Mute Swan

Back in late September I fell and damaged my Sigma 4.5, 500 lens.  It was a disappointment and I was quite upset about it.   It's an expensive and over-priced bit of kit that cost me 10 x's more than my car, at a penny under £5000. A ridiculous price really and it was a massive leap  of faith when I bought it.  So, as soon as I could, I sent it off to Sigma UK for repair and was told that it was going to cost me the best part of £650, but what could I do but accept this inflated and avaricious cost.?

So off it went for repair and I was hoping to have it back within the month because I would have liked to take it Sri Lanka with me.   It didn't happen though, Sigma said they were waiting for a part from Japan and deliveries from there were only once a week. An almost acceptable reason but I was disappointed and went to Sri Lanka under equipped with just my 300 lens and a converter.  So back from Sri Lanka 3 weeks later and I heard nothing from Sigma, in itself a quite unacceptable state of affairs and a gross neglect of customer relations on their part in my opinion.  Weeks turned in to months and I kept my distance just to see how long it would be before they contacted me….. and they didn't.  In the end my confidence began to wain and I started to worry that the lens could have been lost in the post on it's way back to me. So after 10 weeks I called, after a few minutes of explaining my situation, I was put through to the department and told quite calmly without apology that the lens was being worked on right now and I would have it back within the next day or so.

Absolute bunkum!   I am expected to believe that coincidentally the lens was almost ready and they were working on it as I rang.  In my opinion, what happened was this.  So poor are  their customer relations, systems and also their concerns about the customer that it had probably been finished for weeks and was sat in a pile with other finished jobs and they just couldn't be bothered.   Or, are they are just so rushed off their feet, or who knows what else that  they only react when a customer finally has enough and rings to complain.  How do I come to this conclusion?  Because I have a photographer friend who's lens took six weeks to repair and he only got it back after he rang and guess what they said?  "Oh, we are working on it and you will have it in the next day or so"   Make your own mind up, but do you think that in any other industry a customer would be kept waiting for a repair for more than 10 weeks?  This is not meant as a slanderous post about Sigma UK but I make no apology for stating the facts as they happened. It's neither a criticism or insult to Sigma UK.  Its the way it happened and it's up to you to formulate your own opinion.

I have now contacted Sigma UK and told them that I have blogged the story, given them a link to this post  and asked them if they would like to make a comment and explain their side of the story?  Their response is below.  

"We try to turn our repairs around in 1 to 5 days. In the case of your lens which is a Pentax, spare parts are hard to come by from the manufacturers and if it had been a Canon or Nikon repair then it would have been quicker.  Once the repair was underway we had to re-order parts from Japan which we had to wait for."

There was no apology from them.  There was no comment about the lack of contact with me except to say that they always try to expediate repairs for professional photographers.  In other words, had I been a pro photographer they would have pulled their finger out, can you believe that?