.. that Nikon is going to pull the plug on selling parts to independent camera repair shops & consumers come July 13, 2012?
If independent repair shops don’t cough up ~ $168,000 for tools, Nikon will not sell parts to them any longer. A very good friend of mine owns Archinal Camera Repair in Richardson, TX. He’s been in the camera repair business as long as he’s been able to work. He inherited the business from his father and has worked in this industry his whole life. We’ve been talking about this Nikon decision for some months since it was announced. He told me that 80-90% of the repairs that come in for Nikons can be handled in the store. They do not need to be shipped out in order to be repaired. Come July, if anything goes wrong with your Nikon camera, you will have to ship it off to one of 23 authorized repair facilities in the US.
I completely understand that Nikon is having a hard time financially due to the tsunami in Japan and the flooded plant in Thailand. It seems the move to stop the sales of parts to the public is strictly to direct profits back to them. The direct impact this is going to have on hundreds if not thousands of repair shops nationwide is huge. They will be pushing an older generation out of the business because of the restriction of parts sales. For my friend, that means a substantial amount of his business will be gone come July 14th.
There is a petition online at change.org that has collected about 6,000 signatures. If you have the time, please click on the link and check it out. Thanks!
-Justin
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