Welcome all.

A great shame that you are having these issues. I have used Johnson's twice previously and found the service to be very good.

Do not be fobbed off by the retailer when they try and refer you direct to Pentax. Your contract is with the retailer NOT the manufacturer.

Also, whether the warranty has expired or not, the Sale of Goods Act requires the retailer to be responsible for the costs of repair or replacement for any goods that fail within the reasonably expected life of the product on a pro-rated basis. This means that after the first year the retailer would be responsible for 5/6 of the cost. After two years, 4/6, and so on. For electrical goods the courts usually take 6 years to be a reasonable expectation of 'life'.

Of course it may take some considerable effort on your part to get the retailer to accept that and so you have to decide how much work you are prepared to invest.

Welcome and enjoy.

I bought a copy of ebay for about £4.00 which worked absolutely fine. So much so I have subsequently bought 3 more and use them when shooting weddings and events without any issues at all.

I have just completed my first piece of paid for photography, a wedding no less, with a kr and k5. You may be surprised that I used the kr as prime fitted with a Tamron 28-75 f2.8 and produced images which my client said made her cry.

Autofocus slow? ....... No!
Hunting in low light? ........ No!
Problems with tungsten lights? .......... No worse than my second shooters Canon and easily correctable in post prod.

Bang for buck it is hard to beat Pentax no matter which body you buy.

I bought a lookie likey version from ebay .... cost about £5.00 and works fine. Has the benefit of letting you plug a USB device in as well.

You can't go wrong with the k-x. It is a superb little camera. Small, light, easy to use, great IQ. For the money it's hard to beat.

And with a link:
link

Found this via Ricehigh's blog. Interesting reading