But hold on a moment, this is a fundamentally flawed argument.
If there's something wrong with your car, yes - it goes back to the dealer and the dealer fixes it.
If there's something wrong with your Phase One back, it goes back to the dealer. Who then send it back to Copenhagen for Phase One to fix it.
Or maybe that's just in this part of the world?
Perhaps the big US dealers participating in this thread could provide some clarity on the kind of servicing they actually carry out in-house?
I will gladly do so.
First - the number of times we receive a phone call from a client and are informed of a hardware repair needing warranty service, for which we simply ship the container for the customer is an extremely low number. Instead, the vast majority of our "technical support" cases involve quite extensive exchanges of information, painstaking diagnosis and troubleshooting, elimination of variables, etc. Many times technical support issues are resolved for our clients by us over the phone (or via email, etc). A sampling of technical support calls over a 4 week period showed about 70% of them were settings/software/usage related and about 30% of them hardware related (meaning some hardware repair potentially was needed). However even in hardware cases, before we just ship a box to Copenhagen, the unit comes to our facility and we put it through our own testing and diagnosis in an attempt to confirm/isolate/dispose of the problem. Sometimes this results in the problem being resolved. No - we do not generally perform hardware repairs on digital backs - at least we don't open them up and replace components. We do perform hardware resolution.
This is just a part of the story. Since digital backs are inherently more complex in usage than 35mm DSLR's - which for the most part, just do what they do within their own enclosed environment - a substantial amount of our technical support actually turns more into technical instruction and guidance. Our clients are constantly taking their digital backs and using them on a multitude of various camera with various lenses, all with their own unique formulas for success (and failure).
This is probably one of the most significant elements of end user experience that separates us from a B&H, etc. In many cases, we know more about a product than the manufacturer does (in terms of real world usage with all the various options). Further, this covers every model in the segment, both new and legacy models that go back generations, due to the accumulation of real world performance and usage data culled from supporting thousands of clients using these products for years.
Our clients never have to have any contact with the manufacturer at all - it's not as simple as my LCD no longer turns on, it's almost always far more complex and lends itself to interpretation, and it's never you vs the manufacturer. The most important factor in my opinion is that our mode is to solve the problem. We didn't make the product. We don't feel any need to defend it or to abstain from responsibility for the performance or lack of it. Our objective is the satisfaction of the client for the benefit of what often is a very close and long term relationship.
I hope that does shed some light.
Steve Hendrix
Capture Integration