Monday, July 31, 2006

Well this just sucks!

It's Monday morning and I feel like pouting. I can picture Mr. Hubby rolling his eyes as he reads this because it seems like complaining is one of my favourite pastimes lately. But seriously, I'm so cranky about our broken camera! I want to take pictures and post on my blog and I find that extremely difficult without a camera. I don't usually have a lot to say, but I love to show and tell!
For those of you thinking of buying a little point and shoot digital camera, DO NOT buy the Samsung DigiMax A400! I suppose we just got a lemon model, but it has caused us a lot of grief - enough for me to recommend passing up any of the Samsung products. It seems that the camera works fine when using it close to home, but for some strange reason it does not like to travel. A couple weeks after we bought the camera last fall we went to Punta Cana and the first day we arrived, the camera stopped focusing. Luckily we were there with friends who could give us doubles and take some extra photos for us. When we got home, we sent the camera back to the store and waited 3 long weeks only to get a phone call from their head office telling us that we must have mistreated the camera and that caused the focus to break. We were shocked and so incredibly angry. Harry phoned the company pronto and left a nasty message (Oh, I wish you could have heard it!) so that in a day someone phoned to apologize for making such assumptions and they would fix the camera. When we finally got the camera back it seemed to work great and I was relieved... until our next vacation. We had another instance of broken focus in Whistler and just last week when we went to Ontario where the camera refused to even turn on! Again the camera has been sent out and we must wait forever for the stupid thing to get fixed and sent back.

This is ridiculous and I am now convinced that I must take 2 cameras on every trip. My big clunky manual SLR (my loyal companion and has never let me down!) and the small unreliable but convenient digital camera. What a pain in the hibiscus! Why must the digital world be so unreliable? Why?

Now then. That is enough pouting. Onto another exciting Monday.

4 comments:

flossy-p said...

That totally sucks! You know my Uncle and I often have this conversation about the terrible customer service that seems to have taken over the world these days. He's pretty high up in his job, working for a multi-national manufacturing company. It infuriates him when he takes something faulty back to a shop and they don't replace it. He says that for a distributor to replace a faulty product for a major brand is expected by that brand and is no problem fro the distributor.

And even if it is, you'd think that would be a much better way to handle the situtaion, then their customers wouldn't be left with no other option than to publically denounce the brand and warn others away from it.

Wouldn't you be feeling differently right now about Sansung if when you took it back to the shop, the servce team said "Gee that does seem like a problem. Here's a replacement, we'll log it in our database, notify Samsung and if you have any more problems we'll give you a credit for another brand."

Pffft! You sould print out this post and mail it directly to Samsung.

Sally said...

Thank you for your adament agreement on this subject Flossy-p! I do think I will send out this posting - I'm glad to hear others are having similar conversations. And I do think that I would feel completely different about Samsung if they had just replaced it in the first place. Apparently the cheeky S.O.Bs will only replace it after the 3rd time it is sent out! Can you believe that? Well there is one way to intentionally infuriate customers.

AscenderRisesAbove said...

good to know. i have the samsung 350 s and it sometimes happens to me. I take the batteries out and put them back in and that wierdly seems to help. I have wondered what I would do if it were to get seriously broken.

The only place it did not work for us is in the winchester house; but for some - spooky - reason most cameras dont work in there.

Sally said...

Ok, now I really want to go to the Winchester house. That sounds so freaky!! Very cool :)