Astounded and livid at the advice I have received from Leica CS

[wlaidlaw]

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The date issue has been there for ever, I bought my M3s in 1968, years later I checked and found that they were part of the last major batch, with serial numbers listed as '1966'.

 

Gerry

 

Gerry,

 

My father took me on my 21st birthday in 1967 to buy an M2 or 3 body at the Leica dealers in Aberdeen. The salesman at Lizars showed him the new M4, of which the shop/demo example was the only one they had, as this was only a couple of weeks after their release. After a bit of arm twisting by my father, who was an old customer, we walked out with the M4. It has a serial number of 1175047 and is thus the 47th production M4 made. I still have it and it works perfectly again now, after a full service and RF re-silvering by Peter at CRR in Luton. I hope therefore you did not pay full price for your M3. 

 

Wilson

[jaapv]

The non sequential issuing of SNs has always been there with Leica lenses going back to the early 1930s. This is however a 'red herring' in this case. In Wilson's case Leica were refusing to apply warranty terms to a lens supplied with a kit only a few months ago. This is a far more significant issue, which, hopefully, is resolved by now.

 

William

I suspect it has to do with the database hiccup in registering. It may well be a computer  GIGO problem.

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[LocalHero1953]

You can go back to 1931 with this issue.

 

William

Huh - that's nothing. I was given a book for Christmas that was marked ©2018

[wlaidlaw]

Here are pictures of how the kit is delivered. I have just found on the bottom of the white box, serial and part numbers for the kit, which are different from the body and lens numbers. 

 

Wilson

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

Edited February 22, 2018 by wlaidlaw

[Valau]

I bought a CL+ 18-56 zoom from Red Dot in December last year (2017) (delighted with the way Red Dot handled the purchase and also with the camera cannot find any fault) but after seeing the serial number in an earlier post, (my lens number was a few hundred more) I wrote to Leica Customer Service and got the reply below;-

 

 

"The lens mentioned by you was produced in 12/2014 and delivered together with the CL as a “Kit” .
Regarding the warranty, you do not have to worry, it starts with the purchase of the lens.
From the technology has not changed at the lens so that you have no disadvantage if the production date is a little bit behind."

 

​So it would appear that lenses in a 'kit' are 2014 production but as clearly stated Warranty starts with the purchase, nice to know that the 'technology' hasn't changed!

​David

[Valau]

On further reflections on a three year old lens, I know there is little lubrication in modern lenses but there must be a little, would it deteriorate in this time? Also would the 'seals' on the lens deteriorate in this time?

David 

[wlaidlaw]

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On further reflections on a three year old lens, I know there is little lubrication in modern lenses but there must be a little, would it deteriorate in this time? Also would the 'seals' on the lens deteriorate in this time?

David 

 

On seals, the plasticiser will evaporate from the material, making them somewhat less flexible but I have no idea of the timescales on this. It may be over 20-30 years. A lot of seals are now made from silicone rubber which has a better life than previous materials but is still temperature dependant. Roughly every 10ºC increase in ambient temperature will halve the working life of a seal. Of more concern than seals is the deterioration of electronic components, particularly capacitors. The life of these is impacted, if the item is in storage, not powered up. Buying new but old stock audio equipment is never a good idea for example, as the capacitors may well be near dead, with them so called "irreversibly de-formed". 

 

Wilson

[jaapv]

I rather doubt that there are electrolytic capacitors in the present-day electronics of the lens. These are probably ceramic or polystyrene ones, which do not show the same detoriation. Other electronic parts have an incredibly long life, provided they are not subjected to moisture.

[wizard]

...

"The lens mentioned by you was produced in 12/2014 and delivered together with the CL as a “Kit” .

Regarding the warranty, you do not have to worry, it starts with the purchase of the lens.

From the technology has not changed at the lens so that you have no disadvantage if the production date is a little bit behind."

 

​So it would appear that lenses in a 'kit' are 2014 production but as clearly stated Warranty starts with the purchase, nice to know that the 'technology' hasn't changed!

​David

 

I think you can not be sure that the person who gave this information really knows when your lens was produced. Likely, he/she is merely taking a look at some lens number table, which correlates the lens number with the year of lens number assignment, but not with the actual production date.

[UliWer]

The product no. for the CL alone is  19301, for the lens alone it is 11080.

 

The product no. for the kit is 19305.

 

I am wondering, whether the serial no 09011727 on the sticker applies to the camera or the lens - or even both???

 

The date on the sticker tells you, that the item(s ?) was/were packed in 12/2018.  

 

I am trying to think about this:

If someone would pack an item 19301 which normally costs 2490,-€ together with a three year old item 11080, which normally costs 1550,-€ (when new) and called the whole package 19305 and sells it to me not for 2490+1550= 4040,- but for 3640,-, which is a rebate of 10% - would this be unfair if no. 11080 was three years old?

 

I am not sure.

Edited February 22, 2018 by UliWer

[willeica]

Huh - that's nothing. I was given a book for Christmas that was marked ©2018

 

Was it by H.G. Wells?

 

 

Here are pictures of how the kit is delivered. I have just found on the bottom of the white box, serial and part numbers for the kit, which are different from the body and lens numbers. 

 

Wilson

 

My feeling is that Leica were left with a lot of surplus lenses as the TL did not sell as well as expected. You are entitled to a lens that is as good as new, no matter when it was manufactured. If your current one is not as good as new now, it should either be repaired to new standard (if that is possible) or replaced. When the lens was manufactured is a bit of a red herring, unless you can establish that the lens was not 'as new' when it was sold to you. New means completely unused and in the same condition as when it came off the production line. You cannot expect a new production run just for your lens. If this were to happen Leica could find itself getting a lot of requests for new production lenses.

 

William

[gyoung]

Gerry,

 

My father took me on my 21st birthday in 1967 to buy an M2 or 3 body at the Leica dealers in Aberdeen. The salesman at Lizars showed him the new M4, of which the shop/demo example was the only one they had, as this was only a couple of weeks after their release. After a bit of arm twisting by my father, who was an old customer, we walked out with the M4. It has a serial number of 1175047 and is thus the 47th production M4 made. I still have it and it works perfectly again now, after a full service and RF re-silvering by Peter at CRR in Luton. I hope therefore you did not pay full price for your M3.

 

Wilson

Hi Wilson, I had 'lusted' after the M3 ever since I got interested in photography. By 1968 (I was 24) I had the money for a Leica, I was working for a Leica dealer in Montreal after 'emigrating' and we had heard of the M4 coming of course, but I, and quite a few of our customers, was dissapointed with it, we had hoped for a development of the M3, rather than a restyled M2. So I stuck with plan A, and bought two M3 bodies and four lenses after selling Pentax stuff.

The M3 was being 'remaindered' believe it or not, and working for the dealer I got them at cost price, I paid the Canadian dollar equivalent of £66 each for them, quite a lot less than than an M4, and very much less than the UK price.

I had to sell one body about 20 yrs ago to keep the other one going (new shutter curtains needed) and buy a Nikon body I needed for a 'job', two sons at University didn't leave much spare cash! But I still have the other and use it regularly. It has it's 50th birthday this year and I plan to do something special with it. Project on hold at the moment until I get a second cateract op done and my vision is back to something approaching normal.

Hope you get the CL sorted, I too have had grave doubts about Leica and electronics, going back to a complete shambles over my 'lemon' R4 some 30 yrs ago!

 

Gerry

[jaapv]

Not very elegant, but I am with Wil on this one. As I expect a Leica lens to last the rest of my life, a few years of careful storage in unused state are neither here nor there.

[jaapv]

I bought an M6 from I guess 1991 in 2008, and Leica honoured the five-year guaranty on it when the rewind crank had a problem.

[wattsy]

Yes, I don't think it is reasonable to expect production of an item to have taken place within a certain time period. Leica have some of the finickiest and most demanding of customers around and I'm not sure it was very wise of them to start putting production date stickers on the boxes of bodies and lenses if those customers are going to start treating them like "best before" dates on food packaging.

Edited February 22, 2018 by wattsy

[earleygallery]

What it says to me is that Leica's sales of the T/TL must have been much lower than expected if they still have these lenses from 2014 in stock (given that it is probably the most popular lens for people to buy with a body).

[jaapv]

Quite possible, or it was cheaper to commission a large batch and sell them over a period of time.

[pgk]

On seals, the plasticiser will evaporate from the material, making them somewhat less flexible but I have no idea of the timescales on this. It may be over 20-30 years. A lot of seals are now made from silicone rubber which has a better life than previous materials but is still temperature dependant. Roughly every 10ºC increase in ambient temperature will halve the working life of a seal.

Plastics - love them or hate them In the marine environment their problem is that they apparently have far too long a life. But in lenses the problem is that they have too short a life? Hmmmmm! In all honesty I cannot image that Leica use materials which have very short deterioration times. I'd guess that the seals will last several decades at least.

[Herr Barnack]

 

Here are pictures of how the kit is delivered. I have just found on the bottom of the white box, serial and part numbers for the kit, which are different from the body and lens numbers.

 

In spite of the buffoonery that Wilson has had to endure, I still find myself longing for a CL kit - with the 18/2.8 lens rather than the 18-56. 

 

It's a shame that Leica has created such a brilliant little camera and has at the same time embarrassed themselves in this manner.

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[scott kirkpatrick]

C'mon, people.  Given two alternatives -- have a lot of nice lenses and develop the new CL to sell them, or introduce the new CL and then sit down to develop some new lenses over the coming few years... Which would you choose?

 

And remember that Leica's practice has been to assign numbers before they make cameras or lenses, so we don't even know how old the lenses really are.  Let's get real. 

Edited February 22, 2018 by scott kirkpatrick