The War of the Camcorder

I have been toying with the notion of putting this up on my blog for a while now and decided that I might as well at this point, since this is dragging out waaaaay too long.

On Jan. 31st, I ordered a refurbished Canon ZR100 camcorder from Woot.com. Admittedly, I was a bit leery of a refurbed camcorder, but I'd purchased refurbished electronics before and have never had a problem. I got the camcorder on Feb. 6th.

When I got home that evening, I plugged it in to charge the battery...nothing. No charging light, no battery indicator, nothing. I went onto the Canon website to see what I could find out. There were a few suggestions that I tried; all of them fruitless.

The troubleshooting guide on Canon's site informed me that if the suggestions didn't pan out, either the battery or the charging cable were faulty and would need to be replaced. Not wanting to spend the $100 it would cost for a new battery and cable (especially since the camera was only $130 to begin with), I decided to return the camera.

I e-mailed Woot to get an RMA number and got a pretty short response...essentially that I should contact Canon to see if they could fix it. Initially I was a bit put off, not thinking that Canon would really do anything since it was a refurb and more likely than not out of warranty.

But, since I seemingly needed to do so, I contacted Canon and spoke to a very friendly woman in Virginia. Much to my surprise, she told me that she would put in an order to send me a new charging cable AND a battery since it was impossible to know which was the problem. I thanked her and told Woot that Canon was going to help.

After waiting the requisite 7-10 business days for the battery and cable to arrive and receiving nothing, I called Canon back. I spoke to another friendly person who said that yes, he did see an order for a charging cable, but unfortunately, the order had never been put in for shipping. This was a bit dismaying. I asked about a battery as well as I was told I would be receiving both and he said, "Yep, I'll get it out to shipping right now."

This time the shipping was expedited (I knew this because I received no less than 8 confirmation/shipping e-mails) and I received a package in two business days. I thought, "Sweet, maybe this'll get it fixed." I opened the package and found, as I had feared, only a charging cable...

Of course, when I plugged the new one in, the same issue persisted.

So, I called up Canon again and spoke to a third friendly representative and explained the story to him...again.

He then asks me, "OK, is the issue with the cable or the battery?"

I replied, "At first, I had no way to tell, but now that you've sent me a new cable and the battery still won't charge, it would seem that the issue is with the battery...or the camera."

"Well, I can help you get it shipped out to a repair center" he answered.

"OK, is there a reason you can't send me the battery I was promised the first time I called in?"

"Um...let me see here. Yeah, OK, I can do that."

"Great, am I going to get a confirmation e-mail?" I asked.

"Yep."

So, now, I am sitting here, awaiting said e-mail. I'm a bit dubious of the whole thing...it seemed a little too easy to change his mind about sending a battery. If I don't get an e-mail today, I'll call them back tomorrow for a status...


...to be continued.

[Edit: 1:30PM - 02.26]

Got a message from my wife that we got another package from Canon in the mail today...the battery. She tried it in the camera, plugged it in and still nothing. So, it looks like the camera is the faulty piece of this puzzle. Guess I'll be contacting Woot for an RMA tonight.

[Edit: 2:55PM - 03.10]

We got a message on Thursday that Woot had received the camera, so now we're just waiting for the refund. That should take 7-10 days. We'll see...