Wednesday, July 26, 2006

How and Why Canon fixed my PowerShot A60

So, a coupla years ago, my wife and I bought our first real digital camera. The PowerShot A60 was within our price range, had the image quality and features we liked, and came with free 128 MB CompactFlash card if we bought that weekend. So we did.

After about a year or so, we noticed that the display on the back of the camera was distorted by some lines, and that it got worse and worse as time went on. When lines started appearing on the images themselves, I went into hyper-research mode.

I found a page that discussed the CCD image sensors that were used in a number of digital camera makes and models, and that they simply went bad after a time. This page (which I cannot find anymore) referenced a page on Canon's site, which stated that they would fix - free of charge - any camera exhibiting this problem.

I called them about the issue, and it was really quite simple. I gave them the info, and they sent me a UPS shipping label, so I could ship it to them free of charge. Then they would fix it free of charge and ship it back to me free of charge. I only spent about $0.85 on tape to package the thing.

It was exactly two weeks from the day that I shipped them the camera that I got it back, all free of charge, and it works wonderfully. There was a noticable 2 second delay when taking pictures before, and now it is just less than a second. It seems that the faulty CCD Image Sensor was causing a problem with the way the images were processed.

I just wanted to post this little bit about Canon, because you rarely see people go on and on about something GOOD that a company has done. Canon has treated us very well. I like my PowerShot A60 and can now continue to use it. I'm sure that there was many a customer that simply bought a new camera, but hopefully, this will help someone else who might need to get theirs fixed.