Nikon D90. Headache comes standard.

A few months ago I bought the brand new D90. After being a loyal Nikon customer for over 20 years and having had recommended the brand over Canon to many, many people, I found myself extremely disappointed with what I got.

The camera was defective. It had a cluster of burnt pixels on the CCD that branded every picture. But that wasn’t the biggest issue. After sending it for repair I once again found myself utterly disappointed as my service order was dragged into the Nikon black hole and, for 2 weeks, I was without my camera. I use this camera for work so to me this is a really big deal.

After many attempts at calling and emailing for information, I finally got the camera back. But the issues were far from over. After only a few weeks, the CCD started showing the same problem again. But this time, even more pixels were burnt.

I sent the camera again and it took a whole week for me to even get a notification of status. Let me get this straight, the camera sat on someone’s desk for 7 days until they sent me an automated email stating they had received it. I was back in the service black hole. Despite having called and emailed many times, I had no clue of when I was getting my camera back.

On every call, all I got was the standard CSR-training script that starts with “My name is [insert fake name here]” and ends on “Thank you for calling Nikon”. With nothing useful in the middle. Seven to ten business days, that’s the only thing repeated over and over.

Point is, there’s simply no hope of getting to anyone that can make a difference. The customer service staff is helpless and impotent. It makes the DMV look like a Louis Vuitton store by comparison. And quite honestly, that’s how Nikon wants it.

This is beyond disappointing. It’s extremely frustrating and simply unacceptable. I feel disrespected as a customer and certainly far from ever being an advocate for Nikon again. This is not how a company should treat their customers, much less someone that has bought and indirectly sold several thousands of dollars of their products.

I wrote Nikon a letter with the above information and, not surprisingly, all I got was another boilerplate response that just proves how careless they are with their customers, here it is:

Thank you for your letter regarding your Nikon D90 camera, serial number XXXXXXX, in for service under service order XXXXXXX.

We are sorry you experienced problems with your camera. We are repairing the camera under the terms of our warranty. Please note our average repair time is 7-10 business days.

Please visit this link for more information on “hot” or “defect” pixels: http://support.nikontech.com/faqid=342. While our technicians are able to remap the sensor to repair hot pixels, we cannot guarantee hot pixels will not reappear in the future, as hot pixels can appear due to environmental factors. Because of this, a new camera will not resolve the issue.

Sincerely,

Wes Kawachi
Technical Correspondent
Nikon Inc.

Thanks for using Nikon products!

It’s absolutely ridiculous that since I bought my D90 I spent 3 whole weeks–going to 5 now without it, paid for the shipment for service and, worst than all the above, was treated with such disdain.

Don’t get me wrong, the D90 is a great camera–I had many Nikon SLRs before it. But it’s not worth all the trouble that comes standard with it.

I still don't have my camera.