"Smear" layer on circular polarizer

[MarkoPolo]

It seems that I may have a defective multi-coating layer on my Hoya 77mm HMC circular polarizer. I have tried the options I've seen on the forum and in fact just got a bottle of ROR to use. That didn't help either. It does seem to be on the camera side of the filter. Since it is less than a year old, I did e-mail Hoya to see if they will replace it under warranty, but have not heard from them.:confused:

Has anyone had the same problem? How did you resolve it?

By the way, my Tiffen and one other Hoya circuar polarizer have no issues that way.

[tim]

Did you talk to the place you bought it from? That's usually a good start. If you say it's faulty and it's many months old they might ask why it took a while to return it, so you should have a good answer ready ;)

[jfred]

is it possible to gently clean the polarizer with something like a small amount of methylated spirits on clean kitchen roll? That's usually good at getting rid of greasy smears.

is it possible to see marks or fractures or other degradations in the coating if you look at the filter through a magnifying glass?