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That one time a customer brought in a camera they tried to fix themselves

That one time a customer brought in a camera they tried to fix themselves. I had a guy come into my shop last spring with a vintage Nikon F2. He told me he'd tried to fix a sticky shutter himself using WD-40. Well, he'd sprayed it right into the mirror box and gummed up everything. The whole mechanism was covered in that sticky residue. I had to explain that WD-40 is not for cameras at all, and that he'd likely caused more damage than the original issue. He looked so deflated, almost like he was about to cry. I ended up spending a couple of hours cleaning it out, and I only charged him for the labor, not the parts. Has anyone else dealt with a customer who tried a DIY fix that made things worse?
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3 Comments
jessica_hall49
Read somewhere that WD-40 is basically the go-to for people who don't know what they're doing... it's like the duct tape of the maintenance world but for all the wrong reasons.
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owens.cameron
Duct tape at least actually fixes stuff sometimes.
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emmaallen
emmaallen25d ago
Did you charge him extra for the WD-40 cleanup?
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