Here's the sordid story of the OM-10 debacle as related by Clint Rumbo
almost 12 years ago. Many of you will remember Clint as a former member
of this list and, like John Hermanson (also of this list) a former
Olympus service manager. Clint's service area was centered in Dallas.
Clint was a frequent contributor to the list and especially with service
tips but one day just disappeared. AFAIK know one knows what happened
to him
But here's the story
=====================================================================
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 19:14:01 -0500
From: clintonr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [OM] Re: Why the OM decline? (the OM-10 story - long!)
Chris O'Neill wrote:
> > >... Olympus did some stores dirty in
> > > the recent past, which has probably left some store owners with
hard feelings... The owner of a local (Wichita) camera store told me
things began to go downhill with the OM10. For whatever reason,
Olympus determined that this would not be covered by warranty.
>
> A former dealer here in Edmonton told me that at one point, not sure
when, > Olympus tried to "strong arm" dealers into pushing more equipment.
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Ah, memories, memories!
Let's start at the beginning of all this -- the OM-10. Prior to this
model, Olympus Camera Corporation (OCC, Olympus' US Distributor) was
going "great guns". The OM-1 and 2 had established the Olympus name as
one of quality, overcoming the resistance of a consumer market where
"bigger is better", and the intransigence of the "professional" market
as well.
The OM-10 was designed as an economical amateur camera. Inside, it has
plastic gears and shafts where earlier OM's had metal parts -- and
_that_ I suspect was where the problem started. To make the shutter
work "smoothly" (my analysis), the plastic gears were liberally doused
with shutter oil (an indisputable fact).
This (over-oiling) was fine for a while. But in a year or so,
particularly in warmer climes, this lubrication began to migrate,
eventually saturating the armature and electromagnet of the shutter.
OM-10's began to pour into the (5) Olympus repair facilities, all with
the same problem -- erratic exposures.
At the time, some may recall, Olympus OM products distributed in the US
by OCC were covered by a 2 year warranty. I don't know about the other
facilities, but in Dallas (where I was Customer Service Manager /
Technician), this was recognized as a warranty defect, and serviced as such.
Our first instructions to correct the problem were to simply wipe the
excess lubrication off the armature (I wouldn't be surprised if other
facilities received different directions -- sort of a "test marketing"
of different repair methods). This worked fine for a while, but
inevitably, in a few months, the cameras came back again as more
lubrication seeped onto the armature.
It quickly became evident that the only reliable solution to the problem
was to completely disassemble every OM-10 with an erratic shutter,
completely flush the excess oil from the shutter, soak the electromagnet
coil in solvent to remove the lubricant trapped in the windings, the
reassemble and re-time everything. That was the procedure we began to
use in Dallas, and our actual re-work percentages for OM-10's dropped
dramatically. Again, I don't know what other
offices were doing to address the problem by then.
But it was, of course, too little, too late -- the reputation of an
otherwise good model was severely compromised.
At the same time, foreign exchange rates were such that US dealers could
buy OM cameras from non-US sources cheaper than they could from OCC
(resulting in the so-called "grey market")! Thus, OCC found themselves
fixing OM-10's they'd sold with a two-year warranty again and again, as
well as servicing non-US cameras with their one-year warranty (this may
have been the source of some dealer complaints that Olympus wasn't
recognizing their warranty) for which they'd received absolutely no
economic compensation. Something obviously _had_ to be
done!
OCC management decided to do two things to balance their books,
essentially "shooting themselves in the foot" -- first, they dropped the
two-year warranty (clearly the only advantage customers had for paying
extra to obtain a legitimately imported camera). Then they created a
"special" Manual Adapter with the "FC" ("Full Control") marking for the
OM-10 that was included with the US models (along with a little US flag
emblem on the body), and they raised the price of the accessory Manual
Adapters an outrageous amount -- the idea being
that "Grey Market" camera sellers would have to buy Manual Adapters from
OCC to "compete" with OCC's cameras. This was, of course, an abject
failure.
With the resulting losses, OCC had to cut expenses. This meant (to
OCC's management) closing offices and laying off personnel. First they
closed the Dallas office, then the office in Atlanta. Next came the
warehouses in LA and Chicago. Finally, sales regions were
"consolidated", sales positions eliminated, and so on.
At the same time, OCC was determined to increase profit. Prices were
raised without considering the marketplace, and sales quotas were
increased in the face of growing dealer resistance -- to many dealers,
it seemed as if Olympus wasn't long for the US, if not the world!
So that's the story from my perspective -- others may disagree, but
that's what I saw. Except for a few minor blemishes, though, Olympus'
products are superior by far -- otherwise they would have never survived.
======================================================================
posted by
Chuck Norcutt
On 1/2/2013 4:55 PM, Chris Crawford wrote:
> How did Olympus screw over dealers on the OM-10?
>
> -- Chris Crawford Fine Art Photography Fort Wayne, Indiana 260-437-8990
--
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