Re: Ricoh Service Germany BEWARE

Hi Lenseye,

justice seems to work a bit different in the US than in Europe,

suing a company for this will cost you a lot of money, the company did service you, the result might be different from what you expected, but that is in Europe not an argument.


No, just proceed as you are doing, call them, sent mails, add pictures printed to explain the issue you have,

explain them their repair did not improove the issue.

They are trained technicians, they will udnerstand, some customers just have a better eye for details, other not, probably for most a repair as done is good enough.

i also would have problems with the result, simply keep in contact and try to solve the technical issue, rather than getting offensive and spending more money then the camera itself.

I guess in the U.S. it'll be a bit different but many of these companies just don't want to own up to their mistakes and errors. In the case at hand here, a scratch on the lens (an expensive one at that) is not good enough for anyone unless the customer is blind! I would escalate all the way to Florida if some one broke my favorite lens! Writing to Ricoh Japan is my first suggestion...

The 400G wide was returned to day with a new ccd and it clearly has been changed as it have some green hot pixels which the old one not had. I should have requested pixel-mapping for this one as well but probably forgot about it.
The weather is pretty bad, cloudy, wet and some haze as well but I'll try and take it out for a short walk. It is still the same zoom with corner softness. I made a quick comparison against a G4 wide which have the same 28-85mm zoom. Definitely not a perfect copy but at least marginally better than the 400G wide.
Both my two GRD1 have fully acceptable corner-sharpness at f2.4 as it should be. My 500SE seem to have some slight corner softness but I'm sure that it is slight vignetting coming into play there too so I can have indulgence with that.
Also my Caplio G3 pro have a sharp lens but that have also to do with that it seems to have more aggressive sharpening at the default setting compared to the other cameras.

The ccd in my G4 wide is not perfect either but I'm not going to bother myself to deal with the service to get it fixed. It is just a properly working 400G wide i want.
The person I talked to at the service claimed that the corner softness is within the tolerance of their tested and hence only replaced the ccd this time despite my protest- Not sure howerver I'll send it in once more, especially if it finally is a good ccd this time, which I'll find out within the next few days.

To do following corner-test I put the cameras on a sturdy shoe rack, placed 30cm from the wall. I metered with a footrule on both the left and the right side of the shoe rack to try and make sure that the distance would be correct. And it certainly was good enough as most cameras could show with good corner sharpness at wide aperture. I used macro to try and have the focus nailed. Sometimes need to move the cameras either to the left or right slightly so that it could struggle to find focus. With the G700 however I had to use normal focusing as it refused to lock by using macro. Luckily it works much better outside.



Weird. The name of some models won't show up here.
First, the 500SE, second the G700, Third, Pro G3, fourth and fifth the two GRDs, sixth the 400G wide, seventh, G4 wide and finally the Minolta Dimage EX wide which I couldn't resist to throw into the mix to see how good that copy was. Seems rather good to be f1.9 I think.

Edit: I almsot forgot to mention that the Pro G3 have the very same troublesome ccd as the G4 wide and 400G, but a perfectly working such. It can even handle harsh light conditions. See the last picture.


dpr://galleries/5029999967/photos/1549550
dpr://galleries/5029999967/photos/1549551
dpr://galleries/5029999967/photos/1549552
dpr://galleries/5029999967/photos/1549553
dpr://galleries/5029999967/photos/1549554
dpr://galleries/5029999967/photos/1549555
dpr://galleries/5029999967/photos/1549556
dpr://galleries/5029999967/photos/1549557

dpr://galleries/5029999967/photos/1352047
Last one with the Pro G3 which have a well working 3mp ccd unlike the 400G which now hopefully have been fixed.

Not the best possible weather but at least two outdoor-pictures from a walk with the 400G. The corner softness is clearly visible in IRL pictures as well, as I assumed and I'm NOT happy about it at all - I know very well what a good copy of this zoom should be like and that moron at the service which examined the lens performance needs to be replaced with someone which know what they are doing and how to do it correct.
I've not decided what to do yet, if I'm going to send it in again or not. My previous 400G was nothing like this regarding soft corners. Almost razor-sharp in the center in macro use once focus was nailed.
dpr://galleries/5029999967/photos/1563404
dpr://galleries/5029999967/photos/1563405
If I only could be satisfied with the repair like that...

So, I'm going to bump this thread from now on to make sure that it always are visibly on the first or the second page. That's a fair punishment for Convar service in Germany and also fair to potential buyers which have every right to know how out of warranty repairs are being fumbled, too often, sometimes deliberately and sometimes by an accident or a mistake by a technician.
This is not only for how I been treated while I've tried to get my 400G wide restored to something usably but also from what others have suffered.
Ricoh's convar service in Germany finally plssed off wrong guy too many times and them ain't going to get away with it.

Schaki, I am sure you have good reasons to be upset with them, but I believe there must be a more productive way of dealing with it. Usually the best thing to do is get in touch with a supervisor, and they are almost always helpful in sorting things out. The service people are very difficult to communicate with (in general) they need to follow a certain protocol. I often have a feeling that I am talking ( or emailing) a machine, not a person...it can be very frustrating. But people on managerial position have much better attitude. This is true for ricoh too...I can think of few people who can help you get in touch with a manager in Germany service center. Both pavel and cristian can help you with that....

schaki wrote:
> So, I'm going to bump this thread from now on to make sure that it always are visibly on the first or the second page. That's a fair punishment for Convar service in Germany and also fair to potential buyers which have every right to know how out of warranty repairs are being fumbled, too often, sometimes deliberately and sometimes by an accident or a mistake by a technician.
> This is not only for how I been treated while I've tried to get my 400G wide restored to something usably but also from what others have suffered.
> Ricoh's convar service in Germany finally plssed off wrong guy too many times and them ain't going to get away with it.

rondom wrote:
> Schaki, I am sure you have good reasons to be upset with them, but I believe there must be a more productive way of dealing with it. Usually the best thing to do is get in touch with a supervisor, and they are almost always helpful in sorting things out. The service people are very difficult to communicate with (in general) they need to follow a certain protocol. I often have a feeling that I am talking ( or emailing) a machine, not a person...it can be very frustrating. But people on managerial position have much better attitude. This is true for ricoh too...I can think of few people who can help you get in touch with a manager in Germany service center. Both pavel and cristian can help you with that....

Well I don't even have that unusable zoom anymore. Having given up and thrown that unusable piece of crap away. I kept the good ccd however as the zoom are very easy to replace on that model unlike other like GX100. I've found a G4 wide on Ebay which might sell cheaply enough to make the gamble worth it. Hopefully it have a good copy of that zoom which I can use then.
In the future I don't intend to try and deal with that repair service again, more than absolutely necessarily - Just waste of time and money as repairs are being fumbled or fooled up. I'll certainly think at least once before I choose to buy new Ricoh-gear again. But with the current stuff coming out that won't be a problem.
My interest is not lensors or smooth-engine.
I might be tempted by either a GXR FF m-mount, GRD or potentially new GX or G-series camera, If it use low NR.
Edit: I'm going to keep my word and bump this thread for several months.
Ricoh and their piece of crap service in Germany are suffer more than I've done.

schaki wrote:
> So, I'm going to bump this thread from now on to make sure that it always are visibly on the first or the second page.
That is an abuse of this forum and "hurts" readers more than your intended target.

--
Richard

sphexx wrote:
>
> schaki wrote:
> > So, I'm going to bump this thread from now on to make sure that it always are visibly on the first or the second page.
> That is an abuse of this forum and "hurts" readers more than your intended target.

No but it provide readers with useful information which them likely want to know about when they are going to decide what camera to choose.

Hi Schaki,

we fully appreciate your contribution to this forum, good or bad experiences, negative or positive, all is welcome,

but please dont bump,on of the reasons why it is forbidden, is that to prevent frustrated people anyoing others.

I think we more aprreciate you creating a new tpic, or sharing in the same thread a new experience with the service company.

Thanks Bart

BG_CX3_DPREVIEW wrote:
> Hi Schaki,
>
> we fully appreciate your contribution to this forum, good or bad experiences, negative or positive, all is welcome,

> but please dont bump,on of the reasons why it is forbidden, is that to prevent frustrated people anyoing others.
Truth needs to get out as well as convar service needs some bad publicity for what they are doing against people which just want to get their gear repaired but kind of gets punished for trying to stay loyal to a brand and get gear repaired instead try some other equipment.
I chose to keep go with Ricoh because many of their compacts offer what I want.
Low NR, good macro at wide-angle, short shutter-release lag and other nice features not often found combined in other compacts.

> I think we more aprreciate you creating a new tpic, or sharing in the same thread a new experience with the service company.
As said earlier. I've no intention to get in contact with that kind of service more than what is absolutely necessarily for quite some time to come.

Between. You just helped me to bump the thread with that post ;)

No it's not. I live in Germany and this is perfectly believable. Not only is it believable, it's the norm of service here and how CS in Germany handles anything. It's always frightful to send anything in for repair and better left avoided, if at all possible.

I have a bit of a sticky adjustment wheel on my EX1 and if I was still in the US, no problem. I'd send it in. Not in Germany.

I had my car repaired in 2008, thank god, under warranty, at the Mercedes dealer, who ended up damaging the car because they use untrained 17 year old apprentices. They refused to tell us what happened, but the car was not fixed for two weeks while they waited on parts. On the back end, we got the invoice of what they paid out- 13,000 euros in damage while trying to simply replace a steering rack (a 1,600 euro repair). This included electrical damage and mechanical parts from other systems. Luckily, the car suffers no problems related to that repair today, but it's a testament to how bad things are in Germany and how the precision and work quality is a myth.
sphexx wrote:
>
> schaki wrote:
> > So, I'm going to bump this thread from now on to make sure that it always are visibly on the first or the second page.
> That is an abuse of this forum and "hurts" readers more than your intended target.
>
> --
> Richard