Bill, here in Israel the following is very common practice. You walk in a store and ask for something. They walk away and return with the box which they put on the counter. You ask to open it and actually try it before you commit your money. They respond that by doing so they risk so many shekels worth of goods. You parry by saying that you cannot buy something that may not work. They respond in turn that whatever is the problem you will have it resolved by the warranty and that they'd be happy to assist you should invocation of warranty become necessary.
What hides behind all this exchange is the fact that proving that the lens such as DA* 16-50/2.8 malfunctions is going to be non-trivial process. What you will claim is soft they will claim is normal. Usually there is an indignant frown attached to it saying something like - "this is professional gear, you just don't know how it works for 'us' professionals. My nephew is also Pentaxian and he has this lens and he loves it." I know personally a guy who bought one of the first Nikon D2Xs here (five digit sum in local currency, something like 3-4 times average monthly salary) and couldn't actually prove to local Nikon dealership that some of AF sensors of his camera malfed. He even wrote some letters to Nikon Japan or whatever high authority outside Israel there is. Ultimately, the firmware upgrade solved the problem, but I am sure poor fellow lost some hair on the way. Trust me, I've been through this story more than once. Unless I develop a deep friendly (as in drinking beer together) relationship with the dealer, the game is extremely risky. And unfortunately there are no enough reaons for me to start developing such a relationship (though I do like drinking beer, thanks to Thibouille ;-) ). Nor are there any considerably reliable and long-lasting photo gear dealers that also work with Pentax. *Deep sigh*. On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 4:29 PM, William Robb <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Probably the 16-45 then. I've only used one once, and was impressed enough > with it's optical quality. I wouldn't buy a 16-50 unless I could go to a > store and try it first. They still haven't fixed the assembly problems, so > the end user seems to be the first stage of quality control. > > William Robb -- Boris -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
