I found an older camera I’ve wanted for some time now over at Goodwill fairly cheap. It’s in beautiful condition, and will probably replace the trusty ol’ Canon G10. It didn’t power up or come with a charger, but I took a chance on it knowing that I had a 7-day return privilege if I couldn’t get it operational.
The 7th day is this Friday, so I had to get it working. As soon as I got home I ordered a replacement battery and a charger figuring that between these two items I should be able to make it operational. Well, as it turns out, no, I couldn’t, not with the equipment in the state provided. I ordered a used, but genuine Nikon, charger from a seller relatively close by so that I could get it quickly, but it didn’t charge the battery. The replacement battery is new, but it didn’t have a charge, so that didn’t fire up the camera. I tried using a generic charger I had laying around, with the battery held in by a spring clamp, but that didn’t seem to be doing anything either.
Today I decided to open up the charger and poke around. The swing-out wall plug portion didn’t appear to be making good contact so I ran a couple of wires to the terminals, and for the first time it indicated that it was charging the battery! I soldered in a line cord to those terminals and gave it a go, and as you can see from the image above it finally appears to be working. I pulled a battery off after about half an hour and tested it in the camera and the camera fired up and seems to work just fine - whew.
Now what to do about the charger. I made it operational and I’m OK with it in its current state, but it’s not as advertised. Had I known it was unusable in its original state I wouldn’t have purchased it, especially given the premium price I paid to get a working, genuine Nikon part. Is it reasonable for me to ask the seller for a partial refund, say 50%? I don’t want to be an ass, but I don’t think I received the item as advertised. Any suggestions?