Babble Fish

A letter to Panasonic

Dear Customer Support,

I was touring Japan during Chinese New Year holidays this year and happy that I bought the GH1 there to record my memories. The camera performs well till now, but both of the strap lugs had detached from the body by themselves within 3 months after the purchase. This is clearly a manufacturer defect.

I was away from Malaysia after that incident and was using the camera without the strap (very inconvenient) till I came back a few days ago. I took it to the Shah Alam service center today only to find out that I need to pay more than RM300 to fix something which is not caused by my own neglect. Even checking it will cost me RM50.

I am extremely disappointed with this outcome. It just shows that customers are not the core of the after sales service of Panasonic because the customer care representative just brushed me off saying that she can’t do anything to help me because I bought the camera in Japan. I was told that the warranty is not valid in Malaysia. I just have to pay.

I need to fix the camera anyway because I just can’t walking around with camera with an obvious defect (which does not serve well for Panasonic branding too) in my trips. The RM300++ charges for fixing two camera strap lugs just made a dent into my confidence in Panasonic. I am pretty sure that my next camera purchase will highly probably not be a Panasonic camera.

For your information I am also posting this email to the Internet as well just in case it is being brushed off.

Thank you very much for your attention.