here's a story.
about two months ago i walked into best buy to purchase a digital camera.
i had done some indepedendent studying previous to this and i had mostly narrowed my choices down to two cameras. one being a canon and the other an olympus.

however, i had owned 3 canons prior to this. 2 of which have broken due to something called the "e18" error. if you were to take a moment and google "e18" you'd find hundreds of messageboards and websites devoted to suggestions on how to repair this problem, as well as thousands of unhappy customers who canon refused to help regarding this issue. i'm certain you know someone who has had a canon digital camera malfunction. you see, canon simply will not own up to this defect and if you want it fixed it will cost you over $150, even if your camera is brand new. legal complaints and action suits have been made and dismissed.

so, in the end both had similar features. in the end i felt like the canon took better photos (great image stabilization) and was a bit easier to operate, but the olympus had a handful of other stunning features. most impressive is that this camera is both shock and waterproof. which means you can drop it up to 5 feet and submerge it 33 ft underwater. its also crush proof (up to 220 lbs) and freezeproof (-10°C/14°F). this seemed to more than one up the canon, which seemed to be more likely to malfunction if you breathed on it the wrong way let alone accidentally dropped it.

i'm sure you can guess by now that i chose the olympus. i figured i'd give it a shot (get it?). everything was great, that is to say until a "something" of significant size appeared on the the lense. it was definitely on the inner lense of the camera and not on the outter protective lense, and despite my diy methods of shaking and banging, this "something" refused to budge.

"great," i thought, "now i'm going to have to send this back to olympus who undoubtedly will find some way to charge me for this problem thats obviously not my fault." and not only that, i'm leaving for africa in less than a week! i thought "how am i going to get this repaired and back in time?" for any of you who have had customer service repairs on electronics, you can bet on it being at least 2 weeks if not 5.

so i made some phone calls and found out that the closest olympus repair center was 4 hours away in hauppauge, ny (long island). so yesterday morning i climbed into my mothers car and thats where i went. after sitting through manhattan and long island expressway traffic, i had the plan of explaining my situation and begging/battling them to fix it asap.

i found it without much trouble, took a deep breath and prepared for war. i walked in the double doors and met a service clerk named frank cruz. i explained the problem to mr cruz and told him the tyranny of the urgent. i told him what i was to be doing in africa and that i much would like to document it. he told me that the camera repairs were under warranty (olympus +1) and he also told me that he'd take it back to the service engineers himself and tell them that it needed to be a rush job (olympus +1). then he also threw in a two year extended warranty ($49.99) for free (olympus +1)! this was not what i expected! frank then told me that they'll try their best to get the camera back out the door and to me as soon as they could, but that he could make no promises. so i left olympus feeling somewhat encouraged and somewhat hopeful that i'd have my camera back in time for my departure.

on the way out of the olympus parking lot i recieved a call on my mobile phone. it was frank! he told me that the engineers would be able to have it repaired by friday and that they would overnight it so that i would have it by monday afternoon (i leave tuesday morning). "PERFECT!" i exclaimed (olympus +1)! it was now that i regretted never adding kool and the gang to my ipod.

i made my way home and was very pleased and also amazed at how great this all had turned out. i then tried to imagine what my trip would have been like if i had chosen the canon two months ago.

it gets better!

this morning i woke up to a ups delivery. WHAT THE HECK!? overnight delivery from hauppauge, ny? my camera was here! they also included another lithium ion battery ($44.99) for free!! (olympus +10) they fixed it! they fixed it and shipped it the same day!!! (olympus +30!)

olympus, 73
canon, 0

so, needless to say olympus has gone above and beyond the call of duty.
THANKS, OLYMPUS!


presenting the olympus stylus 770 sw
=)