No such luck....

Almost two months ago I wrote a post about how my Canon PowerShot A300 digital camera was acting up on account of a defective CCD which gave me nothing but blank pictures.

The camera was promptly brought to Canon's service center in Pasong Tamo (which I only recently learned has been renamed to Don Chino Roces Ave.), Makati. It was confirmed that the problem was with indeed with the CCD. As it turned out, a particular batch of A300s had a defect with the CCD right out of the factory, resulting in the symptoms that I had experienced. It took somewhere in the area of two years before the problem would come to rear its ugly head with my particular unit. Now that it has, I turned it over to Canon for repair.

As it was a factory defect, I had been informed that I would not be charged a peso for the repair, though I may have to wait two to three months before I got the camera back.

Punzi came across that post of mine, and by sheer coincidence, also happened to own an A300 with a defective CCD. He turned in his camera for repair last December, and by the end of March he was informed by Canon that they would be replacing his defective A300 with a brand new PowerShot A410.

Boy, was he lucky. :-)

Last week before the Holy Week holidays, I received a call from Canon that my camera was now ready for pickup. They fixed it.

Oh well. Lady luck can't weave her magic on everyone all the time. :-)

They gave a three month warranty on the repair work done. I put the camera through it's paces, and it works fine. It works absolutely fine. While I'm a bit disappointed by the fact that I didn't get a new camera, I suppose it's no biggie. I actually already own an A410, so if they gave me a new one I would have had two of this model. And I should be thankful. They repaired my camera for absolutely free and now it works flawlessly, just like the day I bought it.

I guess there's just something magical about cracking open a box for a new tech gadget. It can be quite addictive if you're a techie. :-)

So it's back to the original plan. I'm going to use the fixed A300 as a backup and a training camera for my son, whom I plan to teach basic photography to. And I'll keep saving for a nice "prosumer" class digital camera, probably still a Canon. Punzi, that 7.1 megapixel PowerShot A620 is looking mighty attractive. Canon also introduced a newer PowerShot, a 6 megapixel A700 with a humongous LCD (albeit fixed) last February. Maybe I can afford one of those babies by the holidays. Perhaps if I get lucky. :-)