Hard Times These are hard times for electronics. My Canon Powershot 70 camera has ceased to work. About a month ago it began to act strangely. Sometimes when I turned it on the LCD screen would stay dark. I could push the buttons and get the f-stop numbers etc. to display on the screen but it would not function as a viewfinder and any pictures taken while the screen was dark would be black. A couple of weeks ago I turned it on and the screen was black and stayed that way. I went on the Canon website and finally determined that it was indeed broken. A notice on the website suggested that before I sent it off for servicing I should call Canon customer service so on 2 July I did. A nice, patient young woman said that it might be covered under a recent service notice and said that she would send me a return label and packing instructions. She explained that, if it was covered under the service notice it would be fixed at no charge and that if it was not I would be contacted with the cost of repair before any repairs were done. Since this was just before the Fourth of July holiday I figured it might be a few days before I got the return instructions but the next day the link to the return label and instructions were in my inbox. So the first thing Tuesday morning my camera went back to the repair center.
Update on the MP3: On 30 June I e-mailed Creative Labs, via their website, about my Creative Zen. Within hours I received an automated response from them telling me that my e-mail had been received and that I would be contacted by a human being shortly (they said that their average response time was 24 hours) and warning me that sending additional e-mails would only slow down the process. On the 7th I received an e-mail from Creative Labs tech support asking me to complete a customer satisfaction survey. But still no word about my MP3 player.