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June 4, 2007
Nikon Is Ridiculous
So I accidentally broke one of my D2X bodies while I was in Indonesia last week. It was a dumb mistake. I had the camera mounted on the tripod but forgot to tighten the clamp on my ballhead and when I let go of the camera to reach for something else, I heard the most sickening sound. My fisheye lens, which was mounted on the camera, took the brunt of the damage. The built-in hood shattered and the front elements cracked.
The camera body looked okay. It is a "pro" body after all. It's supposed to withstand some abuse (not dropped from nearly 6 feet I'll grant you that). I tested it, it turned out the AF mechanism was busted. Everything else functioned normally. So I ended up focusing manually with that body for the remainder of the trip.
The point of this post is not to tell you how I damaged the camera but how ridiculous Nikon is. I took it in to the service center in Taipei (where I am living at the moment) and was informed that since I did not purchase it from the official distributor in Taipei (I bought it from Nikon USA when I lived in New York), the only way they will even look at it is if I paid them NT$10,000/US$302.39. That is just so they will look at my camera. And then I still will have to pay for the actual parts and labor. Isn't that absurd? That US$300 is essentially Nikon Taiwan[1] telling me "fuck you" for not buying the camera from them.
I understand them not providing warranty service to cameras bought out-of-market to protect their own interests (though in this day and age of the global nomad, that is frankly very anti-consumer), but this is going way too far.
Does Nikon do this in all markets? Does Nikon USA charge you a US$300 penalty if you brought in a gray-market camera to repair? And for that matter, does Canon? If Canon does not do this, or at least has a more reasonable policy regarding gray-market cameras, I am going to switch back (I used to use a 1D). I move around the world (in any given year I might be living in Taiwan, China, Canada or the States for example) and I need to know that I can walk into an authorized service center in any country and have my cameras expertly repaired in a timely manner without paying a hefty penalty.
I'm pissed.
[1] Well, technically, it's not "Nikon Taiwan", but Nikon's Taiwanese distributor. But Nikon is equally culpable for allowing its distributor to treat its customers this way.
Filed Under:
Technology
Tags: broken, camera, d2x, nikon, repair, ridiculous, taiwan
Comments
You have cool photos at this blog and at Flickr, too.
Greets from Macedonia!
Posted by: DeeJay at June 5, 2007 3:07 AM
i think it's a Taiwan thing... perhaps nikon doesn't even know about it. i've encountered all sorts of ridiculous rules and customer service from international brands in Taipei. good luck...
Posted by: joanh at June 22, 2007 10:17 AM
It turns out this is basically Nikon's policy worldwide. In the U.S. and Canada, Nikon USA and Nikon Canada will refuse to provide ANY service to your camera if it was purchased elsewhere. That is, they will refuse to service it for any amount of money; you HAVE to return the camera to your original country of purchase to get it serviced. So in a (very perverted) sense, I am lucky the Taiwanese Nikon distributor will even service my camera for me, albeit for a ridiculous fee.
Posted by: Yusheng at June 23, 2007 5:58 AM
Has any one used the nikon digital repair service in mellville,NY?
Posted by: billyp at August 7, 2007 4:02 PM
Try taking it to a non-Nikon shop, just some place that fixes cameras. They should ship it to be fixed for far less. I did something similar with my Nikon and the fee was something like $30 US, this was in Canada, but I did get a camera fixed in Taiwan, and it was a similar reasonable fee.
Posted by: eric at January 11, 2008 3:15 PM