Why does it take so long to repair a camera?

[steveatesh]

Had to put my Sony in for a warranty repair with an IBIS problem, went in on 30th May and they have told me today it will be another 7 to 10 working days (as a guess, could be longer).

When my Nikon went in for a repair it took 4 weeks.

This is not a moan as it won't get my camera back any quicker but I'm curious as to why camera repairs take so long?

After all, the actual worker hours spent on the camera cant be that long Or it would be uneconomic to repair. I imagine a camera can be stripped down, new parts in, reassembled and tested within one working day (Would that be about right?) and a manufacturer repair site should carry spares without having to wait for it to come from Japan?

Anybody educate me on this please - what takes the time?

[paul.deitch]

Monopoly, priority and workload?

[tog]

paul.deitch said:

Monopoly, priority and workload?

This. Canon Professional Services ship kit back the next day usually (assuming parts are in stock), so is it's clearly not the length of time that the repair itself takes that is the hold up. They need to keep a backlog of work so that the techs are always busy (they don't want to be paying staff to sit around waiting for a job to come in), but some customers will go straight to the front of the queue.

[steveatesh]

Cheers for the response. I got the camera back after 5 weeks, around 2 weeks of that was waiting for parts, presumably to be sent from Japan.

It does seem to me to be a lengthy business, but I suppose that’s the market at the moment!