Nikon Nonsense

All non-camera people may disregard. If you never, ever plan to buy a camera again, this will be of no interest to you.

This is for the rest of the internet-connected world and photographers that may wonder if they are the only ones suffering through a "parts hold" from Nikon. You are not alone.

I shipped my Nikon D80 off to the Nikon repair shop in Melville, NY. I don't live anywhere near any camera repair shop so it's really not a bad option for me -- shipping it off to the "big shop". They received it on July 7, 2012 and everything was going fine until the the status of the repair got changed to "parts hold".

Now, believe it or not, I'm a pretty patient guy (for an ex-controller). I even tried to turn this lemon into lemonade. I figured if I was going to have to learn to use my point-and-shoot camera while the repairs were being done, I'd make it into a learning experience and let everyone follow along on Flickr. I made a sort of tutorial for point-and-shoot cameras. And what did I make it with? A Nikon of course (an L22 Nikon Coolpix). I'm a loyal customer kind of guy.

But I had no idea it would go on this long. And I had no idea how little information you can get out of Nikon about when to expect a repair to be completed.

I was all ready to be understanding and everything. I figured the tsunami that hit Japan might have wreaked havoc on their production and/or supply chain. But no excuses. Just apologies and a vague promise of "soon".

So, I've been without a "real" camera for one month and 9 days. And I have no idea how much longer it might be. Considering my last transaction with Nikon's repair shop -- where they kept my lens from 1-24-12 to 2-21-12 -- only to send it back with a note saying they could no longer find parts for it (it *is* an old lens) so they couldn't fix it...

I'm not exactly a satisfied customer. I am definitely not happy. And I'm wavering on the loyalty part. Canon users: Feel free to convert me. Or at least try.

Don Brown
July 12, 2012