Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/02/09

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Warranty Issues
From: John Collier <jbcollier@shaw.ca>
Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2003 08:48:46 -0700

Ummm Austin,

A couple of points:

1) All officially imported and distributed gear comes with an 
international warrantee period. So Leica US gear comes with the 
international warranty PLUS the Passport Protection Plan. If you buy 
Leica US gear, it is covered by the transferable international warranty 
and you can get it repaired at any distributorship's repair depot 
(provided they have the skills to do the job) during the warrantee 
period. Passport repairs can only be done at the issuing distributor's 
repair depot (at least this was the policy but now that many 
distributors are offering a passport plan, perhaps they have a 
reciprocal agreement)

2) We have largely NOT been talking about grey equipment. Grey 
equipment does not come with a two year international warranty period. 
Grey equipment can be repaired under warrantee ONLY at Leica AG.* So 
you would have to ship the camera at your expense to Germany for the 
warrantee repairs to be done. If you send the gear to a Leica USA (or 
elsewhere) they will either repair it at your expense or send it to 
Leica AG at your expense.

For some reason (they are broke?) you can phone the factory and, if the 
order is large enough, bypass the authorized distributors. Also it 
seems that authorized distributors can dump their product unofficially 
into another market with NO support (no support = low price). Why this 
is all allowed to happen I have not got the foggiest. It certainly does 
happen and Leica knows about it and does nothing to to control it.

This may not seem fair to you but I am just reporting the facts not 
apologizing for them.

John Collier

* Some grey resellers offer a warranty from independent repair shops.


On Saturday, February 8, 2003, at 10:06 PM, Austin Franklin wrote:

> If the US cameras come with only the Passport "plan", and not other
> warranty, and that "plan" is not transferable...then it would seem to 
> me
> that the International warranty that comes with "gray market" cameras 
> might
> be more valuable to some, as it IS transferable...and if you keep a 
> camera
> for a year, and then decide to sell it, it sells with a warranty if 
> you have
> the International warranty, but none if you have Passport "plan".  Hum.

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