What's that definition of insanity?

Oh, yeah: "Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."

You may remember the Great Binocular Debacle of a couple years ago: I sent a pair of Canon stabilized binoculars (Why is one binocular called "a pair"?  Like: "a pair" of shorts?) in for repair.  They were covered by warranty, but Canon Service said they had been dropped in the water.  They hadn't.  The exterior covering was disintegrating.  They said they had never seen anything like this.  I produced a bunch of on-line complaints about exactly this same thing.  They dug their feet in.  So did I.  They agreed to repair the binoculars for a price that was about $100 higher than simply buying new.  Yes, really.

They started it, but I escalated it.  Some well-placed posts on their owner forum, followed up with e-mails with links to those posts to Canon Public Relations.  In the end, they did cover it as a warranty issue... as it should have been.

But, I digress.  I said I'd never buy another Canon product, but this Canon G3x caught my eye.  When it works, it is a nice camera with a very capable zoom lens.  Three months out of warranty, this camera took a dump... won't focus with any reliability, and when it does, there is a 20 second delay between pressing the shutter release button and the actual exposure.  For the money, I expected it to hold up better.

That said, I sent the camera off today for repair.  Prepaid for the actual repair, even though they haven't seen the camera, yet.  So, we'll see how this plays out.