Service Terms and Conditions

SHIPPING:

When sending us your lens for servicing, please ensure it is well packed (lens individually bagged, surrounded by bubblewrap often works), and sent insured, tracked and signed for. We cannot take any responsibility for items that are sent to us but go missing in transit before reaching us. However, we will work with the sender if this happens to the best of our abilities.

Post servicing, repair or conversion, lenses are sent back to the customer at actual costs. For the safety of the item and peace of mind with the customer, we only send items insured, tracked and signed for. We often use ‘Royal Mail Next Working Day Delivery by 1 pm’ for UK customers and either UPS or FedEx for EU and International customers.

Please do not send us your lens until you have messaged us, and we have responded with a copy of the Terms and Condition and Request for Service forms. The Request for Service form will need to be filled out and sent to us with your lens. We ask, for each lens sent, a separate Request for Service form to be filled out.

We will let you know when your parcel has arrived and when it is shipped back to you.

On all invoices, we add return postage costs, which include insurance for the value the customer deems their lens to be, tracking and signature confirmation. The customer takes responsibility for ensuring the lens value is what they deem it to honestly be, when arranging return shipping with us, and we cannot declare any lens below the price of the service they have just had with us either. There are return customs forms we can help International customers with also. If there is a certain courier you would prefer, please let us know. At the moment, we will not send parcels with either Yodel or Hermes courier services.

In the unlikely event a parcel should go missing or is damaged on its return to the customer, we will work with the customer providing all necessary service and receipt paperwork and shipping receipts to help either find the lost item or make a claim against the damaged or lost item.

For United Kingdom customers, drop off and collection of your lens is permitted by pre-arranged and agreed upon times and dates.

NON-EU COUNTRIES:

If you are currently outside the European Union, please ensure that a correct International Customs Form is filled out and placed in a clear plastic sleeve located on the outside of the parcel, in the “item description” stating:

• Broken camera lens for ‘repair and servicing’.
• Vintage camera lens for ‘maintenance, restoration and servicing’.

If the form asks for “Reasons for Export”, please state – “Repair and Return”.

The form will depend on the parcel carrier you choose for the delivery. If you’re using your country’s national postal service – please let us know in advance so we can send you an additional UK Customs form to complete, which would then expedite the clearance of the parcel through UK Customs.

In the event UK customs applies an import duty with taxes, we will contact the customer by email and ask them what they would like us to do. If we decline, it will result in the parcel being returned to the sender. The payment of UK Import VAT is the customer’s responsibility, however we will complete and submit a refund request on customer’s behalf after the lens is sent back, we charge £10 for this service.

SERVICING TIMES:

The lenses are prioritized by the time of their arrival at our facility. However, some of them are completed earlier if there’s a “batch” of the same work being carried out.

During busy periods, we may ask you to hold onto the lens for a while but reserve a service window. We will let you know about 3-4 weeks before the service window arrives and ask the lens to be posted to us. This works in the customer’s favour, as you are not separated from your lens for possibly months at a time, and typically, we aim to perform the service agreed upon on the lens within 8-12 weeks of receipt. If you want to send your lens to us immediately, and not hold onto it until the service window, you can do that also. We keep customer lenses locked in special humidity-controlled cabinets. However, if your lens has fungus in it, we keep it separate from non-fungus lenses, to avoid the risk of cross lens contamination.

FULL SERVICE DESCRIPTION: 

Our standard full-service price covers what is listed on our FULL SERVICE page. 

  It does NOT include:

• The fabrication of custom/ bespoke parts
• Fresh coats of paint or finishing
• Internal cleaning to sealed doublet or triplet sets
• 6-Bit coding
• Removal of ‘Baked on Haze’
• Removal of ‘Ghost of Fungus’
• Recoating of optics that may have coating damage due to fungus
• Re-honing any parts that may have become bent due to impact damage
• Aperture rebuilds, which include full aperture disassembly and cleaning of individual blades
• Re-fonting, font colour changes

It does include:

• Relubrication of internal components
• Cleaning out of internal debris in the optics to the best of our ability
• Cleaning out of internal debris found in various crevices of the mechanics
• Fresh grease on the focusing helicoid and aperture ring if applicable
• Removal of surface-level haze that is not ‘baked on’
• Removal of surface-level fungus (ghost of fungus, which is coating damage, may remain)
• The making of any custom shim that may be needed to ensure accurate rangefinder focusing
• Non-disassembly aperture cleaning (we use lint-free wipes and isopropyl alcohol to try and clean the aperture of oil, as much as we can, without performing an aperture disassembly)
• Collimating the lens, and calibrating it to ensure if focuses properly to Leica calibration standards
• Service and calibration certificate, which states the work done to the lens
• Inspection by the chief Opto-Mechanical Engineer to ensure the work performed passes quality control
• 12-month transferable warranty

ADDITIONAL SERVICES:

Conversion work, 6-bit coding, element scratch removal, focus finger tabs, new part fabrication and other projects that fall outside the full services, are arranged at prices established between the customer and Skyllaney Opto-Mechanics. It typically happens during the evaluation phase of a lens at our workshop, unless those estimates have been agreed through an exchange of communications which may include photos of the lens or work to undertake and may include phone calls.

If, during the standard full service, we find something unexpected inside the lens that neither the customer nor we were aware of (this does not happen often, but sometimes internal parts are broken, and the only way to discover this is via disassembly while servicing). If this should happen, we often will take a photo of the issue, and notify the customer with a discussion on how they would like to proceed.

Should the rare occasion arise that we are sent a lens to service, and upon its arrival and inspection, it becomes deemed outside of our scope of services, there is no charge to the customer for the inspection. The customer will only be charged the price of return shipping, with insurance and tracking.

PAYMENT:

After every full service, conversion, and project we take a photo of the finished lens and/or item, and send it to the customer, along with an invoice.

Payment for the invoice can be taken via either PayPal or bank to bank transfer.

WARRANTY:

Our 12-month warranty on full services guarantees the labour and calibration of the lens, unless otherwise expressly stated on the invoice. The 12-month warranty begins when our Opto-Mechanical Engineer signs and dates the service/calibration certificate.

Under a warranty claim with us during the 12 month period, there is no guarantee should the lens have been damaged, exposed to liquids, sand or foreign debris, impact damage or dropping, excessive humidity, or post-service intervention by a third party. If any of these are detected during the warranty claim, then normal full-service conditions shall prevail, and the warranty will be invalidated.

The exception to the third-party post service intervention is the original lens manufacturer themselves. For example, we service a Leica 50mm v4 Summicron. The customer then sends the lens to Leica Wetzlar or New Jersey, post our service, for further work (possibly to add 6-bit coding, element replacement, etc.), we would still continue to honour the initial term of the 12-month warranty. However, we may ask for the service history work that the manufacturer performed, to assist with addressing any services under warranty.

INSURANCE:

Lastly, we do ask that all customers seek to get their lenses on their own insurance policies prior to sending them to us. Often, should something happen during transit, or an unexpected event occurs, knowing the lens has been insured does help the peace of mind. Typically, insurers need proof of ownership or proof of purchase, to add items to their homeowners or other insurance policy.  Equally, there are photography equipment specific insurance policies.