A word or two about the Nikon customer service

Jeez it has been a while. It seems I can post even less frequently than Jochen. I just can't find many interesting things to say, when other birders / bloggers / bird photographers are way more talented than I am. I mean, I look at Jerry's digiscoping blog, and I want to throw my scope and cameras in the Huron River for good. I read every day our listserv email list, and read about people twitching to the UP to score say, a Anna's Humminbird or Pine Grosbeaks and think " so why would people be interested with my goldfinches and my ebird stuff"?

Oh yeah, Ebird. I am totally obsessed with this stuff. I can't help but check the missing data for my favorite Hotspots (Brown Park, Redbud, Gallup, Shanghai, Lefurge woods) and feel pain for every missing week of data I can see in the bar charts. Nothing much I can do about it, it is going to take years to get complete bar charts for those spots, but in the mean time, it makes me super incomfortable to see those stupid shaded area showing "missing data". The good thing is there is a few good county birders who are picking up on Ebird, so it is getting better every day. All I need is to be patient, and breath. The feeling of panic is going to go away one day. And not to feel too bad if I did not record the exact time and distance I walked last time in Gallup. Wait, was it 1.2 or 1.25 miles?

Anyway, I have a couple of interesting things to say about my Nikon Monarch 8*42. Good Bins, specially for the price, $270 I bought 3 years ago. The kind of bins I can afford to buy, more important, the kind of bins I can afford to lose or bang on a tree during a run (yeah, I run and bird at the same time).

So I had some troubles with the Eyecups. I would say lots of Monarch Owners do. Eyecups threads are made in plastic, and soon or later (rather sooner if you nervously twist them up and down while waiting for a bird to show up), they get loose, and can't stay in the "up" position.

Nothing that a brocoli rubber band can't fix, you would say. True. But is it not a pain somewhere to have these perfectly good bins that are not QUITE perfect?

So I shipped them back to Nikon Customer Service, in California. Got them back a few weeks ago, fixed, cleaned, realigned.....perfect at last. They did not charge me a dime, because of their non fault warranty. The whole thing took 2 weeks, and I was always able to follow on the website what they were doing to my babies

So, thumbs up to Nikon!!!!!!