Good Faith

10 Sep 2008, 5pm

It goes like this.

Decide you’re ready for a fast prime lens, because much of the time you’re taking pictures in low light and you need the flexibility one would provide.

Discover your Nikon camera doesn’t actually like prime lenses per se, steering you instead toward their own (otherwise very good) line of zoom lenses, which don’t require the on-body focusing motor your Nikon lacks.

Lo! It turns out Sigma makes a fast prime lens with a built-in focusing motor. Just the thing! You buy one secondhand on the Ebay.

It arrives in a timely fashion, you take some shots. You feel vaguely badass, but quickly begin to realise that the subjects are always slightly out of focus. You do some tests, it’s a consistent problem. Lightroom’s develop module mocks and sniggers.

You look around the intershingles, and find you’re not alone; the problem with this model of lens is rampant, and it seems everyone who buys one rolls the dice to see if they get a dud or not. Those who do, say no problem! because with Sigma’s warranty, you can always return it for recalibration. Yours is still under warranty.

Bah. Fine. You make a farty sound with your lips, and call to consult the one solitary Sigma technician in France, who says, yeah, send it in with the warranty card, I’ll get it back to you in a couple weeks. Fine, off to the post office with you.

Two weeks do indeed go by, at which point an ‘estimate for repair’ arrives by mail, on which there is a sum named. The sum is about half what you paid for the lens. You speak some salty language and pick up the phone.

—WTF, one solitary Sigma technician in France?
—It’s not covered.
—The hell you say!
—It’s not covered. It wasn’t imported into the EU.
—I did import it into the EU.
—Not through customs. It’s only imported when it goes through customs.
—Of course it went through customs! They look at everything that comes by courier.
—They didn’t look at yours, so it’s not covered.
—But the guy who sold it to me got rid of it because it wasn’t sharp. It’s a defective lens! You have to be aware of the problem!
—It’s not covered.
—I hate you and your mother is in army shorts.

A few years ago there were G5 iMacs that were randomly turning off power, poof, and Apple sent out notice acknowledging the problem, announcing it would be repaired on all iMacs, in or out of warranty. Sigma, however, doesn’t have any evident problem with sending dud products out at a premium price, only to service those customers who bother to complain.

And then there’s you, in your freaky little bureaucratic niche of ‘Worldwide warranty’ non-coverage, with a lens that was defective at manufacture, being asked to pay the price to fix it. If someone from Sigma has anything to say on the matter – perhaps a way to see this whiny consumer rant have a happy ending – you can be reached at dean@textism.com.

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