Subal After Sale Support

Greetings fellow photographers,

I like to enquire with fellow photographers who are using Subal systems and how if any have they had any issues with their system go about getting it resolved.

​A friend of mine / client purchased a brand new D800 for a real bargain a year ago but was unable to use it due to work. Only this year was he able to test the system and on his first dive, he reported that there was a leak in the housing. After returning the housing to me, I tested it in the chamber and found that after 8m, water was indeed leaking into the housing from one of the push button assemblies on the top left of the front housing.

Needless to say, for a new housing that was not used, I took the conservative side and changed the o-rings on the push buttons assembly and tested it again. Alias, that did not work and this time I in the chamber, I was certain that the module that was holding the push button assembly (as seen in the photo) was leaking from the screw mount that holds the extenders in position.

I tried messaging Subal via their Facebook page, emailed to Harald and also to their office@subal.com address but have not received any replies, though their FB messenger indicates that my messages were read.

Contacted Alex Mustard too if he knew anyone there too but even that came to a dead end. The local dealers listed on their website have also told me that they do not deal with Subal nor stock any of their parts.

All I like is to get a reply and purchase a replacement module shipped to me so that my friend is able to use his housing. Not asking for any warranty claim or anything if any. Neither does it sound economical to have the housing sent back from Asia to Europe just to have the module replaced.

What are your thoughts about this?

Wow, that’s frustrating for sure.

I have found some of their email addresses stay silent but I’ve always had answers from Vladimir or Michaela (who does despatch and orderin),

You could try vladimir@subal.com. He’s really helpful and very knowledgable

Wow, that’s frustrating for sure.

 

I have found some of their email addresses stay silent but I’ve always had answers from Vladimir or Michaela (who does despatch and orderin),

 

You could try vladimir@subal.com. He’s really helpful and very knowledgable

Thank you Tim.

Right after posting this, I received the contact for Vladimir as well and within the last hour, Harald wrote back to my email to say that they are closed this week for the National Holidays and will get back to me on Monday when they return to work.

Today's Subal is not what they were yesterday!

Our first set of two were the old blue cases for the Nikon N90 film cameras. - Bullet proof.

Our second set of two were for Nikon D200 - Bullet proof!

Our third set of two were for the Nikon D7000 - Bullet proof!

Our fourth set of two for Nikon D500 - that's a different story! One unit arrived from the factory with approximately 2-3 inches of the main body O ring glued into the groove. Factory responded, "accident during assembly". No, two accidents; first open glue container during final assembly and secondly final quality control allowed defective equipment to ship. Then last month with less than 150 dives on one unit, the review button started to jam up, locking out the camera. Disassembly disclosed the top O ring next to the washer/button had a nick in it easily visible to the naked eye.

Our next set of housings will probably have blue trim on them!

Thank you Tim.

 

Right after posting this, I received the contact for Vladimir as well and within the last hour, Harald wrote back to my email to say that they are closed this week for the National Holidays and will get back to me on Monday when they return to work.

 

Good that they made contact. I hope you get the part sorted quickly.

Annoying for you, Okuma. Happily I’ve had no problems with any of mine: Coolpix 5000, D100, D200, D300, D800 and now D500.

I agree Subal needs to improve their communication lines.

For instance, they included a type of pressurized detection system in my new Subal ND850 that’s actually pretty RAD. But there was no documentation about it anywhere I could find and even the Backscatter people were surprised it was there. It works great though! It’s a selling point for sure (wish I had known about it) as it looks like it will work with other vacuum systems. It works well with the manual Backscatter Airlock.

My new Subal ND850 is, so far so good. Very much like my other 3 previous Subals. I do appreciate that Backscatter checked the housing before sending it to me. Everything lines up just right and I just had to tweak a couple of things like removing a piece of the port lock inside (Backscatter talked me through it). I have type 3 ports and the port lock doesn’t work with type 3 and actually makes it much harder to mount ports. But other than that and the cool surprise of vacuum detector lights, everything is lining up perfectly and the housing arrived fast, too fast as it took about a week from Europe and I wasn’t in town expecting it and had to delay delivery.

That’s my experience. I do miss Stephan Dietz, he was a good communicator. Carol