Both a blessing and a curse of the Internet is that quality control issues for products are easier to see than pre-Internet. It's a blessing in that the ease with which you can search coupled with the high visibility of postings on some social sites gives you rapid access to "my X doesn't Y" type of complaints.
The curse is that, when you've got a company like Nikon selling almost 20 million widgets a year, there's bound to be some products that slip through the quality control cracks and arrive in a user's hands with defects. Indeed, the common benchmark that most manufacturing companies aim for is something the single digits, say 5% out-of-box defects. Given that this would mean Nikon produces 1 million units a year with problems out of the box, and that most of those buyers are Internet savvy, it's easy to see that you'd get a lot of quality complaints on the net.
The trick, of course, is figuring out what in your search results and forum browsing constitutes a real problem you should watch out for and what are probably more isolated incidents you're not likely to encounter. One thing to note, of those presumed 5% bad out-of-box experiences, some of them are not actually a problem, but user error or misunderstanding. For example, a lot of focus issues turn out to be misunderstandings of how a new focus system works.
Let me point out just a few of the Nikon quality control complaints I've seen in the past two years:
- D3x viewfinders are misaligned to the sensor
- D3s low light autofocus freezes
- Color LCD or Top LCD show water behind it in high humidity
- SB-900 overheats and shuts down
- Dead Battery Syndrome with some camera/lens combinations
- 70-200mm has flecks inside barrel
- 70-200mm has defective ring inside barrel
- 24mm f/1.4 has focus inconsistency issues
- plus numerous Lens X is "not sharp" and "back/front focuses" complaints
FWIW, the first five on the list I've personally encountered. The first was fixed by swapping out the body for a new one by my dealer, the second is still under investigation but appears to be a common trait in certain low-light and low-contrast situations, the third is a clear DESIGN defect in recent Nikon bodies, the fourth is another design defect (the SB-700 doesn't shut down under the same stress pattern), and the fifth appears to be a conflict in a third-party lens.
The reason I point these things out is that one needs to distinguish between a manufacturing problem (product you received wasn't made to Nikon's QC goals during manufacturing) versus a design problem (all products were made with the same underlying issue). If you know which you're dealing with, your action should be pretty straightforward:
- Manufacturing defects: either have your dealer swap out the copy you bought for a new one, or have Nikon fix it under warranty.
- Design defects: return the product for credit if you can, or learn to live with the defect, or wait for Nikon to come up with a repair solution for the defect (which may be never).
Take that Color LCD and Top LCD issue, for instance. In high humidity situations, especially where you're going in and out of extremes, I've seen isolated case where one or both displays "cloud up" because moisture got behind the protective glass. Simply put, Nikon needs to seal the displays better. But there's not much that sending the camera into Nikon will do for you: they can remove excess moisture and remount the glass, but it's almost certain you'll have a recurrence down the line if you work in high humidity situations. So you either return the product for credit or learn to live with the issue (and figure out how to best avoid it when possible). And you hope that Nikon comes up with a solution some day (it's four years and counting, so I'm not holding my breath).
Issue #1: There is no mechanism by which users can complain about or even comment on design issues like this. In theory, the subsidiaries are supposed to collect such information anecdotally and pass it back to corporate, but given that many of the design issues I've seen persist, either that information isn't getting back to corporate or they're ignoring it. Worse still, there's generally a "deny until proven" element to the support at most of the Japanese companies. I talked with one NikonUSA representative who denies there is any condensation issue with the LCDs. Perhaps I'll drag him down to a swamp in Louisiana and see what happens with his camera ;~).
One piece of good news is that Nikon has a pretty good history of fixing real design problems when they become aware of them. But the question is still: how are they becoming aware of them? Why aren't they being caught prior to production? The answer to that question is: not enough time. Even the pro cameras with their major component and technology changes are iterating on four year cycles, which is relatively fast considering all the technology changes inside. You basically have some of the most complex products in the world being redesigned from almost scratch every four years. Even the auto industry has had problems with that.
Okay, then why doesn't Nikon know about some things that more than one user has encountered more than once? Well, they don't listen well (or perhaps a better phrasing: they listen selectively). As I noted, all the things I mentioned above and many more are highly visible to someone who knows how to do a Web search with any degree of sophistication. So why isn't Nikon seeing them and responding quickly? I hate to harp on the same subject too many times (I try restrict myself to once every couple of weeks if possible ;~), but it's mostly the result of the structure and incentives that Nikon Japan has set up. You can't find gold (or mold) if you don't look for it.
Couple that with the Japanese reticence to admit a problem or failure, and we have an additional issue to deal with. Last year's Toyota debacle is a good example. Clearly, Toyota knew they had some issues. But the purchaser of their vehicles never learned about them (nor the government agencies, apparently). It took a high degree of user chatter and actual data that could no longer be ignored to get Toyota to admit to problems and fast track fixes. In something like a camera or computer, which aren't likely to kill you if they're defective and don't have direct governmental oversight, fixes tend to get quietly put into future revisions of the product, what we in the business call Silent Updates.
Nikon is well known to do this. Even back in the film days, cameras like the F4 got Silent Updates: eight that I know of. This continues today, and some companies even do Silent Firmware Updates (firmware labeled the same externally, but with something different in the binaries). Thus, sometimes things get fixed in our cameras and users don't know about it, which means that those that had the problem prior to the Silent Update probably never get it (they often do, without knowing about it, if the product goes back to the maker to be repaired or serviced after the Silent Update is available).
All of which makes writing about product defects, whether of the manufacturing kind or the design kind, difficult. Nikon could have fixed the condensation problem on the LCDs and I might not know about it, as the fix could have been silent and come after my D3s and D3x were made.
But what I mostly wanted to write about today isn't product defects, but manufacturing defects. I get a regular stream of emails that go something like this: "I just bought an X and it doesn't seem to do as well at Y as I've seen others get from it. Do I have a defective sample? Should I return it?"
Short answer: yes, you probably should return it. At least once you've established it isn't user error or a misconception on your part. In the recent past, it appears that returning and getting a replacement is a faster and more reliable way of dealing with a manufacturing defect than sending the product into Nikon for repair. Given that Nikon's repair facilities do the same QA testing that the manufacturing plant does, if it got past the manufacturing plant, there's a good chance that it'll get by the Nikon repair facility, too. I've heard far too many reports of something sent in for repair and it coming back with "it works fine" when in the end it turns out it doesn't. If you do use the repair route instead of the replacement route, be sure to document, document, document. As in "doing X reliably and repeatedly produces incorrect behavior Y," complete with image samples to support that.
Issue #2: Nikon, like most manufacturers, would love to reduce their repair/replace rates by some percentage, because it reduces costs, so they don't make it particularly easy or well known on how to deal with a problem that occurs. It's not like with Apple, where you can walk into an Apple store and have a well-trained repair expert take a close look and make a quick repair/replace decision and you typically walk home with a working product. A good Nikon dealer will do swap-outs without much question, but that, too is hampered sometimes by Nikon's inability to keep products in stock. If you buy a D3s today, for example, your dealer may not have another to swap out for a defective one should you find that's what you've got.
The reason why I'm writing about manufacturing quality control right now has to do with what's happened this year in Japan and Thailand. I keep getting emails from people asking if they should be leery of post quake (FX bodies and many lenses) or post flood (DX bodies and lenses) products from Nikon. My answer might surprise you: no, you shouldn't worry.
One thing Nikon has been very good at over the years is having a fairly high degree of control over product quality. They've been able to start new facilities and establish their same basic high level of control from day one. That's exactly what's going to happen in Thailand when they restart (and has already happened in Japan): damaged facilities are redone, so they are essentially just like starting up another new factory. Nikon's record with that is excellent. I really don't expect more manufacturing defects just because they build products in a new plant or a redone plant, whether it be with new or existing workers. If anything, the manufacturing defect rate might go down, because Nikon is going to be looking for issues harder than usual.
Of course, that doesn't help us with design defects.