I must admit, that when I was sending my two camera bodies and a lens at the end of october 2008, I was full fear. I had read many not very nice stories that fellow photographers had to participate in. On one hand my fear, on the other one very important photoshoot coming, which required my gear not only to be working but also certain and reliable. I took all my courage and rang up a courier to pick the parcel up. Further in my post I'll focus on D2H because its the most interesting part of the whole story.

I bought that body in England from a guy who seemed to be reliable. Camera was in near perfect condition with a small number of shutter releases (approx 5000 shots) and full paperwork, set of cables, in a genuine box. Price was lower than in Poland at that time, not a lot but still. You know that, don't You? :) D2H was my spare body which means it was always with me, sometimes becoming the main tool. And most imprtan is that I never had a single reason to be worried about the camera's condition.
Sometime near last summer I had some holiday, spare time so I started taking some 'relaxing' shots, which means playing with themes, settings etc. including some manual focusing. Thats when I found out that the camera would focus perfectly in Auto mode but slightly in a wrong spot in Manual. I thought it was a straight forward job for the service so I didn't panic. I waited a little bit leaving a big enough time gap (knowing all the negative feedback), so that I wouldn't have to get nervous if the repair stretched in time. I wrapped D70 (my first DSLR wich I just can't get rid of), 80-200/2.8 lens that had a focusing ring broken and a D2H.
I described everything to a smallest detail and asked the repairmen to do their best, alhough I wasn't employed by any newspaper or magazine but was a freelance. It worked quite well, as You'll find out later.
Few days after  my parcel being despached (end of October), I was thrilled by the serviceman's question: 'Are You the camera's first owner?' My first thought was that the camera had been stolen or something? I admitted that didn't buy it using Nikon's official shop. Luckily it was about something else, but also a bit shocking. Service equipment, after being plugged in indicated an attempt of unauthorised repair by someone who didn't have a clue what he was doing. Shutter (with approx 20 000 shots, despite being designed to last 300 000) came up with a number of faults qualifying it to replacement. The question was whether or not I wanted to have it done.
I must admit I expected many different things, including sand inside after my trips to Africa. But shutter replacement? I didn't think long though, especially that the serviceman said he wanted to have a closer look at my camera's interior. When I asked if it was possible to make the camera 'as new' he replied he would try his best.
My D2H does look like new now. Thats beacause its clean, all rubber grips have been replaced. I thought there was nothing that could be done to the selector wheel, which in this camera model works pretty hard, but suprisingly, it work smooth now.
Just a few days later I received a parcel with perfectly wrapped gear. Everything was carefully packed in load of bubble wrap, even the lens put in CL43A bag by me was wrapped in bubbles.
Summary? - I am very pleased with the service I received, I have paid quite a lot for it though (prices below). When I will be sending my gear to Nikon's service in Warsaw next time, I won't worry. Every item had its unique reference number, over their website I could check what was happening with my stuff, pricing estimate was also available online (the only question is why after the estimate being accepted, I lost the ability to view the PDF file with repair description?). I had been contacted over the phone at every stage of repair, I almost led my camery "by hand' all the time.
No, I am not Nikon service's employee that was paid to improve opinion about them. Having said that, I wouldn't mind a small donation - the repair cost me almost 1600PLN.

Here's a list of some parts that were replaced

1B060-906 — 436,44 PLN
1K602-048 — 3,27 PLN
1C998-448 — 87,54 PLN
1C998-449 — 57,60 PLN
1C998-451 — 47,45 PLN

If You add 480PLN for labour, You will get quite an amount.

I've quoted the parts numbers so that everyone could check what is what

http://thefotogeeks.com/diagrams/nikon_digital/DSeries/D2H_parts.pdf

One remark. The shutter on my invice has a different part number than in the file (1B060-812). I don't know why, but the main thing is my camera is like new now.

80-200 D ED 2.8 lens- snapped focusing ring replacement - 332,52 PLN. The glasses never have been this clean.

And that would be about it. I don't really have any conclusion. I don't know how could I have avoided buying a faulty camera, except for looking for one with valid service documents (however, it wouldn't guarantee anything). Oh, yes, I ought have bought one at Nikon shop.

There's nothing to fear when it comes to the service in Warsaw. Maybe they have some hickups sometimes, but one can be also very pleased after being served.

Kind regards
Paweł Dworniak

translation: Marek Pietrzyk