How Nikon's repair service sold me on a Sony mirrorless
/I love Nikon cameras. But the Nikon repair department has convinced me that my next Nikon is going to be Sony.
All of my cameras are Nikons. Come to think of it, 90% of my glass is also Nikon. I even have a Nikon tee shirt somewhere. And I truly believe that the D850 is the best DSLR that money can buy. So what's the problem, you might ask. Read on...
I've been excitedly awaiting the release of the new full-frame Nikon Z-7 mirrorless from the minute the whispers started. Well, it was ceremoniously birthed from Nikon's loins, along with its Z-6 sibling, last week. And, to all accounts it looks like a spectacular piece of gear. I listened closely to what Sharky James had to say about the camera on the PetaPixel Photography Podcast (episode 295, if memory serves) and I was not that discouraged (but one card slot? Are you kidding me?). I'm definitely ready to add a full frame mirrorless to my bag, but I am definitely not going to buy a Z-7.
I'm not taking a pass on the Z-7 because of Sharky's reservations, or because of the cost, or because there are probably several kinks to be worked out of the "mark-1" model. I'm not buying another Nikon because I am done dealing with Nikon's service and repair department.
I'm pretty sure this is what Nikon's repair facility must look like...
I won't bore you with the details (untrue - I'm about to do just that), but my new D850 died, quite suddenly, during my one opportunity to shoot the perseid meteor shower a few weeks ago. For the next few days the camera would operate normally for a while before mysteriously losing all power. I worked through the usual troubleshooting steps, replaced the batteries, cleaned the terminals, reset the camera, and so on. Nothing helped. After much research, I concluded that my D850 was suffering from "dead battery syndrome", an issue that was fairly well documented several years ago with the D700 and D810.
With the camera no longer usable, I initiated the warranty repair process. I did so with much trepidation because this was not my first dalliance with the good folks of Melville, New York. A couple of years ago it took two months, half a mile of bubble wrap, and hundreds of dollars in UPS shipping and insurance before a failed shutter was replaced on another, also brand-new, DSLR.
Amazingly, I got the camera back in just over a week. I would have expected it to take much longer as the package had obviously been kicked all the way from New York to my house.
Nikon's deluxe protective packaging for my D850
Incomprehensible as it may seem, my pride and joy, the camera of my dreams, was DOA. After replacing the EN/EL15a, it powered up, I successfully took a dozen or so test shots, and then it died. Now, in addition to random power loss, the camera was making a very odd, soft popping noise that appeared to be coming from underneath the top LCD screen, which would flicker before going blank again. I was half expecting it to catch fire, or explode (it did neither). The next morning I dropped yet another $100 to send my clearly demon-possessed D850 back to the mothership, once again.
Maybe they will fix it, maybe not, but either way, I am done with Nikon. Of course, they won't notice that I've left. They never knew I was a Nikon fanboy in the first place. But I certainly was. And you could be forgiven for thinking that a tech mega-company would prioritize customer service and back up every product they sell. But they don't.
In the vanishingly unlikely event Mr. Okamoto drops by the house for a cup of tea (he has not actually been invited), I will be prepared with a few recommendations for his service department:
Spend a little less on flashy advertising campaigns and invest the money in Nikon's service and repair infrastructure (more techs, more training, lower quotas, whatever).
When your people cannot find the problem with a piece of returned equipment, don't just clean it and send it back. Pick up the phone and call the owner - he or she may be able to help you find the problem.
If you aren't already doing so, reward your people based on the quality of their work, not on the number of cameras and lenses they touch.
When you send equipment back to your customers, wrap it like it was your $3,500 D850 (or at least follow the same shipping instructions you give us).
When you send a repaired camera back to a customer, show enough courtesy to explain, clearly and completely, what you found and what you did.
Finally, when a customer is forced to return a still-broken camera because it was not fixed the first time, have the decency to refund the initial shipping costs.
After all that ranting it just occurred to me that I would feel like a complete idiot if it turns out that I am the only unhappy customer of the Nikon repair department. If you have had a similar problem, do me a big favor and leave a comment below - it'll help me sleep at night to know it isn't just me.
P.S. How do you like my next Nikon?
