Sigma Warranty Service

Recently, I had my first experience with warranty repair. I bought a Sigma 70-200mm F2.8 II APO EX DG MACRO HSM (whew!) back in January. I didn't use it much because I had been using my 18-55mm kit lens for shooting HDR's. One day while doing a shoot with a model, I noticed that it wouldn't focus periodically. I didn't pay it much attention, and blamed it on the lighting.

Then, I went to the Monster Truck show at the Oakland (I'll never say McAfee or any other name) Coliseum on February 28th. Before I left I thought about the intermittent problem I was having. So, I checked the lens at home, and sure enough, it wasn't focusing. I brought along my Nikon 55-200 VR just in case. Lucky that I did because the lens simply wouldn't focus while shooting the trucks. I got a few shots by spot focusing on the cars that awaited destruction by the Monsters. A few came out sharp, but I quickly got frustrated and switched t0 the 55-200. You can check out the pics from the show here.

Now, it was well past the one-month return window from Amazon.com. As much as I hated to, I knew I had to send it in for warranty service. So, I packed it up and sent it off on March 2nd. After three worrysome days, they received the lens on March 5th. Sigma claimed that it would be repaired 5-10 business days from the day they received it. On the 16th business day(March 27th) they shipped the lens. I received the lens four days later on April 2nd - one month after I shipped it.

The repair description was as follows:

• Cleaned HSM (Hyper Sonic Motor)
• Repaired Auto Focus Operation
• Cleaned Front Element
• Cleaned and checked to manufacturer's specifications

This still doesn't tell me what went wrong, but it's working (for now) so I'm happy. The warranty on the repair is six months from the date of repair. I'll give it a full workout April 20-22 when I go to Motorcycle Madness at Infineon Raceway. Overall, I can't complain as long as I got my lens back.