Nikon customer service

Four years ago, we bought a Nikon D80 camera to record our family life.  It's been a great camera for us, and captured thousands of priceless moments.  It has been a little temperamental, though, and a few months ago it stopped working completely - when you tried to take a picture, the shutter would engage, but no picture would be taken, and the camera display only showed a flashing "Err" message, with no other diagnostic information.  So, it was time to send it in for repairs, since buying a new camera that supports our beloved 1.4D prime lens is very expensive: the cheaper Nikon DSLRs don't work with our favorite lens.

It turns out that this last detail is rather a microcosm of Nikon as a company: there's no technical reason why our favorite lens couldn't work with the cheaper Nikon DSLRs, it fits mechanically just fine. But Nikon, in their wisdom, decided to disable these more expensive lenses on their cheaper DSLR camera bodies in order to make a few extra bucks. This is a nice foreshadowing of the rest of the story: Nikon focuses more on restricting the market, creating artificial scarcity, and forcing customers to buy more expensive products, rather than convincing customers to buy more expensive, newer products because they inherently provide better capabilities.

Back to the customer service rant.

Firstly, Nikon never acknowledged receiving our camera. Two weeks after UPS recorded that Nikon accepted delivery, I called Nikon to find out what was going on and why they hadn't given us a service number yet, as they promised to do immediately upon receipt of my camera.

I then received the stunning news that my camera was built for use not in the United States, and so therefore Nikon won't repair it. Period.

It's not that I was expecting a warranty repair, the camera is after all four years old. But Nikon won't repair it at all, not for any price.

I was shocked: here I am, trying to pay money for a service (you know, the normal means by which capitalism makes the world go round), and I'm being told I can't get my camera fixed, at all?  What kind of evil-MBA-driven market segmentation leads to this madness? This bizarre situation reminds me of the two years I lived in Siberia, where the surly clerks in the market refused to sell me the last carton of milk because then the store would "run out" of milk.  Surprisingly, it turns out that even in today's day and age in the US, you can be denied service for arbitrary and capricious reasons.

It's not like I had bought my camera on the black market - I had searched for it through Google Product Search, I chose the shop with the cheapest price, paid for it like anything else, got my camera, was happy. But I had no way of knowing at purchase that the serial number on my camera indicates it's not for use in the US.

I asked Nikon to ship the camera back to me, and I expect it'll show up in a couple weeks, if I'm lucky. And Nikon better pay for return shipping.

Then comes the next stunner. I search around on the internet to see if I can have my camera repaired by an independent shop that won't enforce Nikon's evil market segmentation policies, and find out this: Nikon is refusing to sell replacement parts to independent shops, as of July 2012, so that they can control their cameras utterly and completely.

At this point, I pause to note three ways Nikon has disrespected me, a paying and heretofore satisfied customer:

1. Lazy customer service, never acknowledging receipt of my camera as they promised to do when I shipped my camera to them for repair.
2. A draconian repair policy which blames consumers for buying their cameras at the wrong place, even though there are no indications to the consumer at time of purchase that they are getting an "unauthorized camera".
3. Shutting down independent repair shops so that they can completely control their cameras, putting many camera repair shops out of work, all so they can enforce their draconian policies, without any technical justification. This disrespects my right as a consumer to use the things I buy as I see fit. We have laws preventing car manufacturers pulling these kinds of shenanigans. 

When you buy an SLR, you make a long-term commitment. Over the past four years, we have invested thousands of dollars in lenses, flashes, and the camera itself, and we were expecting to be able to use that investment for years to come, even as we changed the camera body itself throughout the upcoming years.  That's why we bought an SLR to begin with.

Nikon could have enjoyed decades of profits from us; we are only too happy to continue to buy products from companies which make great stuff.  But Nikon's disrespect for us has crossed the line.  Just as I made a long-term commitment to Nikon when I bought the camera, now Nikon has made a long-term enemy. After I get the camera back from Nikon, I will attempt to have it repaired by an unauthorized repair shop, one last time before Nikon makes fixing my camera forever impossible.  Then, when the camera breaks the next and final time, I will sell all my lenses and accessories and buy a Canon.

Nikon sent me a customer service survey after my phone call, wanting to know how my experience with their support staff had turned out. In the box which asked, "What steps do you need to take to resolve your problem, after this phone call?", I listed the following:

1. Sell my Nikon lenses and accessories. 
2. Post on Twitter, Facebook, and my blog about my terrible experience with Nikon.
3. Buy a Canon camera and lenses.
4. Continue to persuade my friends and acquaintances not to buy Nikon in the future.

Looks like it's going to take much longer than I had initially expected to get this problem resolved...

More broadly, companies that blame and disrespect their customers, making enemies out of those who buy their products, don't tend to do well in the long run. It feels like a cliché to say this, but Apple has treated me extremely well over the past decade, going out of their way to make me a very satisfied customer, and they've won my loyalty for it.  Nikon appears to be taking the opposite course.