filmscanners: Nikon Service - in Australia

[Julian Robinson <julian@austarmetro.com.au>]

I have reported on this list about the poor focus of my LS2000.  I sent it 
back for warranty repair and today after 4 weeks I got it back - - - 
without trying to encourage Art any more in his campaign, what I got back 
is enough to drive me into a rage.

First, the thing arrived with one of the transport screws lying loose in 
the bottom of the box.

Second, it came with the dreaded "Checked and tested. All found to be 
within manufacturer's specifications."

I rang them and complained bitterly, but the level of their insight and 
dedication of the "first line" help desk is not sufficient to match the 
nature of the problem.  (IN Australia Nikon is sold and serviced by Maxwell 
Photo Optics who don't really have anything beyond first-line 
support.  This guy was not up to dealing with this kind of problem).  All 
he could say was "your method of measuring how well it is in focus is 
useless, and we measured it and it is within specs".  When I asked how the 
measured it, the gentleman said that they have a "special slide" which they 
put in and look on the screen to see if the test pattern is focused all 
over.  Very sophisticated.  Trouble is it doesn't use the holder that I was 
having the most problems with, and it doesn't give you any objective evidence.

IN short form, I got NO satisfaction from this man at all, and just reached 
a dead end.  He actually said "if you send it back, we'll just send it back 
to you the same".  He also said "I don't know the details of how it was 
checked, and you can't talk to the service people directly, you have to 
talk to me and I am only a support person" as well as "It is within 
manufacturer's specifications" - at least 10 times.  What 
specification?  Measured quantitatively how?

I finally spoke to the head of service this morning who appears to be much 
more comprehending and has offered to send me a replacement unit while I 
send mine back.  He also agreed that my method of measuring focus using the 
manual focus feature on Nikonscan was valid and should have produced better 
results.  He couldn't explain why my docket saying "no fault found" had 
been written out on the 6th, and when I rang on the 17th it was still on 
the shelf waiting transport. "Just ready to go".

I think like most of these things, Nikon's service in Australia is partly 
an institutional thing which may be good or bad, but more related to the 
quality of the individuals you actually end up dealing with.  Of course it 
is the  organisation's responsibility to employ people who have the right 
attitude and enough grey matter to sort out real but difficult problems 
without resorting to "NFF" every time.

BTW, the manager also let on that he had heard of jaggies, although not 
under that name.  When I told him about Nikon USA stating that the problem 
had been passed to Nikon Japan, he said that more or less the same thing 
had happened here and that they had never heard anything back.

Julian

Julian Robinson
in usually sunny, smog free Canberra, Australia