I have a good buddy that's been a Swarovski dealer for 18 years. He said that he had a few slow years where he sold maybe 20-30 scopes and a few good ones where he sold 60-70 units. So depending on where you figure the average he's probably sold somewhere between 500-1000 Swaro scopes. He's had to send 2 back for repair.
One of the two was when a redneck genius figured he could take a scope apart and get it back together again better 'n new. They sent the peices back and Swaro reassembled them correctly. The other was when a rifle was dropped out of a tree stand and bent the scope tube. This was sent in and Swaro replaced it with a new one.
I've had 2 Swaro scope problems. One was a brand new scope that had a cracked glass reticle - you could see it cracked where the screws around the retainer ring were tightened. Swaro fixed it and had it back in IIRC about a week and a half. The other was a 3-10x42 AV that had the internal lenses come loose. I don't know if it was due to recoil or riding around too long in a Diesel pickup.
I have another good friend that has quite a few Swaro's, (in the 50-60 range I'd guess). This buddy has managed to break 2 Swaro PH 1.5-6's on Safari. Now understand that this guy could break a rock with a feather and is VERY hard on equipment but still he said they did go down in Africa.
So overall between me and a couple good friends and a sample size of close to or a little over 1000 Swaro scopes so far we've had 4 failure's that weren't directly attributable to 20ft falls or stupidity. Out of that many scopes I think it's a pretty good record. At one time I had a couple dozen or so leupolds and I had more failures with them with fewer scopes. Now please understand, I'm not saying that Leupolds are bad scopes yada yada yada, I'm just saying that even the brands that have a strong reputation for reliability break also.
I can't remember any of us having a broken Zeiss, Conquest or otherwise but here we only have a sample size of maybe a couple dozen or so between all of us so I don't know if you can really compare.
So anyway for what it's worth there you have it...................................DJ
