RE: [Leica] is this the place for complaints about leica qc?

[Tom.Henson@bakerbotts.com]

I have been reading the thread on these postings, and would like to comment
of them.

I had the same problem as Terry. Only for me it was three new lenses, not
two. After exchanging two lenses with the retailer and still getting bad
lenses, I wrote an email message to Horst Braun in customer service in
Germany and I sent a similar message to Brenda Olesin in Leica NJ. In it I
stated my dissappointment and my desire to get new lenses. I felt that to
have to "clean" new lenses was unfair to the purchaser and asked that a
decision be made by Germany to do this and to convey this to NJ. 

Horst was very kind and forwarded my message to Hanns-Peter Cohn the
president of Leica. Lecia is well aware of the QA problem with their lenses.
If you asked nicely and they will help you. Whether you will get new lenses
I don't know. But if you don't ask, you will never know.

Tom Henson

>>These findings are intolerable! These two lenses cost me approximately
>>$5,000 and Leica dared send them out with these anomalies????? Does
>>anybody else herein have horror stories about sickening findings in
>>recent Leica product purchases they would like to vent? 

>Right Terry, this is not excusable but there is hardly anything we as a 
>LUG can do about it.

whether or not the lug can do anything about this is academic (though i
think there's an argument that the lug _may_ be able to do something about
it in some oddball way -- (anybody who knows how to make a pipe bomb
please contact me off list)) after all, we have exactly the same ability
to change the optical quality of the lenses but no one has a fit when
someone posts how great the lenses did in a bench test -- the real point
here is that this is EXACTLY the place to post your positive and negative
stories about any piece of leica equipment -- this is the most on-topic
post we've had in months (except of course any post that i've made which
have not only been on topic, but thougtful, insiteful, and funny as well,
not to mention dotted with beautiful photographs) from anticdotal evidence
such as this we can discover whether this crappy lens was an anomolie or
the norm. these are exactly the types of posts i want to see on the lug.
(though people, please see if you can figure out how to infuse more nudity
into your informative posts.)

kc