How much to change a flash tube?

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bfitzgerald
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How much to change a flash tube?

Unread post by bfitzgerald »

In £ sterling what would you consider a fair service charge parts and labour/postage?
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bfitzgerald
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Re: How much to change a flash tube?

Unread post by bfitzgerald »

This is the repair bill I got!
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bakubo
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Re: How much to change a flash tube?

Unread post by bakubo »

Maybe if they had outsourced the labor to Bangladesh or someplace like that it would have been less. Get rid of those high-priced UK workers! :)
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Dusty
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Re: How much to change a flash tube?

Unread post by Dusty »

Yikes! That's a lot of labour, not to mention shipping/handling for a 5 pound part!

What's a use one go for on evilbay?

Dusty
An a700, an a550 and couple of a580s, plus even more lenses (Zeiss included!).
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bfitzgerald
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Re: How much to change a flash tube?

Unread post by bfitzgerald »

I spoke to a manager at Intro 2020, they won't move on the labour I questioned why such a simple repair was so expensive (I can get the postage down by using a UK address but it's still excessive) He tried to make comparisons to cars saying a clutch part doesn't cost much but the labour is longer (ie more pricey job to get done) I replied by saying that clutch replacement is a tiny fraction of a car's price but this repair is not far off what I paid for the entire flash.

I told them to send me back the flash, they won't charge me for postage as I moaned to them
Did send an email to Metz in Germany suggesting that their service charges are "excessive" and I won't be buying any more of their flashes.
I have 2 x 58 AF-2's they are good flashes and I'm really happy with them, but if they develop a fault it's questionable if they are worth fixing, I paid £199 for each a bulb replacement will cost almost half of that. I can't see how they can justify the cost for such a simple job I could get it if they had to change the capacitor/board or something major, you would just have to throw the flash out.

I'm hoping there is better support for A mount flashes from Chinese makers I've tried quite a few models for Canon and Nikon and they are really way better than they used to be a few years ago and cost a fraction of the price of an OEM or Metz. At the moment they don't have much for higher end dedicated fully featured models but I will be looking there in the future if I have to get more flashes.
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