My 18-135 IS started acting up yesterday afternoon. The zoom barrel hangs up about half the time and sometimes won't focus. Fiddling with the barrel gets it working again temporarily. Feels like the internal mechanism has something out of place.
I paid $250 for this lens used. Trying to decide if it's worth the trouble to send it to Canon for an estimate, or if I'm best off just shopping for a replacement. I like the range on this. Makes a perfect walkaround lens for when I want to travel light. Anyone sent a lens with similar issues for repair?
Not that it helps, or that I'm going to try to be useful and find it..
But --- Someone mentioned a while back that they used a 3rd party service for repair on their (I think*) 28-135IS, I recall that it was fairly cheap, and the repair was successful, but it did take longer than Canon..
I figure that you might be interested in saving a few bucks in return for spending some time.
I can afford to wait if the repair is reasonable. If it takes a while to repair, I'll just steal back the 17-85 from Ellen or use the G11 if I need something in that focal range. You don't recall the company, I guess?
That was me. $86 bucks (and mine was slammed on the floor). Let me get the link... //www.precisioncamera.com/. And it wasn't that they took a long time, it was that for some reason the USPS took forever to deliver it to them.
A quick search found the thread you mentioned. It was Kelli, and she posted a link to the repair place she used. Looks like their fixed rate for repairing that lens is $165. Minimum I could replace it for is $250 if I shopped around for another 18-135. So that sounds like a fair deal.
That works for me. It's giving me a higher price for mine, but still reasonable. Since I have no burning desire to upgrade from from this lens, I think this is the way to go. Thanks.
It appears that most of these repairs are done on a fixed rate. They certainly know after a time what repairs run on average.
I can say I was very happy with their results. My lens wasn't working at all when I sent it in, and had parts rattling around inside. It's good as new now.
Update: They received my lens on July 8th and was shown as "in repair" for 3 weeks. The status shows as shipped back to me on the 29th, and they billed my card this morning. Not super duper fast, but the price was right, and it's not like I didn't have other lenses to use in the meantime. I've really gotten to like this one, however.
