I am finding it very hard to suppress my anger towards Canon Service at the moment. Let me tell you why.

I arranged to have my EOS 1D Mark III taken in to the Canon Service Centre to have the issues identified in the latest product recall attended to. Canon duly sent UPS to collect my camera from my work address. It was away for the estimated two days and then on Friday I got a text message saying (to paraphrase) “all fixed and here’s your UPS shipping number”. OK disappointing that I didn’t get it back for the weekend but hey, no big deal.

Today (Monday) I’m sitting in my office watching the UPS tracking information on my computer screen when it miraculously changes to “delivered”. How odd, I’ve not seen the UPS truck. Apparently it was signed for by “Kelly”. Even stranger since there’s no “Kelly” at the office. I go down and check with goods-inward. “Guys, have you seen a parcel for me?” “No, Glenn. If one had come we would have taken it straight up.” Mmm…

So I phone up the Canon service centre and talk to a helpful chap called Gavin. I quote my repair reference and he tells me, “Yes, it was shipped to your home address and has been delivered”. I see. Now the thing is I am pretty thorough about these things and I did include (in the box I shipped) a letter giving the return address for the camera as my office; in a large font, in bold.

I KNOW they read this letter because that’s where they got my mobile phone number from to send the text messages to. I also thought that my office being where they collected the camera from might be a clue as to where to send it back to, sadly not.

Here comes problem number two. There’s no-one at my home address to sign for said parcel and certainly no-one called “Kelly”. I explain this to Gavin and he says, “Hang on, I’ll call UPS”. I’m put on hold for a few minutes and then he comes back and tells me “I need to get some more information from UPS, can I call you back?”

So, half an hour later Gavin calls back to give me the good news; UPS have “left the camera with a neighbour; in number 37”. Right… they’ve left my £3,000 camera with some random neighbour several doors down the street who I’ve never even spoken to. I try very hard not to go ballistic on Gavin. After all, it isn’t HIS fault. He’s just the customer service rep who has been unfortunate enough to field my call. He’s actually done a pretty good job all things considered.

Now, before any Canon apologists get in here and tell me I should blame UPS and not Canon I’ll make it plain that I don’t accept that for one little minute, no sir. Canon are the people who contracted with UPS and Canon are the people who agreed terms of service with UPS. Gavin told me that “UPS are allowed to do that on home deliveries under the terms of their contract with us. It is something that we are reviewing.”

Oh good, hurry up and get the review done and change things because quite frankly this is a very long way from satisfactory. I’ve just wasted a fair amount of time chasing this whole issue up not to mention the stress of wondering just where-in-hell my camera has go to.

To finish the story off I get home to find a card from UPS through the door confirming what Gavin told me. I duly go to #37, “parcel for you, no sorry – I have no idea what you are on about”. Aaaaarrrrrrggggghhhhh.....

In an act of desperation I try #38 – bingo, one camera in box.

My CPS rep will be getting it in the ear tomorrow. Yes, I have Canon Professional Services membership. That’s supposed to get me special love and cuddles from the Canon Service Centre (It never seems to work out that way though) and yes my CPS number was all over the aforementioned letter in big, bold type. I will also be sending a formal letter of complaint in to Canon management through whatever complaints procedure they have.

Blaming the courier is a complete cop-out. As you say, Canon chose UPS, so they take the responsibility when it goes wrong.

Haven't decided whether to send mine in yet... this is a tick in the "don't bother" column.

Did the fix make a difference?

I have no idea. By the time I got home and then tracked down the camera to the random address where Canon had delivered it, it was too dark to do any sensible testing.

That's shocking! Regardless of the cost of the camera, it shouldn't be left with just anyone! If my £300 camera was left with someone else I would go ballistic too....nevermind a £3k one!

Let us all know how you get on with your complaint

That's crap!

Had a similar thing when I ordered a laptop from Dell (albeit the order was only just over a tenth what your camera is worth), I was told they could only deliver to my billing address for security reasons so I duly took the day off.. no laptop. Fuming I got them to arrange a delivery in the evening next day. I was at work when I got a message telling me they'd delivered it to my neighbour... !!! So much for their bloody security policy!