Hi,
what you are reporting seems to be exactly what happened to my 7D in march/april this year after roughly 18 months of usage and about 13-14,000 photos taken.
It focussed perfectly and behaved as normal in all belongs but when I tried to take a photo it "freezed", that is to say, I was able to take a totally uncertain number of photos, from 0 to 20,30,40... but then suddenly it freezed. Switching on and off brought it back to life in belongs of metering and focussing but at every attempt to take another photo it got stuck again. Only after some (totally uncertain) time of putting it back into the bag, i.e. after some hours, a day, two days it eventually returned to normal function again.
After some weeks of trying somthing here and there, after all possible resets, re-installing of the firmware I sent it for repair - and there it is until now.
I really got upset - besides the technical problems and the fact that after 13 months of usage my 7D had shown up with another problem which needed repair (under warranty yet) - with people from Minolta/Sony when I received the information that they would charge a minimum fee of 240 Euros. And no explanation about what they will do, which parts may be faulty....
I compared it to the price when I bought it new which was around 1000 Euros. More or less 25% for a repair I still would consider ok from this point of view. But time has changed. Nowadays a new A100 body costs less than 600 Euros. Would it be any wise to invest this amount of money in a body that:
a) has to be repaired for the 2nd time in 19 month of usage only;
b) after only 13-14,000 shots taken - so heavy usage I consider a non-issue in my case;
c) to get the camera repaired with only 6 month warranty over the repaired items
and finally, is it possibly any wise paying an amount of money with no single hint what it means in terms of repair and paying a MINIMUM amount that comes quite close to 50% of a similar new camera? Paying all this money for a camera that seems to be everything but not mechanically/electronically any reliable and long lasting. Who would accept a car mechanic doing a repair on a non-itemized charging basis? This gets ridiculous.
After all I don't understand Minolta's / Sony's PR policy in such cases. I think it would be much wiser for them to inform, yes, an estimated price for a possible repair but why don't they do a step further suggesting to the customer, explaining that repair could be done but this wouldn't be very wise economically thinking, an interchange, offering to him a new body under very special, friendly conditions. Perhaps much less costs overall for them and probably a satisfied customer - who is free too to decide for the repair.
What's your take?
Cheers,
Michael Fritzen
