The Tale of the Bad Battery

On Saturday I posted a poll asking you how many chances you gave a retailer after a bad experience. In the writeup I explained the situation a bit to try and make you aware of the situation without making this post obsolete. It all revolves around a battery for my new Nikon D40.

A couple of weeks ago I decided to go ahead and purchase a digital SLR to get back into photography. Deciding on a camera was tough, but after considering all of the information I found, I went with a Nikon D40. From there I needed to decide on a retailer to make my purchase from.

The first place I went was Amazon. I have purchased dozens of things from them over the years and have not been disappointed as of yet. After checking out the price I went to a handful of other camera suppliers, then moved on to reseller ratings to check up on a few of these companies.

Given the price and feedback of a company called Adorama, I decided to give them a shot. I put my order in on a Friday night and found the camera waiting for me on Monday when I returned home from work. I couldn’t believe the fast turnaround time and immediately unpacked it to give it a test drive.

I connected the battery to the quick charger and plugged it in. While it was charging I read over the owners manual to get an idea how long it needed to charge. Ninety minutes later I returned to the charger expecting to find it complete, but it was not. I gave it another hour and checked on it once again, and just like before it was not complete.

I removed the battery from the charger and placed it into the camera to see if it had picked up any sort of charge over the past two and a half hours. To my surprise, the camera would not turn on. I removed the battery and placed it back on the charger for another two hours before trying it in the camera once again.

The total time on the charger at this point was four and a half hours, and the camera would still not power on. I logged onto the Adorma website and navigated to customer support. I found the email customer service information and sent in an explanation of my troubles. I also asked them if they could simply send me a replacement battery so that I did not have to return my entire camera and wait for a new one to arrive.

To my surprise, I did not receive any sort of response for three business days. On Thursday I decided to give them a call to see what the hold-up was. I spoke with a nice customer service representative that told me she would need to speak with a supervisor about sending out just a battery. Unfortunately this supervisor was unavailable at that point in time, but she would email me with information on how the issue was to be resolved.

Monday rolled around and I had still not received that promised email. After verifying that it did not get caught up in my spam folder, I headed over to Amazon and ordered a spare battery. Having a non-functional camera sitting in my house for an entire week was beginning to irritate me. All I wanted to do was get out and snap a few pictures.

A couple of days later my spare battery arrived and I still did not hear back from Adorama customer service. Not trusting Adorama to handle the situation in a timely manner, I contacted Nikon via their website to ask if they would take care of my bad battery via warranty return.

I explained to Nikon that I was able to verify my camera was functioning properly with a fully charged spare battery, but the original battery would not take a charge. I also explained that I had been in touch with the retailer. A few hours later I had a response apologizing for the situation and a note that a new battery was being sent out to avoid any additional inconvenience.

It has been a few days since then and I fully expect to see my new battery any day now. It took more than a week to get a functional camera, with no help from the retailer, but I’m finally up and running. Due to the weather I haven’t been out and about just yet, but snapping random photos around the house has been a pleasure.

Next weekend I plan on heading out to the Daniel Boone Homestead to see how the camera does outdoors, and to see how the place has changed since Ive been there last.