I had the same thing happen on my 12X42 ATB's this year. The diopter cup on the right side came off track. I screwed it all the way down thinking it would re-align. Ended up getting stuck so tight when it untwisted it unscrewed the entire eye piece out of the binocular.
The single most frustrating warranty experience I have ever encountered followed. I did not think I could remove the objective lense covers so I shipped my binos back with them still attached. The warranty work was done within a couple weeks and the binos shipped back to me. However they removed from front lense covers and did not return them. 14 phone calls over 5+ weeks later they finally acknowledged that the replacement part was out of stock. Sorry was all I got out of them. Totally ruined my late season spot and stalk archery deer hunt in SD. Could not use my binos without the covers. Finally after 48 minute phone call with the manager of the service center I gave up on Nikon. I emailed cabelas where I had bought the binos 3+ yrs ago with their cabelas visa card and asked for assistance. Within 4 hrs I had a VM from the manager of the service center. However the _____ called my work number at 9pm and left the message there instead of calling my cell. I had told them which # to reach me at depending on which time of day. They chose to call the # I was not at.
Anyway 3 days later I had the part overnighted to my door. Nikon customer service/ warranty department blows. Cabelas rocks.
I love the glass for the price. However I am probably never going to buy another nikon product because of this experience. Unfortunately for me I have 4 rifle scopes, 1 spotting scope a laser range finder and 2 digital cameras that are Nikon. I will be swapping these out as $ allows.
Not to discourage you as the warranty work was done correctly. The binos are good for the money as you know. Nikons CS just sucks.
I have scopes, range finders, cameras and bi-noks and its no uncommon for them to get full of crud from time to time---get a can of canned air at wally world or any computor store--works great to keep them cleaned out . Heck of a lot better than dealing with customer service on such an easy fix
It is a piece of cake to clean any optics at home.
When belly crawling on a whitetail buck and you get dirt, mud or whatever on them not so much. The covers would have prevented that.
Once I got the covers back from Nikon I took the binos muzzleloader hunting and managed to dunk the binos in the snow while walking to my evening spot. They were on my butler creek bino harness and I still managed to get them in the snow. With the covers on no big deal. If the covers had not been there I would have packed the objective lenses with snow. The covers serve a purpose.
