Sony Warranty bites after shutter button fails
Written: May 21 '02 (Updated Dec 17 '03)
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Pros: Great Pictures, loads of features, costs only power to take pictures!
Cons: Warranty troubles, Slow startup time, annoying "mavica disc recommended" message, not an action camera
The Bottom Line: This camera is wonderful but unsupported. At 6 months, I payed Sony to fix the camera (still under warranty.) At 2 years and 7 repairs, I'm trying get replacement.
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| troyrock's Full Review: Sony Mavica MVC-CD300 Digital Camera |
First let me say that I love this camera.
Pros:
Uses CD's: You can take 80 or so high resolution pictures per disc which is wonderful. You can use CDRW discs which means that you will never have to buy anything for the camera once you have enough discs and batteries. It's so nice to be able to take the disc and put it into any computer (windows, mac, linux) and transfer the photos instantaneously. Not having to mess with buggy transfer programs or being tied to a single operating system is really wonderful.
The camera also takes 15 second clip mpeg movies. At first this was an annoying limitation since 15 seconds is such a short time, however, I think that it's just about right now, no one is stuck watching hour after hour of boring home videos from this camera, 15 seconds is enough to capture some neat moment and not get too boring.
There are lots of options and fancy do-dads within the menus that I don't really use but it does have some very useful features (such as focus lock) that I use frequently and that help make the pictures very nice.
Cons:
Digital cameras are not good live action cameras because you never know when the shutter will take the picture. We had one time when we wanted to catch my daughter on the swing sideways but it took about 10 pictures to get the timing and focus right. If we weren't able to try again and again, we simply wouldn't have been able to take that picture.
NOTE: you can predict when the camera will take the picture I recently learned by pushing the shutter button half way down and holding it until a little green circle in the lcd display goes solid. Focus can still, however, be an issue.
Another annoying thing is that Sony insists on reminding you when you put non-Sony discs in the machine that "Mavica DISCs are recommended." Of course Sony brand discs cost quite a bit more.
Wish list: The only thing that I can think of that would be better would be to have a network interface (ethernet or 802.11) and a web server on the camera itself to get the pictures off. The CD drive part will wear out the soonest, if it has built-in memory and a network interface, you would still have the flexibility of using any computer to access it with the advantage of fewer moving parts.
Overall Camera experience:
Everything about it is wonderful. I am a computer geek who knows nothing about taking good pictures but I can take pictures that look professional with this camera.
WARRANTY:
Unfortunately, the shutter button started to fail on mine (it would take the picture about 50% of the time.) I was under warranty so I sent it in for repair. Sony is charging me $130 labor costs to fix their camera! Apparently the warranty covers parts only which means if something on the camera fails, no matter what, you can expect a hefty $130 charge to fix it (more if you aren't under warranty.)
This is an expensive camera and I expected that it would be supported by Sony so I'm really disappointed. I love the camera but the technology is only a part of the picture. I would rather a camera that works because there is a company who is willing to support it than one that doesn't or only works at the cost of obscene support charges each 6 months (I've had it for about that long.)
The camera is great but I have to encourage people to find another company to sell them one because $1000 for 6 months of pictures just doesn't make sense.
UPDATE:
Now the CD drive is having trouble! If you turn the camera sideways, sometimes when it's trying to write to the disc I hear this awful grinding sound. If you don't turn the camera horizontal quickly, you get a disc error and the picture is lost.
Also after sticking in a new disc, it can take up to two minutes to be able to do anything. There are no error messages but you can't do anything (you get a message that says "ACCESS").
I called Sony again to get it fixed and was told that it was going to cost $175 to get it fixed! After arguing with the lady at Sony for some time and being told repeatedly that there was no way for be to get a break on the repair price, she went to find someone in second level support. She returned to the phone and magically found that since it's been less than 90 days since the last repair, they would pay for the repair/shipping/etc.
I strongly urge others to avoid Sony products in general, not because they are technically inferior or buggy but because Sony won't support their products.
UPDATE (2):
It's been a while and I'm still fighting with Sony about this camera. I've sent it in for repairs a total of 7 times now! The last time I sent it in I got a "no trouble found" message because they didn't follow my directions to recreate the error. I'm TRYING to get them to replace the camera with one that actually works. It's been in the shop for almost all of the last two years' major holidays. I had to buy another digital camera so that I would have one reliable one while I try to fight it out with Sony. My suggestion is stronger than ever: Stay away from Sony cameras, you have to pull teeth to get support and ultimately they don't appear to be able to provide it anyway.
UPDATE (3):
I think that I finally got through to someone who feels my pain at Sony. They will be buying back the camera. I'm going to use the money to buy a Cannon I think!
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 1000
This Camera is a Good Choice if You Want Something... Easy Enough for Anyone to Use
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Epinions.com ID:
troyrock
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Reviews written: 10
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