So… you may remember the story of my camcorder. I bought it in the summer of 2003. I paid it off in November of 2004. Three months later, I pulled it out of its case and discovered that the screen had decided that from then on out it would display and record nothing but blackness. Audio came through just fine, tapes played without a hitch, but recording anything new was impossible.
This discovery was, at the time, incredibly frustrating. I had barely used the camcorder, hardly justified the $1000 purchase.
The camera has mostly been a frustrating experience – when I did use it to record anything, it became apparent (I thought) that my old iMac was no longer up to the task of editing. Of course, the resolution to _that_ bit of the story was that it was actually my firewire drive gumming up the works. This meant that although I could edit video, there couldn’t be much of it because of the limited space on my main drive.
When it finally broke, however, that was the last straw. At the time, I contacted Canon customer service to see if they could do any kind of repair. I got the impression, however, that fixing the problem would could about half as much as the camera was worth, and that hardly seemed worth it considering how little I had used it in the first place. I decided to wait until I had some spare cash to worry about fixing it. It didn’t really seem like a priority.
Flash forward to a year later. The camera has been sitting in a drawer, unused and forgotten about. One big change, though, is that I bought myself a brand new computer, one with more than enough to horsepower to edit video. Enough horsepower to edit video without even batting an eye. The first big step had been taken. Now I just had to look into getting it repaired.
This is where one begins to wonder _why I did not think of the following solution a year ago…_
We’ve had some discussions among my group of friends recently about putting together a kind of variety show, with theatre, poetry, music, film, and whatever else anyone can come up with. Thanks to a recent discussion, it finally occurred to me that I should look into getting the camera repaired somewhere else besides Canon.
“Hell,” I thought, “why not check and see if Best Buy could repair it? It’d probably be cheaper that Canon repairing it.”
It occurred to me after some thought that I should probably dig up my receipt to find out whether or not the camera might still be under warranty. This was no small task, considering that my “filing system” consists of five years of random papers stacked on my dining room table, oftentimes topped off by a surly black cat.
At first it was pretty hopeless, but as I was on hold with Best Buy, I started flailing around in the pile to see if I could just find an old Best Buy credit card statement, when what should I find but _the original receipt_!
It gets better from there, however… it turns out that way back in the day I was thoughtful enough to buy the Best Buy service plan, which (much to my surprise) covers my camera for four years. This means that I can get repairs done on the camera… *for free* until 6/6/2007.
Needless to say, I felt pretty silly and pretty happy at the same time. Earlier tonight I dropped the camera off for repairs. I should have it back sometime in a week or so.
And then all I have to do is start making movies again.
