On November 15th 2007 I took my Sigma 10-20 wide angle lens into O’Learys Camera World in Cork to be repaired. (I found out they were using some of my photos without permission too, but that’s another story. Read the linked post above!)
Several phone calls followed over the weeks after that. Eventually I was told that parts had to be shipped from Japan.
Roll on 5 months later to April 15th 2008. I rang O’Learys Camera World and got on to Andrea. She had to check my docket number and was gone for quite a while, during which time several members of staff tried to make phone calls. Beep, beep, beep and I’d wait for them to put the phone to their ear before saying, “I’m waiting on someone to check a docket for me”. After what seemed like an age, Andrea finally came on the phone again. She couldn’t get in touch with anyone and rattled off the same old story about shipping parts from Japan. She’s said she’d ring me back in 5 minutes after speaking to the repair shop in Bandon.
Oh, and that took almost 11 minutes to find out. Grrr.
A few minutes later she rang back. The repair guy is off today, she’ll be off tomorrow, but she’d leave a note for Declan to ring them again. Hopefully he rings me, and I have to wonder at the inventory system of a repair shop that doesn’t have a database a secretary can check ..
If I didn’t have Matt‘s old lens I’d be really pissed, but as it is I’ve been without an expensive piece of equipment for too long.
O’Learys Camera World – you screwed me over by using my photos to sell your digital photo frames without asking my permission. Now you’ve kept my lens for 5 months. Please don’t expect any business from me in the future once this debacle is sorted out.
Hopefully a few members of Mallow Camera Club will read this and pass the word along. I gave a talk at the club last night on educational websites. Here’s a list of the sites I covered. If you’re new to blogs, it’s a good starting point for any budding photographer.
4 replies on “Still waiting after all this time”
I have used these guys before, still prefer the shop around the corner ( not too sure of the name) somehow they seem just a little bit more interested
What a nightmare. Hopefully you’ll have it back shortly and you won’t have to deal with them again.
Thanks for the mention on the educational photography sites list! There’s a typo in the url, but there usually is. I’m actually in the process of moving to a new domain but I need to come up with a good name first. 🙂
Latchiko – fixed the url! I had used my Macbook for the presentation with all those sites open in Firefox tabs. I had just copied all of them into a Vi session when the GUI just froze. I could ssh into the machine, but I couldn’t do anything. Eventually I realised I’d have to copy the URLs manually into another file on my Linux box so I typed them all out again and then reset the Macbook.
I’m still waiting. Declan from the shop rang and he apologised profusely. He rang Sigma in Bandon and apparently they told him that their repair guy is out sick and will be in tomorrow. He’s due to ring tomorrow morning at 10am so hopefully it’ll be good news.
Gotta wonder at Sigma’s inventory system…
Thanks!
Fingers crossed you’ll have good news in the morning. 5 months is a ridiculous amount of time to be waiting – just as well you were lucky enough to have a spare lens.