gdanmitchell Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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p.2 #4 · p.2 #4 · Canon/USPS broke my lens: What to do now? [UPDATED] | |
LeTiger wrote:
Based on my experience, I am no longer recommending Canon to others, the process was just too tiring to put anyone else through. (on the same note, I will not be using USPS for high-dollar shipments anymore, though I really do like to support them, as once they're gone, UPS and FedEx prices will inevitably creep upwards)
I am also discontinuing my use of Canon equipment past this point, as the process of sorting this out has no appeal to me over the long term, and one of their "pro" lenses, over normal usage scenarios lasted me under two years before developing quirks....Show more →
I had a similar experience with a different business recently, in which what I regarded as poor treatment led me to react in a not-so-helpful manner, which I suppose could have been excused by my understandable anger about the situation. However, I resisted the temptation to blame the entire company for stupidity and incompetence (more on why below), called back, took a very deep breath, assumed that the person I talked to might want to help me solve my problem... and it turned out that once I spoke person-to-person with someone the problem was solved, and turned out even better than I had hoped. Actually, this happened twice just this past week.
I (finally, I hope) learned this lesson after I embarrassed myself quite publicly and quite foolishly by following a different path a few years back. Something happened - and the details are unimportant - and I jumped to the conclusion that the "corporate entity" with which I was dealing was stupid, didn't care, was unethical, and was perhaps trying to cheat me. It was as plainly obvious to me - perhaps more so, since I only had one entity to blame and you have two - that "these people" were terrible, horrible people and that they needed to be outed after they failed to fix my problem.
I have a fairly active online presence with tens of thousands of people who follow me these days in one or more of several places. So I posted something kind of like what you posted in the material I quoted above. I was angry - with justification! - and I wanted to let the world know about these terrible people. It is possible that a few thousand people saw my post in which I railed against this entity, told a long fully-detailed story much like yours, marshalled all of my evidence of their poor behavior, mentioned individuals (not by name, thank God!) with whom I had dealt, and more.
Only then did I finally start to calm down and go back and think this through a bit more rationally. At about the same time, a genuinely concerned representative of the "entity" contacted me to try to make things right. I began looking more objectively at what had happened and the way I had responded and discovered, to my horror, that I had been wrong. I ended up having to find and retract much of what I had posted in this very public way, and felt that I had to offer a somewhat humiliating and demeaning public apology and disclaimer.
Like any company, Canon and your shipper can make mistakes. You may decide to no longer use Canon or your shipper, but that isn't going to solve anything - no other company is going to be any more perfect than they are, and there is no less likelihood of such a problem with Nikon or Pentax or Sony or whoever or with any of the many other shippers that you could deal with.
I would begin by accepting that it may take some time and some personal calls to attempt to work this out, especially since the exact timing and blame for the damage is unclear and because both the shipper and Canon could, as you have, reasonably believe that someone else caused the problem. You have been and will be inconvenienced, at a minimum, and the final outcome cannot be known. But if you opt out in anger right now, there will be no good outcome for you. If you keep trying to find the person or people at both companies that may understand and want to try to resolve this, there is some hope. And like me this past week, when I was ready to scream (and, yes, post about my anger) about the situation I mentioned at the start of my reply, you might even find that the problem can be resolved in a reasonable way.
Good luck sorting this out.
Dan
BTW, there are other practical lessons for all of us here. Make sure that you have good insurance coverage on your equipment with broad coverage. (I'm often amused by people who invest in UV filters for "protection," but who fail to buy real protection from an insurance company.) Fully insure your equipment when you ship it, or accept that risk that you take if you don't. Photograph and otherwise document the equipment at the time of shipment. Follow the Canon shipping instructions that say to not include other items such as filters and batteries and so forth when you ship.
Edited on Aug 03, 2012 at 01:01 PM · View previous versions
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