A couple of weeks back my mom did the best thing ever for me and bought me the camcorder that I desperately wanted for christmas. It is a very expensive camcorder that records in HD and uses Mini DV tapes, producing the maximum image quality that I wanted so badly. One of the main MAIN reasons that I wanted this camcorder was so that I could record my upcoming trip to Taiwan/Japan next month. I leave on this trip on the 31st. Problem is, my camcorder is on its way to the service center right now, and I don't know when it will come back.

The camcorder will not eject the tape that is in it. It's a Canon VIXIA HV40, and the tape eject mechanism is motorized, so the tape is stuck in there. The tape has important footage on it, I can't simply record over it and send it in after the trip, and I need more than an hour's worth of tape to record on.

The camcorder should be arriving at the service center tomorrow, and from then, they told me that it will take 2-3 business days to process it, then 5-7 business days after that is how long it will take to fix the camcorder + ship it back, maybe shorter maybe longer depending on the amount of work needed to be done. That means at minimum it will take 7 business days, and at maximum it will take 10 business days.

I DO NOT HAVE TEN BUSINESS DAYS

...and with my luck, it'll take even longer than that. Last year my Xbox 360 started scratching my discs and I sent it in to microsoft for repair and didn't get it back for two months.

TWO
MONTHS

and this past summer I was having internet problems and it took 11 technicians and THREE MONTHS to finally get it fixed.

I have the worst customer service experiences ever, so at this point I'm all out of hope.

What upsets me the most about this whole thing is that my trip to Taiwan is pretty much a once in a lifetime thing. It's a memory I want to cherish, and it's the REASON I WANTED THE CAMCORDER. Now, due to a hardware malfunction, Canon is going to take that from me. I am just beyond upset right now, and I need somewhere to vent my frustration.