Would you pay extra for ultimate QC?

What do you think they are doing now? I don't know whether they were cutting corners with QC, or they ran into a problem that slipped through their best efforts. They could have thought they had everything covered and Murphy snuck in with something they had never seen before.

Those two issues happened at different factories in different countries. The factory for the D800 suffered from an earthquake and a nearby tsunami in Japan. The factory for the D600 was newly set up because the original factory was destroyed by the floods in Thailand.

The D800 problem seems to be from some sort of alignment or calibration problem. The D600 problem seems to be from a design and/or materials problem.

The cause and effect relationship that brought them about may not be related closely enough to indicate that there is a endemic problem with Nikon methodology. The Russian meteor struck within days of the 2012 DA14 asteroid flyby. Turns out they were on entirely different trajectories and the timing was coincidental. Not all events that occur at the same time are related.

We don't know if Nikon reduced QC efforts. A problem doesn't necessarily indicate a change is in QC. Sometimes new problems slip through QC efforts that seemed adequate in the past.

I think you are making too many assumptions to say that Nikon undercut Canon's price by lowering QC. First, you would have to know that Nikon reduced their QC efforts. Second, you would have to know that the people who set the price for the D800 ordered the factory to reduce QC efforts. I find that scenario unlikely.

The D800 makes a much greater demand on the AF system than any previous Nikon DSLR. Nikon could have thought they had QC covered, and been surprised by the problem.

As is mine, and probably 80% of the ones in use.

--
Robin Casady
http://www.robincasady.com/Photo/index.html
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts."
— Bertrand Russell