I'm considering on getting the Canon S95. I'm currently living in Thailand and the camera costs $515 with 12 month warranty. However, if I purchase a Japanese import, I could get it for $410, but with no warranty.

My questions is, is it absolutely necessary to get a 12 month warranty for a camera? From my experience, most electrical equipment never break within their warranty period and only break sometime after. And since this is a camera I'm buying, it is much more likely for me to break the camera by dropping it than it breaking by itself, in which case I don't think the warranty would cover anyway since it's physical damage.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Cheers,
Jason

I don't make it a habit to buy extended warranties, but my experience has been that if a camera or electronic item (other than a computer) is going to fail, it will fail in the first month or so. If you buy from someone out of country, what type of return policy does the store have? If you get a defective camera, will you be able to return it? I've returned 1 camera that was defective and 2 lenses, had a 3rd lens repaired (replaced) under warranty. I would not buy out of country without knowing the return policy of the store and how much the shipping involved would be (who pays for the international shipping?). That alone might end up being more than the difference in cost.

While I agree that $105 is a lot for a one-year warranty, it is insurance against having to pay out another $410 if the camera should fail.
If you get the camera with warranty, you pay a little more, but if the non-warranty camera fails, you pay a lot more to replace it.
Your call.

brian

I agree with everyone else...

With electronics there is a higher rate of failure within the first 6-12 months of use
then with most other things and without a warranty of some sort you'd end up paying
for a second camera to replace the first if you're not covered... That figures out to
$8.75 a month which is really cheap insurance...

No, I'd find a third party accidental damage policy and buy the grey import. You're right that most failures happen very early in the life of the product or long after the warranty expired. Do you have buyer protection in your country, so that at least you can be assured that whatever you buy is fit for purpose for a limited period, say a couple of weeks? Or will the shop give a cast-iron money-back guarantee for a short while?

Canons tend to be pretty well put together. I've had terrible experiences with Sony, but always after the warranty has expired. Do a search on this site and on POTN for S90/95 to see if there are any recurring problems that people have experienced.

Also consider a third party warranty, like Squaretrade. You can get a 3 year warranty for less than a 1 year in this case (although I dont know how it works when buying internationally). IMO it will fail in about 2-3 years if it is a bad product and didnt fail in the first month.

Thanks for your help guys. I guess I'll think it over a bit before I make a decision.

Cheers,
Jason

If you buy the Japanese sourced camera and it later needs repair, will Canon service centers in Thailand work on a grey market camera?

I've lived in Thailand for 8 months now. Read a horror stories about foreigners returning electronic items to the retailer within a few days of sale only to find the 7 day store warranty was void for some reason. I've read the nationwide chains don't do this ... but then they probably don't sell grey market items either.

I bought my S95 from Big Camera. Paid the 15,500 baht ($510) because I knew I'd try to strangle any clerk that told me the 7 day warranty was invalid.

I would go for the warranty, if electronic equipment will fail it'll do that in the first month's and ... that first year is mighty important.

as a sidenote , 2 year is standard in Europe (by law) on all electronic equipment.