A while ago I wrote ‘Faulty Camera (Part 1)’. The short version of the story is that I had a camera that I though was too clever for itself and that made it slow.

I started to look for another compact camera (just because of their convenience of being carried day to day). I had pretty much decided on The Canon S120 as the reviews suggested this camera would meet my needs & the other Canon products I have (6D & L-series lenses) are excellent.

However, I had the S100 purchased for me as a present on the back of reviews. Yep you guessed correctly, it was the faulty camera mentioned above & I had some concerns that the S120 would not meet my expectations.

Looking further into this I discovered that there was a fault with my S100 camera……… Lots of emails backwards and forwards with Canon and a little research, along with some helpful advice from the Canon Community forum, led to Canon very kindly offering to carry out a repair at a greatly reduced price. They also provided me with some valuable UK consumer advice.

On the back of this advice the camera was returned to John Lewis.

I’ve always had a positive shopping experience with John Lewis and found the staff knowledgable within their working area, they have also been incredibly polite and helpful. So it was a bit of a shock when I visited a department to discuss the camera and any options for obtaining a repair or upgrade. If I was typing this within an hour of leaving the store it would be full of expletives. The air would be as blue as a blue thing could be!

So it began, a few emails, then they wanted to “send the camera to Canon to get their own report”. Not a problem and finally some movement.

A phone call was received asking me to pick up my S120, then my lap-top! It was very clear that I was not getting any form of  customer service that anyone would expect from John Lewis who really do have a good reputation.

Eventually a qoute was received…… funny thing was that it was to fix something completely different and the camera never went to Canon.

I again had some correspondence with Canon who kindly confirmed that the company that John Lewis had sent the camera to, are not associated with Canon and are not a recognised repair agent for Canon and were wanting to charge for repairs that were not required. Tut Tut!!

John Lewis did end up sending the camera back to Canon to have it repaired at full cost and at the expense of the department.

The ridiculous thing is that I would have been happy to pay the difference between the Canon quote and the cost of the S120. As far as I was concerned this would have been a win win for all involved.

One member of staff not taking two minutes to engage in a polite conversation resulted in what has been a long old, totally avoidable kerfuffle.

I’m pleased to say that I do have the camera back and it is everything I had hoped it would be.

I would point out that Canon were extremely helpful and John Lewis has a good reputation for good reason & I believe my experience was out of the ordinary.

The one bit of advice I would offer to anyone in a similar situation is to make sure you get the right consumer advice for your country/state/provence. Keep accurate records of events, take down names and contact details of people you deal with. Especially if they are helpful. This way you can send a letter/email of thanks rather than just being a moaning mini.

The John Lewis advert “Man on the Moon” supports age UK.

All images taken with a Canon S100.

Thank you for stopping, thank you for reading, thank you for looking at the images. Feel free to comment and do come back again.

Kind regards,

Jim Jimmy James.