While I was out of the country last month several emails hit my In Box that ask about particular Nikon policies.
Let's start with the old bugaboo: subsidiary repairs. Nikon Canada now has a pretty prominent statement on their Web site that says "[cameras] purchased outside of Canada...do not qualify for warranty service..[and] Nikon Canada will not accept for repair [such cameras]." Here we go again. I believe that the statement, as written, is not Nikon's corporate policy. If I were to marry a Canadian and move there, Nikon Canada should indeed repair all the equipment I bought here in the US while I resided here. The problem underlying the policy comes solely from the way Nikon corporate sets up and measures subsidiaries. With most Canadians living close to the US border, Nikon Canada doesn't want to absorb possible repair costs associated with equipment bought in the US. Gee, the only way that should be a problem is if corporate didn't completely cover warranty repairs, isn't it? I've written it before and I'll write it again: Nikon is fooling itself if it thinks it's operating as a global corporation. Instead, it sets up feifdoms overseen by Japanese executives on temporary assignment, and holds them to performance standards that make the company overall very unglobal.
The real corporate policy has always been that if you can show that you've bought a product in the country it was officially imported into, any subsidiary should uphold the warranty and repair it. Unfortunately for Canadians, it's so easy for most to drive a few miles to get into the US and buy an official NikonUSA import. Now you are in a Catch-22. NikonUSA won't send repaired product to a non-US address; Nikon Canada won't repair it. Nikon is fooling itself if it thinks that this doesn't hurt sales. It does, especially since their largest competitor no longer has the same policy. It's long past time for Nikon to fix this problem.
The second questionable policy statement is actually a non-statement, and regards "refurbished" equipment at the NikonUSA outlet store. Previously, most refurbished equipment from Nikon went through the traditional Nikon dealer network, and it was clearly indicated by those dealers that the product was not warranteed the same way as new (90 days versus one year). I cannot find any such claim on NikonUSA's site, which I would take to mean that the refurbished products have the same warranty as new products bought elsewhere. Indeed, under US law, I'm pretty sure the lack of information regarding warranty status would cause a court to hold that the regular warranty should apply, as no indication has been given the prospective customer of any difference in the way refurbished and new equipment would be treated. Regardless of what the real answer is--and why do I suspect that the real answer is a 90-day warranty?--NikonUSA should list the warranty information on their outlet site, one way or another.