I recently completed a long and very frustrating battle with Dell over a returned item. All their responses were scripted; "thank you for calling, is there any other questions that you have, may we put you on hold, thank you for using Dell, have a nice day". My last four phone calls to Dell lasted more than an hour each. Each time I called it was if I had never talked with them before. It was not until Dell turned into their collection agency that they corrected their error! I think the reason was that I had kept good records of my conversations with them. However, I will never, ever buy anything from Dell again. And, every chance I get, I tell others about Dell's awful customer service. Occasionally someone will tell me about the great computer they bought from Dell which of course begs the question.
It sounds as if both Nikon and Dell are great companies as long as their products work properly. Although Dennis' wife (see above post) has the right idea and is essentially how I handled my situation it is a lot of work and very time consuming not to mention frustrating. At the risk of sounding paranoid, I believe companies like Nikon and Dell have made a conscious and caculated finanical decision not to deal with complaints until they absolutely have to. Yes, good documentation helps but I'd rather deal with a company that values it's customers than deal with Dell again.
Customer service is the issue, not quality control. There is no way for you to see what a company is "made of" until there is a problem. I, for one, hope you tell everyone who crosses your path how poorly Nikon treats their customer when you do have a problem.
