{"id":6329,"date":"2010-09-20T16:13:25","date_gmt":"2010-09-20T23:13:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/?p=6329"},"modified":"2010-09-20T18:19:07","modified_gmt":"2010-09-21T01:19:07","slug":"the-down-side-of-buying-a-panasonic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/2010\/09\/the-down-side-of-buying-a-panasonic\/","title":{"rendered":"The down side of buying a Panasonic"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"lumix<\/a><\/p>\n

I had been generally happy with my last three Panasonic cameras<\/a>. Those days are over. First my TZ10’s zoom knob broke. Maybe broke isn’t the right word. The control became somewhat “sticky” and difficult to move sometimes. Sometimes it worked fine. Other times it was really annoying and caused me to miss shots. But I could live with it.<\/p>\n

Last week my photos began to exhibit a smudge of sorts near the center. I cleaned the lens, still no good. Nothing I could do would remove the gray circle a bit off center in my photos; nor could I see anything on the lens to suggest why this was happening. One problem I could live with. Two, and especially when one affects picture quality, I could not. No problem I thought. I have only owned this camera for four months, and the TZ10 came with a one-year, worldwide warranty on both parts and labor.<\/p>\n

I contacted Panasonic USA to see what I should do. Initially they said they couldn’t help since I purchased the camera outside of the USA. They said I could get it serviced in Japan, or, for a fee, they may make an exception for me. Hmmmm…. why a fee for a warrantied product? Several emails and two phone calls later I gave up on getting any help from Panasonic USA.<\/p>\n

Next I tried to get help from Panasonic Japan, since I purchased the camera while living in Japan and the Japanese are generally better when it comes to service issues. They seemed very helpful if I lived in Japan, but they can do nothing for customers who purchased a product in Japan and then moved out of Japan. So I went back to Panasonic USA and pled my case. They told me that, “The world wide warranty does not include the US. We are sorry for your inconvenience they will not owner the warranty in the US.” So, apparently the USA is no longer part of the world.<\/p>\n

They kept telling me that they don’t sell the TZ10 so they can’t service it. Never mind the fact that it is the exact same camera as the ZS7 which they do service.<\/p>\n

Their ad for the camera is true. The camera is “for world travelers” because when it breaks you have to travel the world in order to get them to honor their warranty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had been generally happy with my last three Panasonic cameras. Those days are over. First my TZ10’s zoom knob broke. Maybe broke isn’t the right word. The control became somewhat “sticky” and difficult to move sometimes. Sometimes it worked fine. Other times it was really annoying and caused me to miss shots. But I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[9],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6329"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6329"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6336,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6329\/revisions\/6336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}