, not catering to us amateurs. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alberti Posted June 7, 2007 Share #27 Posted June 7, 2007 Advertisement (gone after registration) Not only that, but they completely sold out of their entire lens lineup, and ran out of pretty much everything they sold.There is something more going on here than loyal customers updating their camerabag contents. . Carsten, You get me afraid, having handed in my 50cron for an upgrade (it was loose and two years ago Solms had patched it so I thought, well, take the opportunity now) and was promissed the new lens to be sent 'next week', this being several weeks back... and still no delivery notice yet.. I hope that is not part of the adventure. At Schiphol Airport there was only a 75 mm lux left and no other lenses in stock, and one black M8 so I asked the guy, what are you aiming for as customers then, and he just shrugged. albert Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
charlesphoto99 Posted June 7, 2007 Share #28 Posted June 7, 2007 Charles, I wonder what you mean by your "amateur" comments. I may not make a living with my camera, but I shoot daily and take my photography seriously. Labeling a bunch of us as rich doctors and lawyers and inferring that Solms is catering to this amateur crowd by requiring coding for their lenses is incorrect. As Sean Reid has implied a number of times this coding necessitates the use of Leica brand lenses to assure appropriate software compensation for vignetting and AWB. This is a revenue play, not catering to us amateurs. I was being facetious to try and make a point. I have nothing against doctors and lawyers - in fact I've bought lots of great used gear at killer prices off of them! It may be a revenue play, but Leica have done other things that reek of amateurism (DX coding on M7 required or you get a flashing light; no pc sync on M8, etc). Whether you make a living or not with the camera, Leica should give us the option of lens menu, etc, just like Nikon does on their semi-pro D200. At 5K plus the camera should work for a pro like a pro and not try and cater to some sort of mid-level consumer related interests. If you DO make a living with your camera it's not always an option to send off a lens for a month or more to have it coded, esp as there are not many M lenses in rental houses. Combine that with their increasingly out of touch service policy, and the camera seems to be more and more something reserved for people with time on their hands. I'm currently shooting a 10 page essay with the M8 for a magazine. I don't have coding - and therefore no way to control vignetting. But that's better than not having any of my wides at all because they're sitting on a shelf at Leica (like my 28 Summicron is which I could honestly really use right now). Anyway, there's probably just as many "amateurs" out there that can blow away "pros" on an image by image basis. It's all photography. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
glenerrolrd Posted June 7, 2007 Author Share #29 Posted June 7, 2007 In my own business experience, there is often a penny item that keeps you (or your supplier) from building a multi thoughsand dollar/pound item, and that penny item suddenly goes from a 4 week lead time to a 32 week lead time with no notice. It happens. You had all the plans in place, things were working fine, but now you are going to be 28 weeks without parts. What can you do? A few years back we had flash memories on order on a 16 week lead time. On week 16 the supplier came back and said sorry your order has to be cancelled, and you have to re-order. The new lead time is 52 weeks!!!!! So, critical parts we had ordered in plenty of time and expected to come in next week were now a year away. Can you imagine what that does to a manufacturing business? That was the biggest scramble ever, and of course we were not the only ones scrammbling for these parts on the grey market. Prices shot through the roof and we had to swallow it. It actually caused an emergency redesign of several products which still took 12 weeks to bring to production. Anyway, all I am saying is it's often not just a case of turning a tap on and catching the water. Many things have longer lead times that most people realise, especially when you get in to high enough volumes (which on custom parts may be as few as a hundred). It's very easy to get swamped with orders, and have unhappy customers. Some people think it's a good problem to have, but others know the truth. It's always much easier to look in from the outside and criticise than to be the one fixing it. I have learned enough about this over the last few years, and succesive problems that I now don't allow myselft to get wound up about other people having the problem. I will just continue shooting 'as is' for now, and when they figure it all out, I will send my stuff in. Dave Just wondering did you let any of your customers know that their deliveries would be delayed? Or did you let them call in and find out when the shipments didn t occur? Did you continue to accept and confirm new orders with delivery dates you could never meet? Did you ultimately confirm ship dates with customers so that they knew when to expect you product. I could easily criticize Leica s management of its Supply Chain...but my point has been ..why can t they communicate ... Once they accept an order they have a responsibilty to communicate delays and shipments . Roger Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
LichMD Posted June 7, 2007 Share #30 Posted June 7, 2007 Charles, thanks for your clarification. I agree with the rest of the forum these "not ready for prime time" type growing pains are frustrating and annoying. BTW, I'm buying a 75 Lux in mint condition from a pro who has decided to leave the world of Leica Cheers Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
carstenw Posted June 7, 2007 Share #31 Posted June 7, 2007 Alberti, I hope that your lens returns soon. I think the odds are better than with most lenses, because there are a *lot* of 50 Crons out there of various ages, so it is more likely that they would have stocked a sufficient number of parts. Anyway, Leica seems to be catching up with most things slowly right now. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Woody Campbell Posted June 7, 2007 Share #32 Posted June 7, 2007 My beloved 28 f2 is sitting in NJ behind the mount backlog/backorder. We called yesterday and Leica said they expect mounts in three weeks maybe. About three weeks ago I emailed Leica Germany to ask if it was too late to add an Frankenfinder to my 30% off WATE order and they said yes (it was too late) because it had been packaged to go to NJ. Then it dropped out of sight. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaveEP Posted June 7, 2007 Share #33 Posted June 7, 2007 Dave Just wondering did you let any of your customers know that their deliveries would be delayed? Or did you let them call in and find out when the shipments didn t occur? Did you continue to accept and confirm new orders with delivery dates you could never meet? Did you ultimately confirm ship dates with customers so that they knew when to expect you product. I could easily criticize Leica s management of its Supply Chain...but my point has been ..why can t they communicate ... Once they accept an order they have a responsibilty to communicate delays and shipments . Roger What we found initially was that we were all too busy running around trying to find solutions to call customers. Then, after a couple of days we said, Hmmm we should let customers know, but then let them know what? If you call them to let them know their order is delayed, the first question is 'how long"? If you don't have an answer, because you are still working on the solution, you look even more stupid than before. The only answer is 'indefinitely' which is never what they want to hear. It's not an easy situation to handle. In the end we had to call customers as fast as possible, some of which cancelled orders, and TBH we lost them as customers for at least a while. Some came back, others didn't. Of course, some customers called us before we got chance to call them, and that's never an easy call to get. It's OK for the business owners to take the crap, but it's hard for the staff. I agree that communication is ALWAYS the best way, and is always biggest problem in these situations. We ALL know what the ideal is, but some times the problem is so big that communication itself can become one of the bottle necks, and the (limited) staff spend more time updating customers than they do solving the problems. This then becomes counter productive to the immediate need and can head you off in a downward spiral from which it's very hard to recover, in the short term at least. As far as communcation with customer who already placed orders, how long do you think it would take to deal with and communicate the 'real' delivery dates for (say) 10,000 orders? Who does the person ask for the details? What is that other person or group (the ones being asked for the details) now not getting done because they are having to answer 10,000 questions, potentially several times over if the original estimate was incorrect for number of reasons. I am 'not' saying they should not be communicating, they should. But the solution is often harder than it appears to those with no inside knowledge of how the company works. It's a really tough situation to be in, and I am sure the management at Leica are learning some hard and expensive lessons along the way. This stuff is really hard to put in to words, or to explain clearly. Unless you have actually been in this situation, and experienced the almost hopelessnes of the situation first hand, I imagine that it is very difficult, if not impossible to understand why it's really not as easy as it seems to every one else looking in from the outside, without all the details in front of them. I really empathise with them, and hope they pull through with their reputation still in a place that they can recover from. Fortunately we did, and went on to bigger and better things. Others have not been so fortunate. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanG Posted June 7, 2007 Share #34 Posted June 7, 2007 I have read this thread and the one about Leica NJ being too slow, along with other posts about how long it takes to get a filter, etc. There seem to be lots of theories and some apologies for these issues. So maybe Leica truly is overwhelmed. Maybe there is a cash flow problem. Perhaps suppliers are holding them up. Maybe there is a shortage of special glass or coating material for the filters. Maybe they don't have enough technicians and can't hire or train any new ones. Maybe these and many other reasons. But does this mean that they don't have the management skills or the funds to hire some people to co-ordinate the communication and fulfillment of customer support and service? I don't understand why in the world Leica would want all of these lenses sitting around for months waiting for coding. Why can't they at least post some information on their web site that let's you queue up for lens coding and email you to send your lens in when they have the part? The people doing this will not have to be highly trained technicians. Surely there are many thousands qualified who do this kind of work at other companies. I recently had a 12-24 lens serviced by lowly Sigma and got very fast personal service. The technician even called me to ask details about the focusing problem I was having. I think it was only in their hands a day or two. Leica has some very dedicated and patient customers. Some of whom seem a little frustrated and pehaps are fed up. Yet, it seems to me that there are some organizational and communication issues that look quite easy to resolve but I have no idea why they aren't fixing them. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaveEP Posted June 7, 2007 Share #35 Posted June 7, 2007 Yet, it seems to me that there are some organizational and communication issues that look quite easy to resolve but I have no idea why they aren't fixing them. This is the classic answer is that every one else's problem looks easy to solve to me! Sorry, I don't mean to pick on you personally, but this does illustrate exactly the point I was trying to make. It always looks easy from the outside. I am not trying to defend Leica in any way, merely pointing out that solutions are not always as easy to find as it seems to those with no experience of this exact situation. Peace Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eoin Posted June 7, 2007 Share #36 Posted June 7, 2007 ......It always looks easy from the outside..... On the other hand, one could just say It looks like a huge mess from the outside. and that's just wearing my un-biased customers hat. Emotion and empathy tend to rationalise it into a difficult period the company is going through. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
glenerrolrd Posted June 7, 2007 Author Share #37 Posted June 7, 2007 This is the classic answer is that every one else's problem looks easy to solve to me! Sorry, I don't mean to pick on you personally, but this does illustrate exactly the point I was trying to make. It always looks easy from the outside. I am not trying to defend Leica in any way, merely pointing out that solutions are not always as easy to find as it seems to those with no experience of this exact situation. Peace Dave I have a substantial resume in Supply Chain management ..I have been in the exact situation you described several times. It is quite a bit different to be surprised by both the problems and the success of the M8 and their current situation. This didn t happen overnight and the customer service communication issues should have been solved months ago. I started this thread no so much to vent but to communicate to other LUF members ..what I perceived as important information... Don t send in your lens for 6 bit coding if you expect them back anytime soon. And of course hoping that Leica will hire a few extra people so that communications can be improved . Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanG Posted June 8, 2007 Share #38 Posted June 8, 2007 This is the classic answer is that every one else's problem looks easy to solve to me! Sorry, I don't mean to pick on you personally, but this does illustrate exactly the point I was trying to make. It always looks easy from the outside... It seems to me that Leica has had about 150 years to get these systems in place. I didn't say that all of their problems looked easy to solve, only that some of them look easy to solve. I don't even know what kind of problems or resources they may have. And I was not addressing their manufacturing, engineering, or logistics issues. Just a few basic simple things. Specifically, tell customers not to send in their lenses for coding until the parts are available. How hard is it to do that? How hard would it be to post some information on their web site that at least explains some things? How hard is it to email customers that their lens/camera was received or their filter was sent? If they are using FedEx or UPS some of this can be done automatically. I run a very small operation and have no problem keeping my clients informed and tracking everything I ship or buy. Now if they don't have the resources to implement this, it would truly be sad. For it is always THE top priority to keep your customers happy. Many Leica customers will tolerate the delays without complaining if the reasons are explained and they are kept in the loop. This afternoon I ordered some items from Amazon.com. I instantly recieved an email confirming my order. Next, I received an email that my packages were being prepared. Then I received two emails stating they were being shipped from two different suppliers - one UPS the other USPS and were on the way, with tracking numbers. Finally I received a 5th email from QuantumView giving me detailed UPS information. All of this service and I only ordered a cable and some inkjet carts - about $50. The reality is this is the level of service is very common these days. I have grown used to and companies that don't provide it aren't really making the grade. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
losta Posted June 8, 2007 Share #39 Posted June 8, 2007 I think the problem is Leica is still actiing like a mid 20th century company. The need to become more computerized at least about dealing with parts, shipping and customers. Then it wouldn't be up to someone to look in a box and say we need more widgets. I called Allendale today about my 30% off 50 Lux I ordered months ago. Luckily they told me they just received a fax that said mine would be shipped next week. I would think that information shouldn't have to be sent by fax and it should be in some data base that can be accessed in Allendale or Solms or where ever Leica is. It's just an example of the lack of efficency they suffer from. I hope the influx of cash and happy M8 owners and lens buyers will help Leica more up and become more up to date. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
4season Posted June 8, 2007 Share #40 Posted June 8, 2007 Two years ago if you had told me that Leica was experiencing growing pains, I would've laughed, but who's laughing now I hope this doesn't push back the introduction of the digital R camera! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.