Lesson Learned about Warranties

Blurmore

When I purchased my 30D, I purchased a 2 year extended warranty, it expired without the camera ever having problems. When I purchased my 40D I didn't buy the warranty because of my good experience with my 30D. Well. 2 weeks ago during my routine Friday night pre-wedding check, I turned my 40D on to shoot time.gov and....the mirror lifted, camera shut off, and the direct print button blinked blue. Hrmm...curious...so I turned on and off, nothing, removed and replaced battery, click...same thing. Now I have a problem. From what I could tell it was either a mirror motor error (30D had a spring mirror I'm pretty sure) or an intermittent power issue. Either way after 3 hours of trying to fix the issue, cleaning contacts, battery compartment springs, all the usual crap, I gave up. I was left shooting the wedding with my second cam a 30D with 150k + accuations, and my backup backup a 20D with a newish (less than 10k accuations) shutter but has been dropped and is 10% gaffers tape. It all went ok, I actually forgot how much I liked the 20D for its better ergo (due to the little screen) and lightness. So I sent the 40D into Canon through my local pro shop, and since it was only 2 months out of warranty I plead my case to have the repair on them, no dice. It will cost 240 dollars, and they didn't tell me what the problem was. So no matter how good the previous experience, buy the warranty.

ziggy53

Jason,

Sorry to hear about this but glad that it is repairable.

lizzard_nyc

Jason,
I will be buying my first DSLR over the Fourth of July weekend. The cheapskate in me didn't want the warranty, but the side of me that knows the gods are consipiring against me thought it best to get one.

Your cautionary tale is swaying me towards buying the warranty, so thanks for that.

Sorry to hear about your camera though.

Art Scott

lizzard_nyc wrote:

Jason,
I will be buying my first DSLR over the Fourth of July weekend. The cheapskate in me didn't want the warranty, but the side of me that knows the gods are consipiring against me thought it best to get one.

Your cautionary tale is swaying me towards buying the warranty, so thanks for that.

Sorry to hear about your camera though.

Buy the extended warranty......it can't hurt and if you're doing this as a profession it is till tax deductible on your taxes as part of the cost of the cam gear........

I like Jason have done much the same thing in the past......I know how a lot of people cringe at buying used off Ebay.....but one reason 99.9% of my camera purchases are off ebay is due to their Square Trade Warranty......especially for USED items.......I have always purchased either extended warranties from mfg'er or Mack Warranties for items that I could not get an extended warranty for......andI like jason had such good luck with some of my equipment I decided against an extended or after market warranty on a couple of items.....NEVER AGAIN.....as the saying goes......
ONCE BITTEN TWICE SHY......never again will I be without an extended or after market warranty.....and my trades up will take place while the extended or after market warranty is still in place........

Blurmore

lizzard_nyc wrote:

Jason,
I will be buying my first DSLR over the Fourth of July weekend. The cheapskate in me didn't want the warranty, but the side of me that knows the gods are consipiring against me thought it best to get one.

Your cautionary tale is swaying me towards buying the warranty, so thanks for that.

Sorry to hear about your camera though.

My cautionary tale is just that though...If I wasn't using the camera professionally (this 40D had ~25k accuations put on it in 1 year) or I was purchasing a Rebel series camera I might not worry so much. Only reason being I doubt even an avid amateur would rack up that many accuations, bumps, near falls, kicks and other indignities in a year, and the cost of my repair would be near 1/3 of the cost of a new Rebel series. One reason I have been 5D MkII shy (beside the lack of a 24-70 f2.8 IS) is that Canon doesn't support it like an D1 MKxx, if you shell out big box for the 5D and it goes poop shortly out of warranty you are in the same boat as a xxD or rebel owner, where as you can twist arms more if Canon isn't standing behind their "pro" line of cameras.

rainbow

I usually forgo the warranty. They are excellent when your product breaks down and they cover the costs. But consumer groups usually advise against purchasing them because the vast majority of warranties do not get used. I expect most of my electronic failures to occur in the first year; after that (as in your case) it is just bad luck.

In your case, the cost of the warranty is not weighed against the cost of a new camera; It is against the cost of repair. Question arises as to how the warranty is now implemented. Does it go to a non-Canon shop for repair (and may take much longer than having Canon repair it)? There are threads in forums whereby the non-manufacturer repairs take excessively long and are sometimes done incorrectly, requiring multiple trips).

The final picture piece is whether you now purchase an extended warranty for EVERYTHING you purchase: your television, stereo, toaster oven, video game system, etc. Now the costs add up (and the one item that fails is the one you did not purchase it for). Instead, you could have purchased a new DSLR or lens instead!

swintonphoto

rainbow wrote:

I usually forgo the warranty. They are excellent when your product breaks down and they cover the costs. But consumer groups usually advise against purchasing them because the vast majority of warranties do not get used. I expect most of my electronic failures to occur in the first year; after that (as in your case) it is just bad luck.

In your case, the cost of the warranty is not weighed against the cost of a new camera; It is against the cost of repair. Question arises as to how the warranty is now implemented. Does it go to a non-Canon shop for repair (and may take much longer than having Canon repair it)? There are threads in forums whereby the non-manufacturer repairs take excessively long and are sometimes done incorrectly, requiring multiple trips).

The final picture piece is whether you now purchase an extended warranty for EVERYTHING you purchase: your television, stereo, toaster oven, video game system, etc. Now the costs add up (and the one item that fails is the one you did not purchase it for). Instead, you could have purchased a new DSLR or lens instead!

Well, it should be mentioned that if a person uses a camera heavily, it is quite likely that the shutter or something else will die. A number of my pro friends in town have replaced the shutters on their DSLRs numerous times. I know my shutters will eventually go with how much I use my cameras, so that is a reason I tend to get extended warranties (make sure they cover that)

Mitchell

What was the cost of the extended warranty you opted not to buy?

If it was over $120, you would have come out ahead not buying it on your two bodies. I'm not a big fan of most of these. I just take my chances on the repair costs and keep the dollars I would have spent on the extended warranties in the bank.

codrus

Don't buy an extended warranty expecting it to pay for itself in strict monetary terms. What you're buying is insurance, and the folks who are in the business of selling insurance know exactly what the average repair costs are and there's no way that they're going to charge you less for the coverage than they expect to have to pay out. This applies to any warranty you might buy, be it for a car, a tv, or a camera.

That's not necessarily a deal-killer, though, because the same argument can be advanced against buying any insurance policy and yet we wouldn't even consider not having car insurance, fire insurance, etc. Insurance is about managing risk, accepting a higher average cost in exchange for guarantees about the maximum cash outlay you will be required to make due to unforseen events. Each person's threshold of pain varies here, but the lower the threshold the more it's going to cost you up front. Personally I probably wouldn't buy such a contract on a sub-thousand dollar camera.

It's possible that if you're using the item differently than most people, then that changes your risk profile and it does make sense on a purely economic basis. Pro use of a camera might well qualify as this, although it's sufficiently common that I'd expect the warranty vendor to have calculated it into the cost up front. If you check the fine print on the extended warranty contract, you might well find that professional use is not covered.

--Ian

Blurmore

News from Canon. Good news is...it is done and on its way back to the shop, so no shooting with my gaffer's tape special 20D. Bad news was what I already knew it is 240 dollars and out of warranty. Diagnosis? The "part" was loose, they replaced the "shutter motor" which sounds to me like a shutter, which failed WAY before the MTBF. The 40D was one of the first Canon cam's to have the live view skullduggery, so maybe this is part of the why, I swear I didn't drop it, but I might have bumped it in the right spot and it had a "glass chin" which scares me for the future. The repair warranted for 6 months.

ian408

Blurmore wrote:

...they replaced the "shutter motor"...

It could also be the loose part is a part of that assembly and rather than tighten it, they replace the whole thing because the labor to actually fix it is more expensive that just replacing it