After what felt like an absurdly long wait, the camera finally showed up. By the time the package arrived, I was so relieved I almost wanted to thank the courier with tears in my eyes. I opened it right away, and this time, at least, the unit looked fine. It powered on normally, and everything seemed to work.
Still, there were two things that immediately bothered me. The very first photo I took wasn’t numbered 000, and the pictures seemed to have more noise than I expected. I honestly have no idea whether that matters, but after everything that had already happened, I decided to stop overthinking it and just trust the product quality for now.
What led up to this was a small disaster of a buying experience.
One day I came across a post mentioning an online retailer that supposedly sold only official domestic products. The price looked reasonable, so I ordered a Fujifilm F200EXR there. Along with it, I also bought a camera case, a 4GB SD card, and an extra battery, because I had heard the F200EXR drained power pretty quickly.
A couple of boring days later, the package arrived. I was in self-study at the time and rushed out of the classroom to pick it up. I tore open the parcel, turned on the camera, and immediately froze.
The screen was completely black, with a weird purple tint. I tried taking a few shots, and they looked the same. At first I thought maybe I had set something up wrong or missed some obvious option. But after asking around on a photography forum, it turned out the camera really was defective. Someone even suggested the CCD might have been faulty.
That was a pretty awful moment. This was supposed to be a trustworthy place to buy legitimate gear online, and my first experience buying an officially distributed camera over the internet ended with a broken unit. It left me with a real bad impression of buying this kind of thing online. For a while I even thought I might as well go back to buying gray-market products instead.
The return process itself wasn’t especially complicated. I submitted a repair request right away, although I had made it very clear that I wanted a replacement, not a repair. To be fair, the request was approved fairly quickly, in less than a day, and I was given the return address and other details.
But even that wasn’t smooth. I didn’t see all the materials I was supposed to send back, and I missed a payment slip, which meant I ended up making two pointless trips to the courier service.
Then came the waiting.
I shipped the defective camera on the 13th, and they received it around the 14th. I didn’t get the replacement until yesterday, the 25th. That means the whole thing took at least ten days in between. For something like a replacement exchange, that speed really isn’t impressive at all. Still, however frustrating it was, the important thing is that the replacement eventually arrived safely.
Looking back on it, I even briefly wondered whether they had knowingly sent out a broken unit in the first place, since I was the one who had to pay the return shipping. It almost felt like some elaborate setup. But then again, that theory doesn’t really make sense either—yes, I paid the shipping, but the money didn’t go to the store anyway.
What bothered me just as much was how hard it was to reach an actual human being. And I do mean an actual human. Every time I called customer service, the line was busy. I still don’t know whether it was genuinely busy or whether nobody was really there to answer at all. I understand that an online store probably relies heavily on automated systems, but when something goes wrong, not being able to reach a person is incredibly frustrating.
All I could do was leave complaints in the comment section, and that felt terrible.
To be fair, a few days before the replacement was sent out, a man who seemed to be from customer service did call me to say the camera was about to be shipped and that I should be available to receive it. I didn’t react in time during the call. Only after I hung up did I realize there were a lot of things I should have asked. By then, of course, the chance was gone. Calling back just led me right back to the automated voice again.
This whole purchase left a pretty deep shadow over the store for me. After an experience like this, I honestly doubt I’ll shop there again.