What to Do with a Broken Camera

Last month we covered how to determine if your camera is truly broken or if there is simply a minor issue that you can address on your own.  If you pick up your camera and hear a random part rolling around, we can surmise that the camera needs to be in the hands of a professional.  Here’s what to consider next:

Check the Manufacturer’s Website:  Camera manufacturers will sometimes issue ‘service advisories,’ which are formal statements outlining a particular issue for certain cameras.  If your camera falls under one of these advisories, it will be repaired at no charge.  Just make sure to follow the manufacturer’s instructions for return and repair.

Find a Specialist: Bring your camera into our store for a free evaluation.  We will give you a professional recommendation so you can decide what steps need to be taken.  It might be a minor problem that can be addressed with minimum expense and time required.
However, more serious repairs can cost anywhere between 25-50% of the original purchase price, so if this is the case, we will need to evaluate how to get you up and running again in a way that gives you the most for your money.
We want to make sure you’re ready for this holiday season so stop by if you have a damaged camera and we’ll see what we can do to get you back behind the lens!

Buying a camera abroad

On all Grey Market cameras Mack Camera service contracts will start from the date of purchase!

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Warranty and other expenses

Will you need to buy power adapters for this item once you get it home? What if it breaks? Will your warranty still be valid once you have returned home or will you be stuck with a broken camera? Some items will come with an international warranty card, but the manufacturer will claim that it was a “grey market” purchase and therefore will not honour the international warranty. More sinisterly, quite a few camera manufacturers (Canon especially) only offers local warranty, so if your camera breaks when you’ve come back home, you’re out of luck. Of course, if you ensure that you buy high quality brands (Canon, Nikon, etc), you’re less likely to need your warranty, but that’s a different point altogether.
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grabbed from http://photocritic.org

Feedback & Reviews (Part 1)

The internet is a funny thing. It is a place for people to communicate, share ideas, thoughts. A place where people can argue, discuss products, ask questions and so much more. When someone has a bad experience with a product or company the first thing they do nowadays is to go online and complain or talk down about that company or product. We see it all of the time here at Mack Camera. Yes, we have contracts that cover only manufacturer defects. But we also have the Diamond Contract which covers all accidental damage except water and fire. So between bad feedback and good feedback on forums and websites, which do you think effects the company more? Of course the bad does! But what many people don’t take in to account is that the few bad reviews and comments you read is out of the 50,000 contracts that were sold. For every one bad experience you read about, there are hundreds you do not.

Every so often we do read and hear about good comments on the internet. It is not too often someone will write something about their good experience. One thing we would like to do is post customers testimonials on our blog, so please send them in if you can.

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“About two years ago the CCD in my Olympus C5050 failed and I had a Mack warranty that was still in effect. Just the regular warranty as they did not offer the Diamond warranty then. I sent my camera in to Mack and tracked it through their web site. The camera had to go back to Olympus for repair and after some period of time (five or six weeks as I recall) it came back good as new with a different grip and a new firmware update. I suppose you could say that Olympus did the work but then it would have been off of Olympus’ one year warranty so without the Mack warranty I would still have a broken camera. Just thought everybody out there might like to hear a good report.”