David Primm wrote: >Anyone had any experience with the Canon repair facility on the West >coast? I am wondering if anyone has had a GOOD experience with them. I >know of 2 people that have had bad experieces -- and I have a camera that >needs to go in.
This is the Irvine, CA, repair facility, right? I have had very mixed experiences with them: I had an EOS 650 about five years ago with a dead LCD. They sent it back fixed in about a week and a half. Very good service. In 1999, I had an EOS 650 with an intermittent loading problem. They recreated the problem and fixed it promptly. Again in 1999, I had an intermittent IS problem on a 100-400 IS lens. After they had sent the lens back unrepaired three times, I wrote a letter of complaint to the CEO of Canon USA, and the Irvine center finally replaced the lens with their demo lens. The replacement had the zoom locking ring fail after about six weeks (but I was away on a one-year trip and could not send it to Irvine promptly). Irvine later said that it was physically damaged, and refused to repair under warranty. I think it's highly unlikely that I caused the damage, but I decided not to complain, because it had (unavoidably) taken me a year to return the lens for repair. This year, both my EOS-3s started metering incorrectly. I sent them to Irvine and they charged more than $200 per camera for "adjustments". When I phoned (repeatedly) to try and find out what these $200 "adjustments" were, I could get no sense out of the people I spoke to (no technical knowledge, including a wildly incorrect statement about the EOS-3), and they (perhaps understandably) would not put me through to a technician. These days, I think I'll decide whether to use the Irvine facility based on what is wrong with the equipment. That's unfortunate, because I think after-sales services is one of the best tests of the quality of a company, and it affects whether I choose to continue buying their products. I'm giving Canon's Irvine facility about a five out of ten at the moment. Gerry * **** ******* *********************************************************** * For list instructions, including unsubscribe, see: * http://www.a1.nl/phomepag/markerink/eos_list.htm ***********************************************************
