Canon Service, Job Well Done

I couple weeks ago I wrote a post about how the joystick nub fell off of my almost new 5D Mark III while I was walking around Coney Island a while back. To condense the last post, it’s not the kind of thing you expect from a camera this expensive, so I called Canon Professional Services (of which I’m a bottom tier member since I rarely need to borrow gear) and asked them to do the right thing.  I was initially told that it would be an out of warranty repair and immediately asked to speak to a manager, who said she’d do her best to have it covered. They sent me a pre-paid UPS shipping label and everything.

Well I had shoots for which I needed the camera, so it took me a couple weeks to have a few days free. I sent it in last Monday, it got there Tuesday, they emailed me on Wednesday to say that it would be a covered repair, and it shipped back to me on Friday with next day Saturday delivery. There’s a couple of week days in there, but it’s pretty much as fast as I could reasonably ask them to turn it around.  If I were a Platinum CPS member, maybe it would have shaved a day off the total and they would have sent me a loaner for a day or two in the middle, but alls well that ends well.

The camera looks good, I’m taking it out on it’s maiden shoot this evening so we’ll see if there are any hiccups. They even updated me to the latest firmware that I didn’t realize had be released. Though I think this reset a bunch of my personalization settings that’ll take some time to get back.

I’ve dealt with Canon service a few times now, mostly for lens issues, and while there were some out of warranty repairs that I had to pay for, I’ve always felt like I had a fair experience. So I just wanted to give them their due. Job well done.