E(rror)-1

After getting my excellent second-hand Olympus E-1 body  from SRSMicrosystems, my brother asked me to keep an eye out on their site for another one to become available as he would like one.

Another one did appear and it was duly ordered.

This too was in excellent condition except for a couple of light scratches on the pentaprism. The battery was put in and everything fired up – excellent. The memory card was placed in the slot and then the dreaded ‘Card Error’ message came up. Several cards later it still wouldn’t work. Cards from my other cameras which work faultlessly also wouldn’t work.

A call to SRS elicted the usual ‘…it must be something you’re doing…’

‘What size card are you using?’

‘Four gigabyte’

‘Ah then the firmware needs updating so it can read that size of card.’

‘I have another E-1, that works perfectly with the cards we tried and that is on update 1.4 – the same as this one’

‘OK, right. well we’ll have it back and have a look at it. Hang on a second and I’ll sort out a collection.’

A few moments pass.

‘Hello. Yes, we’ll pick it up tomorrow and give you a refund.’

So, the upshot is, someone came into SRS with this camera. Part exchanged it for a new one. The shop checked everything on the camera except the ability to read memory cards. At this time, the shyster who bought the camera in must have been sweating in case they checked the card reading. Obviously they didn’t and he got his new deal.

SRS probably paid £100 for the E-1 so with postage costs in collecting from me they are out of pocket to about £120.

They can’t repair the camera because it would cost too much for the motherboard (£80 – £100) and so they are left with an E-1 to sell for spares.

So much for their ‘All of our used equipment is fully tested and cleaned before dispatch.’ on their website.

I wonder if someone got their butt kicked?