Miller’s Lesson For The Week: Warranty Cards

[millera9]

[Warning! Writing major preparing to expound. Go get a glass of water and a snack.]

Hi kids, nice to see ya’all on this fine Wednesday evening. Hope you’re all having a good week thus far.

I want to take a moment to share with you an experience that I had this past week involving my favorite hobby. No Zeke, not furious masturbation while crying; I’m talking about photography.

Upon taking delivery of my new Canon 30D, I noticed that there was a hot pixel showing up in all my photographs. After a little research, I found that this was a somewhat common problem and that not only would Canon happily repair it for me, but the retailer I purchased it from would honor a return/exchange request. I bought my camera through Calumet for specifically this reason; namely that I like their policy and trust them because they’re reputable and large without being a gargantuan, faceless corporate husk of mass discounting and product placement *cough*BestBuy*cough*.

So I called up my local Calumet store and asked them what I should do about my hot pixel. The friendly sales rep on the other end of the line said to simply bring in the camera and all the accessories in the original packaging and they would exchange it on the spot for a brand new 30D which they had in stock. Amazing! Before hanging up, he very specifically reminded me to be sure the warranty card was there in the box when I brought it in. I took this as a sign and pulled out the card when I got home. I had not yet filled it out so the only thing on there was the information that had been printed on the card by Canon.

I filled it out. My thinking on this matter was that, by returning the camera, I was essentially making a warranty claim and asserting that the camera had a defect. The Calumet guys would take it back, give me a new one, and send the faulty offender back to the manufacturer to be refurbished, re-certified, and sold at a slightly discounted price through a less glamorous retailer.

When I brought the camera in, the first thing the sales rep at the store said was, “You filled out the warranty card.” I said, “Yes, I’m making a warranty claim…. aren’t I?” He went on to explain to me that by signing my name to that card, I had inextricably bound myself to the serial number of that camera. It was no longer simply an item that my money had purchased, it was a part of my estate. It was as if the camera and my soul had been forged in the same festering pit, as kindred items later to be assigned to a slightly portly, exceptionally hairy mortal coil. My slightly defective camera and I would not be parting so easily.

At this point I threw my hands up in the air in surrender and begged the sage salesman to impart to me his wisdom in the ways of camera repair. He first apologized, a slightly awkward act which led me to believe that he wanted me to get up off my knees and stop kissing his feet. I stood back up. He went on to tell me that my only choice was to send the camera back to Canon along with a description of the defect and let them decide whether or not they wanted to fix the non-canon (heh heh, get it?) sensor or simply assign a new serial number to my name and send me a new 30D.

Defeated, I agreed. He kindly offered to send my camera out along with a few other repairs that needed to go back to the Canon smelting facility. I told him that I would be forever indebted to him if he would do that for me as it would remove a large burden from my shoulders. I hate the post office, you see.

He smiled, took the camera from my clammy, quivering paw, and uttered a phrase I will not likely forget any time soon. He said, “We’ll give you a call in 2 or 3 weeks. Maybe longer, Canon’s kinda slow right now.”

I froze, left eye twitching ever so slightly under the stress of my nearly doubled blood-pressure. Molecules of sweat leaked from my pores and began to conglomerate in the deep crevasses of my rumpled brow. I managed to smile and nod and then restart my gait toward the door. I do not know if he was able to detect anything out of the ordinary in my pregnant pause.

I seated myself behind the wheel of my vehicle and resisted the urge to cry. If beautiful women hadn’t been coming in and out of the tanning salon next to Calumet, walking past my window, luscious hips at eye-level, catching my watery red eyes with theirs and then glancing elsewhere distractedly, I might not have been able to contain myself.

So there you have it. The full disclosure of my disparaging ordeal. The lesson you ask? Never sign the goddamn warranty card until someone very specifically asks you to. Keep it in the box but don’t touch it. Fret not over the transmittal of your contact information, for if it is required, someone will ask you to impart it to the proper parties.

See you all next week for another exciting episode of “Miller’s Lesson For The Week”. Subject matter is still up in the air, but at the moment it looks like it might be an iambic septameter soliloquy on the virtues of house guests who can successfully hit the inside of the toilet-bowl with any consistency.

-Miller

[swampa]

Why do I have this image of you standing there with a twitching eye and a slightly manic look on your face when they told you two to three weeks?

[monkeybort]

oh miller…………

[zeke]

Dude. That so sucks.

[Curious]

Before hanging up, he very specifically reminded me to be sure the warranty card was there in the box when I brought it in.

right here my heart stopped and a very bad feeling came over me.

it was not misplaced.

sorry for all your problems. then again you’ve been kicking my ass in the contests with your old camera so it’s not like you can’t still take great pictures in the meantime.

nor did you lose your once in a lifetime photos of your trip to Egypt.

feel better now 🙂

[millera9]

Just to clarify for all, I am not complaining or even suggesting anger as my emotion. I really just think it’s a rather comical story and I feel like a dope because I could’ve saved myself a lot of trouble by not filling the damn thing out. I thought that might be a worthy life-lesson since we all have enormous investments in these devices.

In actuality, I’m really happy that they were so helpful and that it will be fixed or replaced so easily. I just don’t want to have to wait a month before I can use it again…

/swampa, “manic” is an excellent word. I wish I had come up with it while I was writing that.

[swampa]

I wouldn’t blame you at all for complaining (I know I would be whining if it was me :P).

And I would have made the same assumption that I needed to fill in the warranty card when they mentioned it (but I will think twice now!)

/Just edit it, no-one will know 😛

[Elsinore]

Oh crap…this reminds me that my year warranty is almost up and I haven’t sent my 30D in for a sensor cleaning. Shit…

/love your story, though
//well written as expected
///would be twitching too
////probably will when/if I send mine off for her cleaning

[XenPix]

I feel your pain, almost.

When my first 400D started showing an error, I was in a panic that I would be without it. Thankfully Calumet just told me to (a) ring Canon to see if they wanted to repair it, (b) when they said no told me to box it all back up and they would send me another one straight out and swap them.

I’m far too lazy to fill out these things, so I would have just taken it in and acted all surprised that I hadn’t filled it in if they asked why it wasn’t done. Lazy is real helpful sometimes.

Hope you get it back all nice and shiny soon.

[millera9]

XenPix
Grrrrrr….

Elsinore
Send that puppy in! Maybe they’ll end up next to eachother on a workbench somewhere and share some good stories!

[Elsinore]

I called today, and they do still offer the one sensor cleaning under warranty. However, they service the Powershots at a different location than the EOS stuff, so instead of going just south of Chicago (about 5-6 hours away) like the A620 did, my 30D will have to go to New Jersey 🙁 So it may be a slower turn around this time than with the A620 in December. I think the West Coast service center is in Irvine, so I kinda doubt our babies will end up side by side sharing war stories 🙁

She did say it was no big deal that I’m within a few days of warranty. Here’s hoping the service center honors that, cause technically my warranty expires Sunday, though hopefully they’ll receive it Monday. I’ll miss my 30D…*cry* Guess my A620 will feel less neglected for the next few weeks….

[Elsinore]

I just boxed her up and Zeke is running her to the UPS shipping center. The camera bag looks so empty and lonely. Might have to break out my Dad’s Canon film SLR to fill the SLR void until my 30D comes home again…

[schnee]

Might have to break out my Dad’s Canon film SLR to fill the SLR void until my 30D comes home again…

GET OFF MY LAWN!

/still shoots film. feels very very old. needs a nap

[Elsinore]

Oh hush. 😉 I just didn’t shoot anything other than cheap/shitty automatic film cameras before we got our HP digicam in 2002, and even then the HP was fully automatic. I had a vague interest in photography before then, but not like these days. Dad got a digital SLR 18 months ago and hadn’t really been shooting his AE-1 Program much anyway, so after I got into photography these last couple years, I asked if I could borrow it. It was a lot of fun to use, meter’s still accurate (and film is much more forgiving than digital, of course), and the old FD lenses rock. Still need to run a roll of true B/W film through it–tried some b/w colorgenic stuff which was ok, but not quite as nice as true b/w.

/loves film
//hates paying for developing
///too lazy to develop my own

[monkeybort]

OOO you should learn to develop your own. it’s cool and super fun and there are a TON of variables.

/misses film
//mmmm….tri-x
///mmm mmmm 3200 tmax…..

[Author]

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