Nothing major here like insider trader information or betting tips for the weeks horse racing, no not at all. In this blog post I basically just want to commend camera company Kodak for their customer service and in particular the customer service they gave me in relation to a specific problem I was having with my digital camera. The digital camera is a Kodak EasyShare V550 and it’s got some pretty nice features such as top quality motion capture. Anyhow I bought the camera in November or Decemeber I can’t remember exactly, but it wasn’t a year old when it broke so it was still covered by the warranty (for legitimate reasons only though… or so I thought) which comes with the camera when you buy it.
‘Broke’ is very generic I know so let me tell you that the specific problem I was having was with the lens, which seemed to be jammed in place and because of this forced the camera to shutdown almost immediately. Now the reason why the lens was jammed in place was because I dropped the camera, I know I’m stupid and I should expect problems if I go around dropping expensive kit like there’s no tomorrow, but it was an accident and accidents happen. To make matters worse though I of course had to ‘fiddle’ with it to try and fix it but only ended up damaging it more.
I wanted to get it fixed as soon as possible, but after being quoted €200 for it to be repaired from a camera repair shop on Grafton Street and then being told by that same shop that there was no way Kodak would fix it under the warranty as there was clearly impact/fiddle damage on the lens I was not very optimistic about the camera or my wallet.
Not wanting to spend €200 on repairs for a camera that cost about €380 in the first place and because I’m a bit of a chancer I decided to ignore the opinion of the aformentioned camera repair shop and give Kodak customer service a call to see if they would fix my camera even though it wasn’t their fault it was broke. I’m very happy I made that call. The support person was very helpful and insisted they would fix this strange faulty lens issue that came from ‘nowhere’. Two days later a UPS courier picked my camera up (complete with extra bubble wrap) from my place of work, the camera was bound for the Kodak camera repair center in Germany. Cost to me so far was about €3, for a box and bubble wrap to store the camera. Today (the package actually arrived on Thursday but I was in Portugal) barely 10 working days since I sent the camera on its way with UPS, I opened a package without having any idea of what was inside, I didn’t think it could be the camera so soon. To my delight though it was the camera equipped with a nice new and fully functioning Schneider lens.
I’m certain that when the repair people at Kodak in Germany seen the damage on the lens they knew that it was dropped or banged and that they didn’t have any obligation to fix it under warranty. Fair play to the Kodak guys though they fixed it anyway and hence they go way up in my estimation because those of you that read my first post on this new blog (located @ http://www.akamarketing.com/blog/11-myhostie-lets-here-it-for-the-little-guy.html) will know that I consider customer care/support/service to be very important when purchasing anything. Kodak will definitely be getting my cash when I decide to change camera models, I can tell you that for a fact.