Canon U.S.A. Canon Faulty product knowing about this mainteined it in silent and new buyers like us received bad units New York, New York

Dear sirs.

We are presenting this complaint on behalf of our company Atomo Films.

We are located in Lima-Perú, South America where we mainly do our business.

Our company is a video production company with more than 20 years in the market, we regularly do work around the world, making documentaries in places like China, Colombia, France, Chile, Ecuador, Dominican Republic, USA an several other countries.

In December we sign a video production contract with a Peruvian Soccer team call Alianza Lima to produce a series of documentaries that ment a lot of travelling and buliding an Internet TV Channel where we can aired the edited material.

For that reason we where seeking on buying a video camera that had several features and specially suitable for this important project.

This features included.-

-Ability to take high quality pictures

-Ability to record Full HD video 1920 x 1080

-Easy to handle and transport

-Posibility to change lenses

We watched many videos made with the Canon EOS 7D camera and finally choose it because of the quality of the picture and the Price/performance.

We where very enthusiastic and proceed to buy it from B&H photo located NY.

The order was placed on december 16 2009 under my name as manager and owner of the company.

I received the Canon EOS 7D camera Serial Number- 0570503271 and is accesories on the last days of december at our Miami office, someone bring it to me to Peru since we do a lot of our business here.

I received i around the 10th of january 2010 and proceed to read the instruction manuals.

We then prepare to initiate on January 20th the activities of the project that we have been hired to do.

We travell to a far away location and began our shooting with the newly buy camera, for our surprise about 10 minutes after turning on the camera a red light began flashing at the side of the view screen.

We read the manual to see what could be the problem and located that this is a warning regarding camera overheating.

We tried to continue our work after turning the camera off and after 6 minutes the problem apeared again.

So we had to turn off the camera trying to avoid equipment damages.

This problem continued all day and we keep turning the camera on and off.

Next day on Friday we began recording again and the problem apeared, this time the material we had to record was live video so we could’t be doing the on and off operation specially because this means that the camera had to rest every 20 minutes.

To prevent further damages we turned the camera off and could’t do any more work.

The results:  our client was very mortified and cancelled our contract, now he is claiming a monetary compensation that was written in the contract.

We believe this faulty camera problem has created us a big problem, not only on the amount of Money we where going to receive but also because of the contract penalties that our client is claiming from us.

On January the 22nd we called  Canon USA INC to tell them about this problem and to see the options that we have to solve this.

The answer was very disapointing, they said that i have to send the camera to them and we have to take care of all the expenses, they said that the warranty does’t cover outside the USA or Canada.

We then check out our warranty card (that it’s included in the box) and it did said this, but the thing is that where are we international costumers informed about this before the buy?

Sending the ítem to USA will cost us more than US 400 with the shipping and the insurance to usa and the return, beside this, that means that after they check the camera and whatever they have to do we will not be able to use it in any jobs for the time all the processes lasts this means  taking away all the purpose of the purchase.

But the matter doesn’t stop there, after taking to Canon’s employee and listening him saying that

Canon hasn’t issue any service report regarding a problem with this particular model, we began to research in internet an our findings where very surprising, we did find in a fórum callled www.dvinfo.net more than 53 pages of different users postings since the first days of september regarding an overheating problems in some of their models. I myself count in the first pages more than 15 with the same problem.

I purchase the camera on december and Canon knowing that they had faulty products in the stores did’t warn or retire the products from the re-sellers .

I believe they did this knowing that this action could make them a bad reputation and Money loses.

That is why and perceiving by the conversation with their representative that Canon USA inc is going to do nothing to solve our problems finally ocasionated by them on selling a faulty product which they know it was going to be unable to work as offered.

We are placing this formal complaint against Canon USA INC.

We are not only asking:

1.  the inmedately send of a new product to Miami, USA

2.  The paying of our travelling expenses to Miami to pick up the new product and to send the defective product (the sending product has to be there when we arrive, and upon receveid we will send the defective product).

3.  The payment of the whole amount of the penalty we our been required by our client on the amount of US 10,000 to be deposit in a USA acount.

4.  The payment of the earnings we are not receiving because of the cancelation by our client of the contract of the amount of US 10,000 to be deposit in a USA acount.

We believe the methods used by Canon go against the principles of the good business and we cannot be being punished proffesionally and economicaly by a company that preffers the silence instead of recognizing its error and trying to fix it.

We hope that Canon Company accepts our demands and avoid bigger problems, we can make a campaign through media and the internet (via fórums and magazines) too let know to actual and future to be costumers about Canon’s malpractices, and we are determined to take legal actions to defend our rights as consumers.

We are extremely mortified with this problem that has been generated since we are victims in this matter and we hope that justice can be served.