M10 Repairs by Leica UK

[LocalHero1953]

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Leica's customer service remains disgraceful and unacceptable, both on account of the long repair time, and the absence of any credible explanation why a stuck rangefinder should require such extensive repairs and replacements. Can you challenge Leica UK to get more information out of Wetzlar to justify their costs? My experience in a similar situation (long delayed repair, though under warranty) was that Leica UK was as embarrassed as they should be - but appeared to be powerless. On the other hand, it is Leica UK, not Wetzlar, that took your camera in and should be obliged to provide a better explanation in return for your payment.

I don't suppose Leica owners warrant much sympathy from the guardian but you could try consumer.champions@theguardian.com.

 

[jaapv]

In my experience calling Leica CS and speak to somebody like Mr. Kaufmann ( no not that Dr.Kaufmann) works best. 

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[LocalHero1953]

36 minutes ago, jaapv said:

In my experience calling Leica CS and speak to somebody like Mr. Kaufmann ( no not that Dr.Kaufmann) works best. 

Nobody should have to rely on picking up a phone to call for better reasonable service - they should get it automatically. The response of "we will repair your camera in 9 months time and, by the way, replace all these other things and charge you a fifth the cost of a new camera for it but we're not going to tell you why" is the response one expected from a 1960s back street car mechanic.

If everybody phoned Mr Kaufmann would everyone's waiting times drop to one month including shipping times?*

 

* In case you're wondering, the answer is 'No'.

Edited August 2 by LocalHero1953

[jaapv]

Well, Leica has always been a bit different and prizes direct contact with their customers. I have enjoyed personal contact with CS for decades, with Attila von Guymes and Andrea Frankl as predecessors to the present-day friendly staff. I solved quite a few hiccups that way. Included Leica resolving timing issues when I needed the camera for journeying abroad for instance. Or checking with the technician in question when confronted with queries about the need for a repair. 
No worries about language barriers. Besides their native Hessisch they speak excellent English ( and high German😂) 

[LocalHero1953]

20 minutes ago, jaapv said:

Well, Leica has always been a bit different and prizes direct contact with their customers. I have enjoyed personal contact with CS for decades, with Attila von Guymes and Andrea Frankl as predecessors to the present-day friendly staff. I solved quite a few hiccups that way. Included Leica resolving timing issues when I needed the camera for journeying abroad for instance. Or checking with the technician in question when confronted with queries about the need for a repair. 
No worries about language barriers. Besides their native Hessisch they speak excellent English ( and high German😂) 

Lovely to have that personal service.

Pity about the rest of us.

What you call 'a bit different' is, for most people, service that has been eliminated by competition and consumer legislation.

Edited August 2 by LocalHero1953

[jaapv]

You can have it too. Just pick up the phone. 

[LocalHero1953]

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1 hour ago, jaapv said:

You can have it too. Just pick up the phone. 

That makes Leica's service good? That I could queue jump? Get service that I shouldn't have to get someone on the phone for? 

Your previous excuses for Leica's poor service have been because of the difficulty of recruiting technically suitable staff. They could solve so many of their problems and improve their reputation by investing in a proper service management system, that allowed you to send items in when they have the capacity for them, allowed you to track progress, and provided proper feedback about what had to be done and why.

Edited August 2 by LocalHero1953

[jaapv]

No -it won’t make it good it isn’t   It should be addressed as soon as possible.
But personal contact is helpful for the customer. So is assessing the situation of a customer. In my case they once pulled a brand new camera off the production line as a loaner. The employees in CS are as aware of the problems as any customer. The complaints should not be projected on the people on the workfloor who would like to see it otherwise as well. And this forum is about providing helpful advice, so I fail to see the thought behind your post 
Deliberately calling explanations excuses is a rather cheap rhetoric trick. 
 

As for the original subject, a squeaky rangefinder that sticks is rather unusual to say the least. It is hard to find a logical cause. It may well be moisture/condensation damage. But nobody here knows. In that case they are doing him a favour as the word moisture damage on an estimate makes a camera an automatic total loss with Leica. 

[db24fps]

On 8/2/2024 at 10:49 AM, erniethemilk said:

Well, here we are in August and still no sign of my M10-P back from Wetzlar.  Each month I’ve had to chase for an update and each month I’ve been told that my repair has been postponed and scheduled for the ‘middle of the next month’.

To be honest, this whole experience has totally soured my thinking about Leica… it’s pathetic that a repair of any description should take this long. 

I'm sad to read this. It echoes my feelings from almost ten years ago now having endured a horrendous customer service experience back when the M(240) was released. Thankfully I was still covered by the warranty, but the rangefinder had drifted, something that two technicians at the old London branch denied until I finally had them test it and, low and behold, agree with me. Off it went to Germany and I was apparently put onto a waiting list to be given a loan unit but the loan unit never surfaced. Weeks and weeks went by, a friend's wedding was fast approaching, and as more time passed I went out and bought a Fuji XE-2 having at that point decided I would sell the M on its return to the UK (like you, it had reached a point where the experience had soured me on the brand). The ordeal did not end there, however. When the M returned with the rangefinder adjusted, it had come back to me with a brand new fault that didn't even exist when it was sent away (the frame lines were not appearing), so BACK it went to Germany again for five more weeks. I told the dealer to just put it up for sale on my behalf once it returned. I didn't even want to look at the damn thing again. 

It was a while before I gave Leica my money again. I could not resist the original Q and loved it, and I had the original SL and SL2-s for a spell. Finally I was willing to return to the M with the M10-P as I missed the M experience a lot. I had to part with the P, however, as financially I knew I wasn't going to be in a good enough position to hold onto it once its warranty expired as I knew that if it were to develop a fault after that period I just wouldn't have the contingency budget to potentially have to pay as much as an entire camera from another brand just to cover a repair bill like the one you've been hit with. My original SL also had a problem, as a giant glob of dirt/dust appeared in the EVF days after purchasing it when I had yet to even take it outside, so I can only assume it was stuck in there when manufactured and had become dislodged while I was testing it at home. Surprisingly that was only a three-week turnaround to Germany and back. A motor and aperture blade fault on an SL75 Summicron took a fair bit longer.

Do we know if Q's are fully serviced in the UK? I seem to remember hearing that they were. It remains the one digital Leica that I have the least trepidation about going back to these days. I'd been toying with going back to an M10 or one of its variants like the R as I do greatly miss using an M, but buying used and getting beyond any dealer warranty would leave me anxious about the cost of covering a fault in future again (and, most notably, potentially being without the camera for two months).

Edited August 10 by db24fps

[hjddd]

周转时间太短了，在中国，你只需支付 80 英镑就可以请专业技术人员来完成，as this problem of stuck rangefinder lever is quite familiar among the M240 and M10  series  。 

Edited August 11 by hjddd

[Smudgerer]

On 3/21/2024 at 4:46 PM, erniethemilk said:

Had a quote back from Leica AG for my squeaking/stuck rangefinder mechanism.... Just the cool £1300 odd pounds!  🥵

Have to say I'm a bit shocked, considering they are proposing to repair the shutter mechanism & main printed circuit board which didn't seem to show any signs of failure whilst I had it.

 

Ouch!.........My M10-R had to be sent to Wetzlar for a LCD problem/replacement back in January of this year and luckily just squeaking in under it's warranty period on the camera by a couple of weeks. The Leica Store I bought it from new said they'd handle organizing the return for service and as I was still qualified as a "Pro'" with Leica they said the turn-around should be "pretty quick"..................It took over 6 months, and this with the Leica Store badgering Wetzlar frequently, "expedited service" they said.

In part I agree with jaapv's later post on this thread in that I have had by phone and via emails some very cordial contacts with CS at Leica over the years, ( yes too many but that's another story ), the main contact of mine there has since retired but my contacts with them over issues with more than one Leica camera / lens issue put us on a first name basis. In truth they did what they could, and no doubt still do, but based on real experience with my Leica servicing needs there is perhaps a Perfect Storm with Leica Service that is rooted in a few things in my opinion. First they obviously need more repair technicians, their camera type/model line is constantly expanding and therefore even with what established service staff Leica has they must need training on the new models as they add to what's gone before. Then Quality Control on new products is quite abysmal, too many cameras / lenses seem to ship with problems in the box, again in my own real experience four out of six new Leica M products I have bought in recent years came out of the box with QC faults and had to be returned, exchanged or repaired right off the bat, this of course is utterly unacceptable in any "high end" product but I see zero signs of Leica acknowledging this or trying to improve on it, to the contrary, service wait times are only getting longer as Leica sits up on it's cloud in some sort of denial.

For these reasons alone I would not buy another new Leica M digital or analogue M body now, and certainly not anything from the seemingly forever blighted M11 series. I am ok with what I have and there's no real reason to add to the existing kit, but Leica has lost me as a new buyer that's for sure. I would love to be able to say differently but I do not fully trust their products out of the factory now and I'm certainly wary of having anything disappear into Leica's Service dismal swamp again.

[erniethemilk]

Finally my M10-P is on its way back to me. Following a conversation last week advising Leica UK that they need to escalate the issue they told me the repair would be completed by the end of the week and the camera would be back with them sometime this week. 

Somehow the camera has arrived today & is on its way back to me. Surprising how quickly they can move when they need/want to. 

Now all I need is it back in my hands and see if my batteries have survived 7 months of no use!  And then of course see if it can live with my Nikon Zf which I’m pretty much smitten with at present.