warranties was Re: Noblex warranties

[Robert Monaghan <rmonagha@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sorry, but you DO have an international warranty from the factory, when
you buy factory new goods. You may get an additional warranty from a local
importer or distributor, such as Nikon USA, but whether you buy grey
market or USA goods, if they are new in the box, they should also be
accompanied by a factory warranty card. 

Nikon USA and Mamiya USA etc. are separate companies or subsidiaries
(wholy owned or not) of foreign manufacturers. They may or may not opt to
repair grey market imports locally (e.g., Canon USA does, Nikon USA
doesn't). But whatever warranties these importers offer are in addition 
to the international factory warranties. That is why you get both the 
international factory warranty and Nikon/USA's extended warranty (to 5 
years) when you buy a Nikon/USA imported lens in the USA. But if you had 
a grey market lens imported from Mexico or Asia or the Caribbean, you 
would still have the international factory warranty. That means, during 
the warranty period, you could still send it back to the factory for 
repairs under their warranty program - e.g., if the goods are defective.

for more info on saving major $$ by importing grey market goods, and the 
various warranty issues, see my "saving 40-60%+ grey market pages" at:

http://www.smu.edu/~rmonagha/mf/hongkong.html  Grey Market pages...

the fact remains, the manufacturer is held responsible for defective 
goods and products (at least in the USA), and can't disclaim or refuse to 
repair goods such as these which have evidently gone into the grey market
channels. These laws are in place partly to prevent consumers from having 
to perform precisely the absurd kinds of serial number checks and somehow 
verifying the legitimacy of the status of the chain of sellers with the 
original factory. That simply can't work if commerce is to move smoothly, 
so the law attaches the warranty responsibility to the manufacturers and 
holds the consumer safe, regardless of who you buy from (if not stolen 
goods..). But the safer approach is to simply NOT BUY from Noblex, if they
are going to take such an anticonsumer and legally questionable stances...

regards bobm

PS I address Ralph's concerns in the above URL, but suffice to say, for 
the USA anyway, you can import one of anything from any photo mfger, 
every month, under a personal exemption (and you can do so by mail etc.) 
in the USA. This includes stuff like Mamiya, where the trademark is owned 
by a separate corp in the USA. Lots of people do. I have scores of 
examples of people saving kilobucks around the globe. And USA duties are 
only 2-3% when they are collected (and I'm sitting here with a 250mm 
zeiss lens for my 500 el/m from the UK - once again, US Customs opted not 
to charge any duty - too busy going after drug cowboys, I guess ;-) grins

* Robert Monaghan POB752182 Dallas Tx 75275-2182 rmonagha@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx  *
* Third Party 35mm Lenses: http://www.smu.edu/~rmonagha/third/index.html    *
* Medium Format Cameras: http://www.smu.edu/~rmonagha/mf/index.html megasite*