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So sorry to hear about your bad experience. Thank you for sharing with all of us so we NEVER use them!

I would like to share that I just used KEH.com to repair my canon and not only were they REALLY fast….they were pretty cheap. Much cheaper than Canon.

Hope things go better the next time your camera needs to be worked on!

Okay, here it goes…

I broke and/or zapped the FireWire circuit(s) in my JVC GY-HD200U video camera, so I did a little research and found UCB. I saw the negative reviews and figured that the old adage might be true – happy customers don’t say much, unhappy customers make a lot of noise. I figured it would be worth a shot.

I received an estimate and purchased the packing materials, overnight shipping, etc. I got all that and sent the camera out. They received it on or before September 28, 2011, according to the email I received on that day.

On October 5, I checked the status of the repair using their online form and received the message “Waiting for customer approval to begin/continue repair.” Hmmm… a week went by and nobody notified me that I needed to approve the repair? I checked through all my previous email and didn’t see ANY that mentioned that. So I wrote to customer service on the 5th to let them know approval hadn’t been requested.

On October 6, I still hadn’t heard back from them.

On October 7, I called and spoke with Don to let him know that I wasn’t a happy customer because a) I never received a request for approval, and b) I hadn’t received a reply to my email of October 5. Don said he’d expedite the repair. Don offered to refund the money I spent for the overnight return once the repair is complete.

On October 10, I received an email from Jennifer in reply to my email of October 5. “Your unit is in line for service now…”, etc.

On October 17, I received their boilerplate email telling me that they’d received the “device” for repair – the same email I’d received twice before.

This same day, I decided to investigate the corporate officers of United Camera and Binocular Repair in preparation for filing suit against them. (UCBR Holdings Corp., United Camera and Binocular Repair, LLC and United Camera Repair Inc.

Keep in mind that during this entire time, online status updates were rarely actual updates – checking online is an exercise in futility. I emailed UCBR on the 18th to ask if that was ever updated, and I received a non-commital response from Don, the first person I contacted at UCBR.

I contacted UCBR again on that day and spoke with Jim, someone with actual influence on things there. He said that the technician ordered a part from JVC to be sent via overnight delivery.

The next day Jim told me that JVC neglected to overnight the part, so I can’t hold UCBR responsible for that little snafu.

On October 24, Jim emailed me to let me know that the new part was received and installed, but that it didn’t fix the problem. We spoke by phone to discuss the issue. The work they had done had fixed some of the problem – it was now possible to get standard definition DV out of the camera via FireWire, but HDV still wasn’t working. That would require a part to be installed by JVC along with a firmware flash that only they could do (JVC won’t release the code). In my conversation with Jim, he had a bit of an odd question, basically asking if in my work I possibly only used the standard definition features of the camera. I could only guess he was asking so they could finally close out the repair with only standard definition working. Um, it’s a high definition camera, so yes, please make that work. That WAS included in your estimate after all. Would you buy a car and take delivery if it didn’t have tires? Sure, you can drive it on bare wheels, but it won’t go very fast. Jim offered to overnight the camera to JVC.

XXXXXXXXXX

So the camera is – supposedly – at JVC as of October 25.

As of this writing, I have a few worries…

1. By the time I pay JVC, will the repair will cost double or more what the original estimate was? If so, it would be like buying two of these cameras. They’re not state-of-the art, so they’re not worth the $6,000 cost when new a few years ago.
2. If I approve the JVC repair, would I pay JVC directly, or pay UCBR? If I pay USBR for the JVC portion of the repair, will they mark it up or double-bill any of it?
3. If I decline the JVC repair, the camera isn’t fully repaired based on the original repair estimate. Should I do a partial charge-back? A high-def camera without high-def is silly, and UCBR will not have done their job.

Before UCBR should continue fixing cameras, they should fix their process. And anyone with sophisticated equipment should NEVER use UCBR. I have no doubts that UCBR means well, and heck, I don’t even have any doubts that they do a good job most of the time. But when they screw up, they don’t waste their effort screw up a little bit.