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International Warranties

What is the situation with International Warranties ?

Nikon products have either International or Local Warranties.

Usually all peripherals, lenses, flash units and the like have international warranties while camera bodies may have local warranties. Nikon also market internationally, but not in the UK, international warranties of extended length. So for example at one point eBay traders from Hong Kong were regularly offering 4 year warranties for D200 cameras at £40. In the UK Nikon have a deal with a insurance based maintenance company (maintenance contracts on washing machines and the like) and attempt to sell the insurance based warranty deals. Insurance based maintenance deals are rarely a good buy.

A year or so ago when we looked at this in detail the D200 was £1200 in the UK, £840 in Hong Kong and a 3 or 4 year International Warranty cost £40. of course since that the D200 has dropped considerably in price both here and in Hong Kong.

Some cameras do have international warranties, in which case they are covered everywhere. It would be quite common for people to buy a camera or extra accessory while on holiday and naturally international companies have international warranties and arrangements to cope with this, as they want you to have the confidence to purchase their products so check the details on each purchase, often this will be included.  UK and European subsidiaries may not completely like this, particularly when they are adding a huge premium for nothing other than being in the UK, and we feel justified in bypassing these rip off practices, but ultimately they have to do what they are told by the parent company and provide an International Warranty service. They don’t know if you imported it to save money or bought it while you were on holiday somewhere.

A growing practice with Hong Kong suppliers is to supply the Australian version, as this tends to have an English manual and international warranty.

In the past, if a product has had a design or component fault, and few have, Nikon have been keen to fix it at once whatever the warranty situation, including cameras out of warranty. This would be likely in the future, as they have had very few problems and reputation is all important to them, as the most reliable cameras.

Nikon cameras and other products are very reliable, it is unlikely you will have anything that needs to be done under warranty, however if you drop it, get sand in it or something you may need access to repairs, and you could send it to Nikon or another repairer, and where you bought it should not effect this.

Items that come from Hong Kong have warranties but its doubtful if its worth returning terms to Hong Kong and back with dual carriage.  If you take an item into Nikon for repair, or cleaning they don’t do much in house but send it to one of several approved repairers in the UK, you have direct access to these yourself, and you will find a list of these in the reference section, just in case you need one of them in the future.