What happened was, after I got my new Canon S500 digital camera home last night, I noticed that there were a couple of small anomalies appearing on every picture. The blemishes are especially pronounced with darker images, but if you look closely, they’re always there. Grumble; I just bought the thing, and I was so delighted that FedEx’s swift-footedness had brought it to me early. I was ready to play, not call Canon customer service.

It’s a high end camera, so at least I figured Canon would be interested in making me happy fast. It’s a $500 camera – you don’t want to be getting pink dots and grey smudges on every single image. (I got a super deal and paid a lot less, but it’s still a $500 camera.) I figured they’d say, “Our mistake. This is a manufacturing defect. Find the nearest retailer that has this in stock and swap with them; they’ll send us back the busted one and we’ll work it all out.” Oh, not so.

The ironic thing is that Canon’s hold message (I listened to it for a long time) boasts about their high customer service rating.

Their first offer was that I could ship it back to the online store where I bought it and see if they’d replace it. It’s not the retailer’s fault; I don’t want to involve them at all. Besides, they’re in New York. I want this fixed today. Their next offer was for me to ship the camera to Canon, and they would repair or replace it. Would they reimburse me for shipping? No. At this point, I asked to talk to a supervisor. I buy a brand new camera with a pink spot on the CCD chip and it’s up to me to pay to ship it back to Canon?

Sadly, nobody would give me what I wanted, which was carte blanche to walk into Best Buy and take a new S500, then let Canon take the faulty one back. (Interestingly, I could have done this if I had paid full price and bought it at Best Buy. Hmm.) It makes perfect sense to me – even if I’m lying, it’s a straight-up exchange for the same product, so they’re not out anything. And if the camera gets back to them and it’s not defective, they know where I live, they can come get the money from me.

At least they’re sending me a shipping label so I can send it back for free. I’m super-tempted to just buy a Nikon or something, but everybody says this one is the best for its size, and it’s not the camera I have a problem with (with such a tiny chip, the occasional manufacturing defect is unavoidable), it’s the goddamned customer service people.

So, for a few more days I get to take pink-splotched pictures; then I get to wait about ten days for them to process and return my replacement camera.

God, I hate Canon.

Credits: onebee.com