It does make sense to buy good stuff. I am too poor to buy crap.
My daughter No. 2 had a Nikon Coolpix 2700 for about not even two years. As it happens with kids, she dropped it. Boing. No more pictures. Big tears.
I am not going to buy another one, just to keep her happy. Nope, but who knows, it would be probably repairable. Therefore I contacted the Nikon service center here in Switzerland and told them my problem. They said, that for this model and the problem I described, the price of the repair would be about 70% to 80% of a new model. See above, no new camera for the brat. I believe, if something is repairable, let’s fix it. Should also be a lesson for the offspring. No new things, just because she broke it, even by accident. Most things don’t grow on trees and I hate this trend in society to throw things away, just because it isn’t the latest and greatest.
I dutifully went to the Nikon website and registered the camera for repair. You get an address sticker (I had to provide the glue) and the postage is free. First surprise. There is even the possibility to include the maximum amount for the repair. In that case a quote would still cost 45 CHF, but I can live with that. Two days after I sent it, Nikon confirmed the arrival at the service center and then nothing happened until today.
A packaged arrived, containing a new Coolpix 2700 (luckily same color and not pink – my kids don’t like pink, which often leads to long faces when gifts arrive that were chosen by women). Price of the new camera: ZERO.
Even though I told Nikon, that she dropped it, they replaced it for free, claiming it was warranty.
Nikon certainly still had a few of the older Coolpix in stock and since they can not sell them anymore, they use it as good marketing tools to make people happy. Hence the blog post.
Therefore: A big round of applause for Nikon who:
… has a useful and easy to navigate service website… for free shipping
… very short turnaround time of about one week
… a good sense for customer relationship
… and the new camera
It posed a bit of a problem to explain to daughter No. 2, why she got a new camera and not the old one back. My whole pedagogical approach is down the tube. But this is normally as it goes.
Next camera will probably be a Nikon again.
***** Using Nikon for almost 40 years now *****
PS: If you are waiting for a Verse Basic review, I can’t make up my mind. Tested a lot, but….