I had an interesting experience with the repair of my E-1 over the past two
weeks that I thought you'd like to hear.
I was shooting at my family reunion and near the end of the day noticed that
the media door latch, which is a flip-out, half-moon,
turn-against-a-spring-to-the-left, should-lay-flat-when-not-used type of
control, was not returning to it's flat position against the body. In fact, it
would spin around and not open the media door, which wasn't a good thing,
especially with a full 1 Gig card in there! I eventually fiddled and got it to
open, quickly extracting the full card and knowing that it needed to go for
repair.
How did this happen? I believe that I may have pushed the latch mechanism the
wrong way too hard and sprung it, but I really don't know. In the end, that
wasn't an issue.
So I call Olympus on Tuesday after Labor Day and try to find out how to get it
fixed asap. The tech/CSR said two weeks. I said that was unacceptable. "Are
you a member of our professional support organization?" "No, I"m not, but I
still need the camera." The next level also said two weeks, as they were
"backed up" vs the normal 3-4 days. I again said that I had a shoot in two
weeks where I needed to use the camera and two weeks was too long and I
wouldn't send it without a better answer. It got escalated again. I called
back and another CSR said to send it in and they'd put a rush on it. So off it
went Tuesday PM.
Then the end of the line, a guy in "Olympus Technical VIP support" calls back
on Wednesday morning. I told him that I sent it already as that's what I was
told. He said "Uh oh!". "It will go into the black hole out on Long Island,
NY, where until opened, can't be identified as an E-1." "When they do open it
and see that it's an E-1, it immediately gets priority attention, but the bulk
of the time is spent opening the packages and entering them into the queue."
So we spent the better part of the day and Wednesday morning setting out an ABP
for the camera. He calls me back Friday and says that they found the camera.
He calls me back on Monday and says that it's fixed and already back on it's
way to me; it was only a 10 minute job.
So it arrives at my house yesterday and I open it up. The media door is great.
The camera fires and focuses. Hey, what the!?..........none of the buttons on
the back like the Menu, Playback, OK, etc. do anything. I call the very nice
VIP guy back and tell him that the camera is here, fixed, but..... He says in
an elevated voice: "WHAT?! You've got to be kidding, right?" I ask the
proverbial question: "You would think that someone would do a cursory test
after such a repair, no?" His answer?, "Yes, I would expect that too. Someone
is about to get a good reaming from me when we finish this call. That SHOULD
NOT have happened." He was VERY nice and emailed me instructions on how to get
the camera back to the repair facility with a specific person's name and
instrucitons to get it back to me ASAP.
So I'll have it back on Friday, if everything goes OK. I'll call back tomorrow
to make sure that it gets here by Saturday, at the latest.
He also emails me and asks: "Do you use the SHLD-2 battery holder?" (it's the
one with the vertical grip.) I'm puzzled why he's asking that. The reply
comes back that he'd like to send me a Grip Strap for my trouble, which was
actually a pretty nice thing to to. I probably should have asked for a grid
focusing screen, but I'd like a grip strap, as I think it'd come in handy.
So I'm not dissapointed at Olympus' efforts at premier service, as they really
do want to do a superior job. I just got caught in Murphy's Law. But the
moral of the story is to talk to the right people before sending your equipment
in to large repair facilities. Human intervention makes a big difference in
service levels.
Try trying to excalate such a repair with Nikon or Canon service, you'd get
laughed out of existance, At least I would, with no money to back me up vs,
huge shops.
Skip
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