Earlier today, I got my Rebel XS back from Canon. Apparently, they had to replace one of the circuit boards to deal with the infinite loop the camera got itself into at the Fill the Hill event. Unfortunately, whoever did the repair managed to disable my on-camera flash in the process. I had little choice but to send it back to Canon immediately, since my one-year warranty will be up in a few days.
Henry’s says they will definitely lend me a body for the family reunion in Vermont, since I bought their three-year extended service plan. I just have to hope I get the camera back before December 19th, when I will be leaving for Vancouver. I really doubt Henry’s would lend me a body for a whole month, but it would be really intolerable to be sans-dSLR during my first trip to Vancouver in two years. I am told that ‘re-repairs’ are generally faster than ordinary repairs. That’s a bit comforting, though it is unnerving to know that cameras are broken often enough during the repair process for the Henry’s staff to be familiar with the statistics. What ever happened to quality control?
As for the mode of travel, I am leaning warily towards the bus. It’s a lot faster and cheaper than the train, and 1/5 of the emissions of flying. On the ‘sociology of travel‘ side, nothing shows commitment to climate change mitigation more than extending the length of your journey twelve-fold, in order to decrease the associated emissions by 80%. Well, I suppose the only thing that would would be avoiding the journey entirely, and passing the time blockading nearby coal power plants instead.
Unfortunately it seems to be the case that during many, (I would give the estimate at about 20%) repairs on electronics, when you fix one thing you often break another. In this case it just sounds like a loose cable. It seems strange to me that they can’t do a repair like that on site!
I’m very excited to see you in December!
I should clarify that 20% of the repairs that we do on Macs in my shop probably return shortly after a repair is done. And we have a good service reputation.
It seems strange to me that they can’t do a repair like that on site!
Henry’s doesn’t do any servicing in-house (and would probably void the manufacturer’s warranty if they did). Everything Canon gets sent to their authorized service centre, which I think is in Mississauga.
What surprises me is that they run so few diagnostics after a repair. A pretty quick physical examination would reveal that the flash was non-functional. Perhaps the problem was that the camera’s software thought the flash was working (marking photos as ‘flash used’ even when it didn’t fire). As such, an automated electronic diagnostic might have missed the new problem.