Unacceptable lack of customer support

[mrbobinski]

I've recently gotten back into photography with a new R10 and a few lenses. I had an issue with a DC adapter I purchased and was not prepared at all for the ordeal that is trying to contact Canon support. I'm not tech illiterate, but could not for the life of me find out how to actually contact support. The 'support' page only helps if the product is registerable - guess I'm out of luck on the $100 cable I purchased then. 

Clicking on 'contact' isn't much help either - nothing on the Canon website mentions customer service/support, only sales. Once you call, the prompts are also only about sales and do not mention support. I actually tried asking for support in various ways and the automated system did not recognize any and simply sent me to 'sales' again.

Why is there not a simple massage about how to call support, or even a mention of it on the phone system? Why is every option labeled as sales instead? It's clear that Canon cares about getting my money, but not about actually ensuring their products work. It would be nearly effortless for you to set up a support email - I'm sure someone at Canon is aware of the plethora of customer service software available, and surely having customer issues enter directly into tickets would be helpful?

I would have loved to share this directly with someone at Canon, but this community seems to be the only avenue available. In fact, it seems like Canon's entire customer service strategy is to simply outsource support to this community, where I assume they're relying on unpaid volunteers to perform the work they're neglecting. It's absolutely unacceptable for a company as large as Canon to have such awful support options.

[SamanthaW]

Hi there, 

First let me start by saying I can understand why that would frustrate you, but I'm here to help! 

The Canon Community is where users can help each other with issues, however in your case you can also get through to technical support if you need more immediate assistance. When you call in (1-800-OK-CANON) please select the option to call about your camera, and give the full model number of the camera, since the cable is an accessory for the camera! That'll get you through to our camera team. They're available Monday to Friday, excluding holidays. 

I hope this helps! 

[mrbobinski]

Hi Samantha - I appreciate the help, but I'm beyond frustrated that I needed to make an account and post here simply to figure that out. That's also just an objectively terrible way to access customer support - do the managers/executives at Canon honestly think that it's intuitive for users to call, ask for sales, and then describe a tangental product, all to get help with a return? Or do they simply not care about customers post-sale? That's insanely confusing and there's literally no reason to not have an option that mentions support.

There is absolutely no reason for Canon to not have a full time dedicated support line or email other than pure cost-cutting at the expense of customers.

[Ron888]

As someone who easily gets frustrated by such things i decided to try this myself. 
On the second (i think) attempt i found a bunch of contact numbers,one of which was that shown by Samantha above. Then somehow many subsequent attempt turned into infuriating dead ends.Surely it cant be that hard??I only pressed about 4 buttons total that time it worked.
Finally on the eighth-ish time i found the list of numbers again.

Yep,finding support is definitely a pile of **bleep**. IT SHOULDN'T BE THIS HARD

Unfortunately this is typical of some things canon does.I had a such a terrible experience with canon printer software help, i gave up in the end.It prints,just not in photo mode.
How a company can be so good at some things (photo gear and much else) yet screw up other things is beyond my understanding