Sigma customer service, my personal experience

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It Happens to Everyone

A few weeks ago I experienced what every photographer fears, a mechanical failure. I was at my son's basketball game, and I was clicking away trying to get some amazing action shots that will one day be printed and make it into his scrapbook when I realized that there was an issue. I was shooting with my Nikon D7100 and I had my Sigma 70-200mm. I  thought at first that I was imagining things, because this was me, and I am always so careful with my gear that there is no way that there was an issue, but I was wrong. Throughout the rest of the quarter I could not get the lens to lock on a focus, I couldn't even get it to manually focus. I thought that it was all very odd. So my first thought was that it had been working fine a few nights ago and my other son's wrestling tournament so it had to be me. I was missing something. The first thing I thought of was that the contact points were dirty. So I took the lens off and cleaned all the contact points the best that I could. Once this was completed, I replaced the lens, and magically it would focus again, but it lasted for exactly three shots. At this point I was very concerned that there was something very wrong with either the camera or my favorite lens. I removed the lens and placed my Sigma 24-70mm on the camera and it immediately focused and was ready to work. This let me know that it was the lens and not the camera that was the issue.

When I got home I took to Facebook and all of my reliable photography groups and explained what happened in hopes that there was something that I was missing, maybe I had accidentally changed a setting and didn't realize it, bumped something, anything that would fix the issue. After many suggestions and all of the simple fixes didn't correct the issue I knew there was no other option. I had to send my lens to Sigma. Thankfully it is still under warranty, however, this was not something that I wanted to do. I did not want to be without my lens for who knows how long.

Prepping to Send it Off

I will admit that I have never had to use the warranty or ever send my camera gear in for repair before so this was all a new experience for me. I first went to the Sigma website and signed up for a customer account which was super easy. After this was completed my husband discovered that you could file a warranty claim on line. So we went ahead and filed. The form was pretty basic. It asked about the type of lens the serial number, the dealer it was purchased from, the date it was purchased, the camera that the lens was being used on, and at the bottom it asked what was wrong with the lens. When I filled this part out I was very specific and described everything that was going on and everything that I had tried as well. Once it was completed we received an automated email from Sigma with the address to ship too and advice in regards to shipping. They recommend that we make sure that we ship the package with a tracking number and that it was insured. Once that was taken care of I pulled out the warranty form and read it. There was a sticker that was suppose to be filled out by the dealer, however my dealer had not done this. So I filled out the dealer information after contacting them and also placed all of my information on the form. The dealer also recommended that we send a copy of the sales receipt in case there was any question since this was something that was purchased online. Once this was all done I placed the lens back in the original box with as much packaging as I could find to protect it on its journey and took it to the local UPS store.

The Wait

This was the worst part of the whole ordeal, and honestly probably my only complaint with Sigma about dealing with them. I mailed my lens to them on the 21st of Feb, and it arrived to them on the 23rd of Feb. The only reason that I know that it got there is because I was tracking it. I never received contact from them that it had arrived. Once it was there it was radio silence until the 27th when I received another email, and all it contained was the statement of what was wrong, how they fixed it, that it was covered by warranty and a tracking number because it was already on the way back! I received it on the 1st of March. The reason that I say that this is a complaint is because I received no kind of contact with a real person, it was all automation. Not to mention I had to monitor when my lens arrived as they did not notify me that it had arrived or anything. I am a person that enjoys some kind of contact when dealing with things like this, and this was a tad difficult for me.

The Arrival

When my lens came back I was very anxious to open it up and see if they had been able to fix my issues with the lens. I was not expecting what I saw.

When I opened the box as you can see there was nothing but bubble wrap. This was impressive to me to see this, considering that when I received this initially at purchase this was not how I received the lens. After I removed the bubble wrap from around the original box I opened the original box to see this.

Inside the case there is even more bubble wrap! Something I was not expecting, as this was not how I got it at the time of purchase. I then pulled the lens out of its case to see this. 

The lens hood was placed in a separate bag, and placed over the bubble wrap to hold it in place, when I removed the bubble wrap the lens was even in a separate bag. I was very impressed! Sigma took the time to ensure that nothing was going to happen to my lens on its return trip. 

Once all of the packing was removed I immediately placed my lens on my Nikon D7100 and it began to function flawlessly! I could not be more relieved. 

So overall I must say that Sigma and their customer service is impressive. It was extremely easy to file a claim and have it processed in a timely manner, and I really did not have much down time without my lens. As I stated above my only issue with the customer support is that I never heard from a live person, however a number of things are going that way so I guess there is not much room to complain, and my lens was taken care of with little cost to me. 

I hope that if you are ever in this situation that this is helpful to you and that it eases your mind when you are shipping off your expensive gear to the manufacturer for repair, and just know that you will have a good experience with Sigma. 

Have you had experiences with Sigma that you would like to share? Please leave them in the comments below!