Story of the Day 6/ 2/ 2013- Saga of the camera- Part 1

I have titlesd this story Story of the Day 6/2/2013, but it is really a saga that started a month ago.
My children have a very nice camera that my husband got for them.
He purchased it using "points" he had accumulated over three years by filling out surveys for a drug company.
Drug as in prescription medicine, not as in crack or heroin.

Theoretically, this means that the camera was a good deal. However, since we pay taxes on the value of the camera, and the value is figured at some incredibly inflated manufacturer's suggested retail price from 6 years ago, when it was the newest model, instead of from last summer, when it was actually "redeemed/purchased", the amount we ended up paying in taxes was really only a little less than if we had bought the camera at it's current, no longer the newest model, Amazon.com price.

Oh well.
At least it is a nice camera, with a nice lens.
Excpet, that it is the old model and certain children seem to complain to us that it is not as good for making movies as the newer cameras.
Despite their complaints, however, they seem to have made a very nice film with it, at the end of the summer , last year, and a few others, since then.

This is the film they made , at the end of last summer. Hopefully, you will think it was worth the investment in income taxes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9ixPIc2YRA

To get back to this year, about a month ago, the wonderful camera with the nice lens had a lens that didn't work.
It wouldn't turn to adjust the focus.
This is bad enough when you are taking regular photos, but it is truly disastrous when you are shooting video.

I groaned a bit when my daughter told me this.
I groaned a lot more after I looked up the cost of getting a new lens for the camera on Amazon.

A friend, Harriet, heard my moaning and groaning and remembered, about then, that she had a Nikon lens in her house left over from a camera she used to have . She went searching for it, and after she dropped it off, we did some internet research.
The lens, apparently, can be adapted to fit the newer digital Nikon camera, but it will not auto focus.
This is fine if you want to take still photos, but it was going to be an issue for shooting video.
Less of an issue than the lens we owned which wouldn't adjust at all, but still.....

So, again, I started looking at what a new lens would cost.

Then, my husband dropped a piece of information on me.

When he got the camera for the kids, he also got an extended warranty.
That covered the lens.
He did?
God bless his neurotic genes!!!!!!

I started digging in all the drawers for the warranty paper he said had come with the camera.
We had the original box, and a number of papers, but I was unable to find anything even resembling a warranty paper.

Fortunately, my husband discovered that he had an email from the purchase. And the email let him access the information about the warranty on the Best Buy website.

Unfortunately, the email indicated that the warranty ran out a few months ago.

What?
That didn't make sense.
The extended warranty was for a year.
We thought and thought and were sure the camera had been ordered during the summer.
The summer of 2012.
How could this be?
It is now the spring of 2013, and , unless I was educated incorrectly about the order of the seasons, less than a year had passed.

On May 6th, my husband checked again, and there it was, in black and white pixels, right on the website, the warranty expired on 1/7/ 2013.

More moaning ensued.

Until a day later, on May 7th, when my husband realized that they had used European date notation.
1/ 7/ 2013 meant the 1st of July, 2013.

My husband sent me the information and I contacted Best Buy- the source of the camera and of the extended warranty.

I called them on May 8th- at their 800 number, and they gave me a service number, after I let them know where I would be dropping the camera off for the repair.
I chose the Best Buy on the west side of town. It is slightly nearer than the one near Castleton Square Mall, and in an area of much less aggressive drivers.

On May 9th, I stood in line for about 5 minutes, and then left the camera and lens ( they had to be left together) to be repaired. I was told that it would be , at most, 14-17 days before it was back from being sent out to be repaired.

Desite the impatience of my children, I waited a full two weeks before calling the store.
On May 23rd, I called the local Best Buy and was told that the camera was not back yet.
Well, they had told me 14 to 17 days,so this was not a problem, except for my kids; and I decided to wait until the weekend to try again.

On May 26th, it being little before the local store opened, I called the 800 number to check on the camera.
After being transferred around a bit, I was told that, "Of course it isn't ready , yet," since it was only dropped off to be repaired on May 23rd.

The 23rd?

I tell the woman that she is wrong: I left it to be repaired on May 9th.
She insists the repair order is for the 23rd.
Then she says, "Oh, this is strange" Apparently, the camera has two different repair numbers. She is not sure why , because she has never seen this before.
She puts me on hold while she calls the store to find out what has happened.

I wait on hold.

She comes back on and explains to me that because the camera took so long to repair, it went over their maximum number of days and they had to assign a new repair number to it. She assures me that it will be back in the store by this coming Wednesday. She is sorry it has taken so long.

I am not happy, but I am not very upset by the slight delay; and, at any rate, there is nothing that I can do.
I am also wondering about that second repair number.
It doesn't feel right.

She assures me, though, that it will be in the store on Wednesday.

Wednesday was May 29th.
It was also not when the camera arrived at the store.
It also did not arrive on the 30th.

On June 2nd, today, I have become a slightly less pleasant to deal with customer.
I call the 800 number.
I ask where the camera is.
I am put on hold.
I am on hold for a very long time.
I read more than one section of the New York Times.
I decide that they have forgotten about me.
At 1:32 PM, Amanda comes on the line.
The camera was never shipped.
I ask what that means.
Was it not shipped out to be repaired, or was it not shipped from the repair place back to the store?

Kristy told me the wrong thing. Kristy is the woman I spoke with on a long ago 800 call, at least, it feels long ago.
She tells me that Kristy told me the wrong thing.
The camera was not ready when she told me it was, it was not already shipped back to the store, it had not been repaired. In fact, it also hadn't even been received by the vendor to be repaired.
They do not know where the camera is and they are looking into it.
She gives me a reference number.
She assures me that I will be called back, at the latest, by midmorning , tomorrow.

Tomorrow will be June 3rd.
I have a bad feeling that there will be a Story of the Day , tomorrow.