K10 reliability

Hi Everyone - here's a hard one to ask, but nothing ventured....

My K10 is coming towards its first birthday. Its been fantastically reliable. So the question I have is do I shell out for the breakdown insurance...or save the money towards the next step upgrade?

I'm not a pro and probably average 200 shots per week.

I know that Pentax offer a policy as does the camera shop I purchased it from (Jessops in Leicester)

Has anyone had any tough experiences with either insurance option? Pentax sounds good to em but would need me to send the camera back to them whereas I could just drop it off at the local store in the case of Jessops.

One main question would be about how quickly any repair would be done.

Cheers, all
Geoff

Most important question is how much is the breakdown insurance ?

I think extended warranties/insurance are mostly a waste of money. The cost is the key. Bear in mind that you have just got through the period where any major fault should have shown itself, and if in say 2 years time it goes on the blink would you not be better off putting the insurance premium towards the newest K-55.5D ?

As an aside I remember buying one of those electrical plug socket testers from Homebase a couple of years ago, £12 I think it was. When the salesgirl asked me if I wanted to take out an extended warranty I was speachless.

Most electronic devices fail within the first six months if they are going to, and if not usually carry on for a very long time.

The only time we ever took out this type of insurance was when Sue worked for jessops - the staff price was superb value and could not be resisted!

Normally we never take out these insurance plans.

Try googling 'bathtub curve' if you're not familiar with the term already. As has been said you're probably through the downslope already.

The question for me is what is the design life for a Pentax DSLR? This will depend on how much and in what environment it is used but are there any published guidelines?

For future reference, if you had bought it from a Pentax Pro Centre it would have had 2 years warranty.

The shutter is rated for 100,000 exposures, but of course you can always have a shutter replaced. Considering how long we have had our DSLRs before uograding, I suspect the design life is not going to impinge upon us.

So far I haven't managed 10,000 exposures with any one camera, never mind 100,000.

Cheers Guys - and John you are right the next upgrade will be well in the bag by the time I get near 100,000 shots.

I envy you being able to change cameras before the 10,000 mark is reached!

I've certainly noted Peter's excellent point about where to buy future Pentax cameras from. Thanks for that. Ironically had Jessops had the Samsung model I'd have got two years with that but rightly or wrongly I thought that the Pentax brand would have given me better lenses and even better final quality control/camera firmware.

I did get some mileage from a Jessops warranty scheme on a digital camera. It wasn't a Pentax and the problems was that it used compact flash cards and some of the pins on the circuit board got bent. It was also a design fault of the camera because the feed slots were "sloppy" making it possible to puch the card down at an angle. The repair would have cost loads of money (they said).


OK, so now I'm off to the bathroom to research the bath tub effect.

Thanks for the thoughts.
Geoff

I was surfing the net last week and found this link:

http://www.imaginginfo.com/web/online/Online-Exclusives/Science-Experiment--Came...$4139

(sorry if thats been posted before)

That should prove the K10D is well built

It impressed me anyway - coping with those temperatures, the vacuum of space and the hard landing!

Please enlighten me, as I purchased my K20D from Park cameras, and Pentax quote that it has 12 months warranty.

I've only found extended warranty options on the Pentax US site, and I'm told by Pentax UK that it does not apply to cameras purchased in the UK!
As my MZ7 let me down in Australia, I am left wondering about the life span of my new camera!

Pentax provide a statutory 12 month guarantee.
The Pentax Pro centres themselves extend that to 2 years. So if things go wrong you go back to the Pro centre and they sort it
Matt

Hi All,

My K10D's autofocus stopped working over 3 weeks ago. It's about 18 months old. I bought it at Jessops and took out the extended warranty at the time. I left it into the local Jessops store where I purchased it. That was 3 weeks ago on Tuesday. I phoned to find out if it was fixed and was told it would be at least another 2 weeks!! I would strongly suggest taking out the extended warranty but do it with Pentax if you want a fast service!!

Hi

Johnny's post must send shivers down the spine of any of us that are strongly attached to our lovely Pentax bodies (and glass). If we only have one body how on earth would we cope with 3,4,5..or even longer weeks without them.

Maybe not so bad for the pros with their bags full of lovely kit.

My money would go to the insurance deal that offered a loan camera while mine was being repaired - like they do with car insurance and accidents?

I can dream!

If Johnny reads this I'd love to know how he gets on with the 50mm FA1.4 and if he likes the Sigma 135-400.

Not sure what the protocol should be for going off topic, maybe I should have written directly to him?

Am happy to get any guidance on this from the more experienced forum members on here (I am still a newbie, in my attempted defense)

Cheers all, Geoff

Hi Rataegeoff,

You can check out some of my work here link Click on the image and click on the link 'More Properties' to see which lens I used. What do you think of the results?

Getting back on topic I have an event to shoot in 2 weeks and would really have liked a second body as back up! Which bings to mind about talk of a Pentax Pro Service Centre. Has this been set up yet?

Insurance??????

You mean "give us your money and we make a hefty profit"

DONT BOTHER!!!!

Look at it this way, NEVER take out insurance or repair plans on ANY appliance or gizmo, how much money are you going to save yourself? answer, more than enough to pay for repais to any of those appliances or gizmo's that go wrong out of warranty.