wont trust used cameras anymore

I posted earlier about a Canon 7D I purchased used...( rated excellent) from a well known and highly regarded used camera store.It worked fine until 2months after the 6month warranty expired.I have had to send in for repairs..about 275$.I'm told they are replacing the main PCB,DC DC PCB and the bottom PCB and adjusting the shutter.I'm not sure what these are but it sounds like a lot of elec trical components.I have not used the camera that much AND IT HASNT BEEN ABUSED. I had just taken a few shots with the camera. I  removed the CompactFlash card and placed it in the computer, downloaded the images. I then replaced the CompactFlash card in the camera turned it on and got error message 40.Given the quality of the latest Canon products I'm hesitant to buy a new one even though as many others are I'm trapped with a load of expensive lenses. I don't think I can trust used equipment either as I had to end up paying more than the price of a new one within seven or eight months if I count the repair costs.I guess there is no way that a camera can be bench tested to see if there are a bunch of electrical gremlins lurking.I guess I'll just have to be happy with the lower priced (Rebel)bodies and hope they last a while.They couldn't be worse than the POS 40D

Sorry in advance because this isn't what you are going to want to hear.  A camera failing 8 months after you bought it new or used  is of course not a happy thing but it does happen.  It's unfortunate that it happened to you but I'm not sure you can blame it on being a used camera.  The exact same thing could have happened with a new camera and in some cases the warranty won't cover you.  Some manufacturers (especially Nikon but Canon and the others do it too) will try to get out of giving you a warranty repair even on something new and they will use the excuse "impact damage - not covered under warranty".  But of course your risk is lower with new due to the warranty coverage.  I've had new and used cameras fail under warranty and have had them fail just after the warranty expired.  

Cameras that have been thoroughly abused can keep working for many years and ones that have been babied can fail for no apparent reason.  Error 40 on Canon cameras is the indication of a power distribution failure of some kind inside the camera. This can be due to many different things ranging from a defective electrical component to corrosion to previous water immersion, to a loose wire and many more.

PCB stands for printed circuit board - there are several in a digital camera. When you have a failure like what you are experiencing, the normal repair is to replace all the boards that can play a role in the problem you are seeing.  it is very rare to troubleshoot any deeper than that if this fixes the problem since PCB's generally aren't easily repaired and in many cases can't be repaired.

I know it's no consolation but $275 seems very reasonable for this repair.  My guess would have been about twice that based on Nikon prices.  Note that you could have bought a brand new 7D and had the same failure right after the warranty expired which would have only been 4 months longer than the 8 month purchase to failure that you have experienced.

In my Nikon world a $275 repair bill would be a cause for celebration.

I had to pay $150 to get the back LCD screen on a pocket-size fujifilm digital-compact camera replaced.

Consider yourself very fortunate to have gotten off that cheap. Face it, the 7D was invented in the Cave Man days of digital. It is an ancient relic undergoing petrification, something I'm personally experiencing at 63 years of age.

I had a new 7D, It failed twice in the first 12 months, once on a trip to Canada. Repairs did not cost me anything but it failed. I sold it and lost a fair bit of money I would not have lost had I bought it used... New or used, units fail randomly despite coming off the same production line.

Working in damp forests an average body lasts me 1 year and I will pay around 300 USD per 1000 USD of purchase price on repairs before that year is over. I then retire the older semi-functional cams to camera traps.

whitehead wrote:Working in damp forests an average body lasts me 1 year and I will pay around 300 USD per 1000 USD of purchase price on repairs before that year is over. I then retire the older semi-functional cams to camera traps.

Interesting.

Blck-shouldered Kite wrote:

whitehead wrote:Working in damp forests an average body lasts me 1 year and I will pay around 300 USD per 1000 USD of purchase price on repairs before that year is over. I then retire the older semi-functional cams to camera traps.

Interesting.

No,that's messed up.