Hello everyone,
I am currently upset with the service I have received the OAMPS extended
warranty people and their repairer of choice Phototechnical in Brisbane
(Australia).
I have just sent off the email below to the companies concerned but
would appreciate comments about either of these companies or with
extended warranties in general. At present I am not likely to ever
purchase an extended warranty again.
--
Leon
http://www.bluering.org.au
http://www.bluering.org.au/leon
Hello,
I would like to express my dissatisfaction with the service I have
received from Phototechnical and OAMPS. The OAMPS extended warranty was
originally purchased through Michael's in Melbourne (invoice xxxxx) who
were unaware that the repairs were carried out by a Brisbane company.
I recently sent my Pentax *istD to Phototechnical for repair via an
OAMPS extended warranty. It arrived at the Phototechnical workshop on
12/9/2005 and took 7 weeks to be returned to me (The Phototechnical
website mentions a 10 day repair turnaround - I have to assume this is
only for your own extended warranty customers as is your freepost
service which I am not allowed to use). When I rang to check on it's
progress I discovered Phototechnical had been waiting 2 and a half weeks
for reply to a quote which OAMPS had never received and which I fear if
I had not chased up both companies you would still be waiting on.
I originally sent the camera with 9 weeks until I needed to have it
again. There are now 8 days until I need to have the functioning camera
back in my hands and the camera works worse than when it was originally
sent.
The camera had been sent securely packaged, double boxed, and was
returned very loosely packaged - I dread what happens to more fragile
equipment that Phototechnical return to its owner. The box used to
return it was in poor condition and had been recycled from a previous
delivery and had not been marked as fragile. If you are going to use
this practice I would have preferred that you reuse the box I originally
used (which was new) and had appropriate packaging for the camera.
The camera had been sent because of a problem with the hotshoe. When a
flash was connected the digital communication was intermittent,
requiring pressure to be placed gently on the left of the flash (looking
at the rear) in order to get connection. Now that it has been returned
to me there is no communication between camera and flash except when the
camera is fired. I tested the original and new faults using 3 different
Pentax AF360FGZ flashes and another *istD body with exactly the same
configuration to clearly identify the cause of the problem.
The original minor fault made using the camera slightly annoying but not
impossible. As I now can not use it with an external flash it is not
functional for my use.
When I rang through to the Phototechnical office today I found no one in
authority to be able to talk to me about the problem and a company
procedure of not letting the customer (me) talk to the technician. When
I asked for a message to be relayed to the technician the answer did not
inspire confidence.
I asked which lens and flash were used to check the camera
functionality. The answer was that they did not know. Before I trust
my camera back to the care of Phototechnical, I need to know that their
technicians have the skill to diagnose faults and test functionality
after the repair. I was not asked to supply extra equipment to help the
Phototechnical technicians, nor should I have to if you are as claimed
by OAMPS authorised Pentax repairers.
If a flash unit had been placed on the camera during final testing, it
would have been evident that there was a problem. I can only assume
that this did not happen, either through poor quality control in the
workshop or through laziness of the technicians - neither inspire
confidence in the ability of Phototechnical to repair my camera on a
second attempt.
I await a phone call from Phototechnical to confirm that they have the
equipment required to test my camera's functionality fully after the
repair. Having observed their shipping department's packaging ability I
am not inclined to send along a flash and lens for testing as I do not
believe they would be returned to me undamaged.
If Phototechnical are unable to satisfy me that their technicians have
the ability to do this repair correctly and return it to me by Friday
November 11, I shall have it repaired by CR Kennedy and send the bill to
Phototechnical. Failing this I will be seeking a full refund of the
original purchase price of the extended warranty from Michael's (who I
assume will recover it from OAMPS).
