Remco Bron

- Posted using MobyPicture.com

As some of you know am an enthusiast photographer. Over the years I’ve spend quite a lot of money getting my gear together. About a year and a half ago I decided to purchase a Tokina AT-X 12-24 AF PRO DX wide angle lens for my Canon camera. I’ve always liked to lens and had a good time with it…until the day I needed customer service from Tokina.

One day I wanted to take my lens from it’s protective bag only to come notice that it had split in two parts. It was damage which I couldn’t repair myself in any way. Till this day I still don’t know how it happend; the lens never fell or inflicted any damage and had performed excellent up until that point. Furthermore, there was no visible damage anywhere on the lens, and the lens looked like new only showing I take great care in handeling my photography gear.

I decided to contact Tokina in The Netherlands to check if they could repair it under garuantee since this must have been a build quality issue. When I contacted them they were nice enough and asked me to file a RMA online and return the lens (I paid the postage). So I did. Two weeks later I received a quote of 285 euro to repair the lens ($386 US). That’s more than half of what I paied for the lens. There was no mention of any gaurantee let alone any compensation for the costs whatsoever.

So I contacted Tokina customer service to find out their point of view and to let them know I never handeld the Tokina lens in any ill manner. I received the most arrogant mail from Tokina customer service basically stating that the Tokina build quality is excellent and that the lens would never have been faulty. Impressive, I’ve never met anyone who didn’t make any mistakes…but in the mean time they basically made me out to be a lair and claimed the Tokina lens was damaged because of my own doing.

I tried to explain to them this wasn’t the case at all and tried to refute the statement the build quality was always excellent. After all we have yet to see the day there is a ‘God like’ product that is absolutely positivly perfect and just can’t have anything go wrong with it. What is this? The Rolls-Royce of lenses? Even a Rolls-Royce can break down from time to time…

But the thing that pissed me off the most is being called a liar straight out. Where do they get off on claiming their customers are liars?

The kicker was that the Tokina customer service manager even said he could return the lens to me in the broken state but he had to charge me for research and administration costs. I mean what the hell?

Basically they are now holding my lens hostage. I don’t want to pay for the research costs and am not willing to pay to repair costs. I have the sneaking suspicion they hope I don’t want the lens returned so they can repair it (probably at much lower cost than what was quoted to me) and sell it again for an outlet price somewhere… Seems like a pretty good business model: screw your customers twice and may three times if you have the chance.

Is there anyone that can help me or know what to do in such a situation?

It goes without saying if you are considering buying a Tokina lens – Tokina AT-X 12-24 AF PRO DX or others – I would strongly advice against it. Sure you can make okay photographs with the lens, but if anything ever goes wrong with it don’t try to get any customer service. They will screw you if you have the chance claiming Tokina products are ‘God like’ and nothing can go wrong with it…EVER!