Casio - testing my patience...

Longtime Etchy Blog readers will know I am a big time fan of Casio's Exilim series of cameras.  I got my first one in 2003 and bought two more since then.  I've also encouraged many of my friends to get them over the years (two ex's, three AnD staff members, etc).  

But I have not been super happy with my most recent Exilim,  the EX-V7, which i bought in Hiroshima, Japan less than 3 months ago.  Aside from the demon red-eye problem, also the low-light feature is a lot worse than my old Exilim. :-P

But it gets worse than just fuzzy pics and red eye!  Yesterday while Boon and I were visiting a printing company I pulled my camera out to snap a picture, only to find it wasn't working... it would give me a cryptic error message 'Camera Stabilizer is Not Available'...  and then it shuts off!

I tried it 10 more times and the same thing... luckily I had my 2mp phone camera, so I was able to get my image (stay tuned for that), but I was pissed about my (practically) brand new camera crapping out.

Last night i did a google search and found that this is a common defect on this camera (Casio's first internal optical zoom camera w/ this anti-shake feature in it).  All they said was 'take it to the service center'...  luckily there is one in HK, (but I'm not 100% sure my Japan bought camera is actually covered here!)

I emailed them last night and got a reply first thing in the morning. OK,  good first step.  I have to drop off the camera at their service center in Kowloon City... not so bad!  I'm hoping I can find some time to do it this week (cause I LIVE through my camera!)

In a dream world they'll say 'ok, we'll replace your EX-V7 with a different Casio model' (EX-Z1200 please!)   I'm expecting them to replace it with another EX-V7, the only question is how fast. If it takes a few weeks I'm going to be PISSED.  (i'm tempted to do one of those things where you smash it with a hammer and mail the parts to the company.... and put the video on youtube). :-P

We'll see...  if they f-up my customer experience I'm going to have to defect to the Ayu Lumix-side:

but maybe not the Hello Kitty version. :-P