Early this year NikonUSA made another of their many arbitrary changes in policies. In particular, they stopped selling parts, both to independent dealers and to customers, as well. It's that last part that's pushed me over the edge.
Let me give you the absurdity of NikonUSA's policy: you lose the rubber gasket on the bottom of your D600 (or other camera), the gasket that protects the connector for the vertical grip. It's a part that Nikon has users remove and re-install as a matter of course of normal use, by the way. So, can you get that part from Nikon or your dealer if you lose it? Nope. Your camera must be sent back to NikonUSA for repair. By the time you insure your shipment and Nikon charges you for "the repair," you'll probably be out three or more Jackson's, maybe even a Franklin. For a one dollar (Washington) part that requires no instructions to install.
This is now true of other easily installable user parts, including the ring eyepiece on the pro bodies (though you can buy an optional anti-fog or diopter version of it!), the rubber doors over connectors, the battery compartment door, and a host of other things that really don't need a trip to Nikon for an actual "repair."
I originally thought that this new policy would just get rid of things like the replacement grips Nikon used to send when they come undone, which is a slightly more sophisticated procedure to perform and probably shouldn't be done by most users. But I've lately been getting plenty of messages from site readers that NikonUSA has extended the parts ban to the point of absurdity.
On top of that, as some folk are learning, "local repairs" are disappearing as an option. Nikon only sends parts to authorized repair centers, even parts that really don't need a manual or training or alignment tool for a decent camera repair person to deal with. So now all cameras go to one of the 20 Nikon authorized repair centers, or more likely to NikonUSA themselves. How many of you live close enough to one of those repair centers to drop things off rather than have to ship and insure your camera or lens? Right, increased direct cost to the customer due to having to ship and insure an expensive product. By the way, NikonUSA increased repair prices for many common repairs this year, too.
I've written about Nikon's increasingly customer antagonistic policies several times now. This is just another in that lengthening stream. Once you've bought a Nikon camera, they don't really seem to care much about you any more. Support is difficult to get and is often wrong. Did I mention that my own surveys and those of others now show that about 10% of the cameras sent to NikonUSA for repair require more than one trip to fix? Bottom line is this: the cost of owning a Nikon camera has gone up, and mostly because of changes in NikonUSA policy and capability.
Gee, Nikon has a Nikon store on the web. Is it all that difficult to add rubber connectors to that site? Bottom line: this new policy has turned out to be absolute nonsense and so customer unfriendly as to raise the eyebrows of Nikon's most loyal customers. I like what Marianne Oelund wrote on dpreview: "Instead of asking 'Why, Nikon?' perhaps we should be asking 'why Nikon?"
You're probably wondering why I didn't jump on the criticize NikonUSA bandwagon when this policy was first announced early this year. Well, some of the arguments NikonUSA provided me made some sense. DSLRs, for example, are not easy to fix (as Nikon's own practices have made evident). I decided to see how this policy played out in practice before I commented deeply. As much as some people think I just exist to criticize Nikon, that's actually not at all true. But in this particular case, some of the arguments that NikonUSA employees used in defending the policy to me are now playing out as false. I've received a number of "silly repairs" lately by site readers, and NikonUSA seems to refuse to do the right thing in these cases. In other words, practice turned out to be a lot different than the stated goal here. That's now obvious to me through the facts. So I've decided I needed to write my thoughts about this and advocate for a different policy.
I encourage everyone to sign Matt Fuehrer's petition to Nikon about this. It already has over 7000 supporters. How high does that number have to go before NikonUSA gets a clue that they've seriously aggravated their user base? Of course, maybe NikonUSA only wants to sell cameras to people that mostly keep them in their closet these days and doesn't really care about people who actually use their cameras enough to need a replacement part once in awhile. In which case Marianne's question becomes very relevant.
Lest you non-American readers think that this is just a NikonUSA anomaly, beware. Nikon seems to be retreating from support in many ways across the globe. Someone just told me that one walk-in repair center Nikon runs in Europe is now closed to walk-ins unless you're an NPS (Nikon Professional Service) member. Nikon might call this "cost cutting," but it's effectively moving themselves further and further from their actual customers. Building walls that customers can't get over just sends customers elsewhere eventually.
Update: a few people have pointed out to me that NikonUSA does have a parts list you can order from as a customer. There are no products past 2010 on that list, however. I suspect that this is just continuing to clear out inventory of parts previously stocked for customers.