need advice - repairs

where is a reputable and reasonably priced place to get repairs done to an optio 750Z in either the UK or Japan?

the lens on mine will nolonger drive out...

have already been quoted 120 - 180 £ for the repair which seems steep -

Its the going rate, They are basically telling you too throw it away and buy a new one.

Sadly, these are not really viable to have repaired professionally. You could try to get another differently broken one and attempt the repair yourself. Pentax announced last week that they are pulling out of the P&S market altogether

I didn't know that, Did they say why they are pulling out.
I feel that is a big backward step for Pentax, surely there P&S sales would out strip there DSLR sales :

The main growth area is the DSLR and also the most profitable area is the DSLR. Plus, having sold a camera they can go on to sell more lenses for it.

At one time Pentax only made SLRs, admittedly in various formats such as 6x7, 645, 35mm and 110.

Disgusted that again a big company won't support their products.
P&S is the biggest part of any manufactures market and should never be ignored.
Most people just want to buy a "good" camera that will record the moment simply with no real effort, and expect it to do so for a good long time into the future.
When you make a DSLR you are potentially only selling a body, not everybody is going to buy your lenses, 'cos not everybody is wealthy enough to, so they look to 2nd party manufactures to get the best value for money.
If Pentax turn their backs on these people then there will be no future for them in the "more up market" DSLR area 'cos there will be no sales to support R&D.
Japanese companies with "cache" have a reputation for abandoning their customers at will as I have experienced: Seiko, Sony, Pentax, Kawasaki, Honda.
The only Jap company that I have found with a commitment above the expected is Nissan.
Having said all this I have more respect for Japanese companies than any other, but they turn their backs on certain markets too easily.

most people have phones that double as P&S cameras and seem very happy with that one toy/tool.

I would have thought that the worst "offenders" in the photographic world would have been Olympus and Canon.

Olympus because they totally abandoned their OM series cameras leaving their users high and dry. I wouldn't be surprised if 4/3 went the same way, eventually.

Canon because they totally changed their mount, I think twice.

Nikon don't seem to be in the compact market so much now, as well as Pentax.

I'm not sure if the general buying public care so much what name is on the front of their P&S camera, or indeed buy the same brand if they go later for a DSLR.

The Pentax announcement hasn't been confirmed yet as far as I know and as I reacall it said future P&S compacts would be sourced from elsewhere, so the Pentax name may be on these cameras for some time yet. Perhaps they are just planning to scale down their in house R&D and manufacture so more resources can be applied to the DSLR range.

It's quite simple, really.

Nowadays, all these electronic gadgets are made by machines, not people. That's why they are so fantastically cheap (my first Pentax SLR cost a month's pay in 1973, now a DSLR is nearer to a days' pay).

But repairs have to be carried out by human beings, and humans are expensive. It just isn't economical to repair anything that costs less than a couple of hundred pounds, and we have to accept that.

Thankfully, most P&S cameras last a couple of years, which is about as long as most people need.

I would much rather pay £200 for a camera that can't be repaired than £500 for one that can, given that probably only one camera in a thousand goes wrong during its (nowadays) brief life.

G

If you're refering to the original post about repair of the camera, there's nothing there to say they won't support their product, just that it would cost over £120 to do so. As George says, you're paying for human time and skill.

It would be nice to expect your camera to last as long as you want it to, but there will always be the small minority that have problems, unfortunately these days it's not economical to repair them. Instead you can spend the same money to get a much better featured product.

Perhaps Pentax are going to sell rebadged Samsung compacts in the future.

Dan

Especially when a human is repairing a minuscule piece of equipment!

For example, I managed to repair my mother-in-laws little Canon P&S after the CF card was rammed in the wrong way Took me about 2 hours to get the thing apart, an hour on the phone to get the right part, and another 3 hours to repair. The part was only about £10, but if I had to charge my time it would have been beyond economical repair! (Note: I do repairs for myself only, having spent my early years fixing all kinds of electronic gadgets!)

Additionally, when repaired, they guarantee the work as well.

Added to that, most companies (Canon and Pentax included) often outsource their repair work.


These days you cannot have more complex products for less money and have them easily and cheaply maintained.
Matt

surely there are small repair shops who can source the parts and pop em in... for a competent technician this has to be a matter of 40 minutes or so of labour... if even that

I was thinking that in Japan there has to be some sort of shop or service like this ... i know here in the uk everything is generally prohibitive - especially for anything that's eevn vaguely "specialist" like a camera or a musical instrument etc.

Well, have you phoned Asahi Photo? http://www.asahiphoto.co.uk
You can at least talk over the issues with them.

As for Japan or elsewhere... alas I cannot help
Matt

"Sourcing the parts" is usually the relatively easy bit "poping them in" is the challenge as modern electronic goods are not usually made with service in mind.

To illustrate - I have in my posession a Toshiba laptop on which the power conector has developed a fault. Getting a new connector was a matter of ebay and a few pounds. Changing it requires completely dismantling the computer to get at the motherboard. It will take me half a day - and laptop computers are designed to be relatively servicable!

I would imagine it's a lot easier to find a laptop power connector than it is a part for a discontinued compact camera - which may be unique to that model.