OLYMPUS CONSUMER WARNING:

Do not buy Olympus underwater housings for digital cameras. The reason being that it is extremely difficult to get spare parts for their products. At first I tried to get spare o-rings for my PT-003 housing from local distributor. There was no interest in supplying spare parts, they seemed much more interested in making quick buck by selling new products than serving their existing customers. My next step was to contact Olympus Japan and they promised to contact the local distributor, send them some o-rings and help me if I had additional problems with the local distributor. Unfortunately it proved to be just empty talking as nothing happened for three months.

By magic few days after notifying Olympus Japan that my camera had flooded and that I was about to put this page to my web site, the secretary for the head of local Olympus distributor calls and asks if I have time to talk with Mr. X. I said sure and after few seconds Mr. X tells me that my o-rings have arrived. Mr. X also acts as nothing has happened to my camera. Odd thing is that I can see from my web site logs that somebody from their address was trying to access this page just few minutes before that call ;) If it was just a simple matter of notifying that my o-rings have arrived, why didn't the secretary tell me that?? I am sure that Mr. X has much more important things to take care of.  Any way Mr. X  just said "Olympus has no obligation to compensate my loss and that there is nothing that he can do". Mr. X ends our phone conversation by asking "Are you still interested in buying those o-rings?" Having new o-rings helps me as much as offering new condoms to a woman who was impregnated when a condom broke.

Since Olympus failed to keep their promises I was expecting them to offer to have a look at my camera/housing and fix possible problems or compensate my loss somehow, no such luck. Also Olympus Japan, who previously had promised to send the o-rings and help with any problems with local distributor just washed their hands off by saying "Local distributor handles all sales and service activities in your region and there is nothing that Olympus Japan can do. Your understanding and consideration would be highly appreciated". It seems that Olympus have no idea how after sales and support should be taken care of.
 

Update Jul. 15, 2001:

Luckily my camera was only partially flooded and I was able to clean the camera by myself and it seems to be working from time to time, sometimes acting up and not working as it should. Before this incident with Olympus, I was thinking of buying a Light & Motion's Tetra housing for my next camera, but as it happens that housing is made for Olympus cameras. After finding out how difficult it is to get  spare parts for Olympus cameras and how very unfriendly and cold treatment from Olympus was, I decided that I would not use any of their products and I would not recommend any Olympus products to anyone. I'll just use this "disposable" Olympus as long as it lasts and then throw this worthless piece of s..t away. For someone looking a camera in the price range of Olympus PT housings, I would recommend buying a Sony P5 camera with 40m rated housing, unless you are looking a very expensive disposable camera which Olympus seems to be since the poor availability for spare parts. 

Update Jan 16, 2002:

My camera finally flooded completely as the shutter o-ring leaked. After discussing  this issue in newsgroups and scuba related chat rooms, I found out what the real problem with Olympus housings is: The housings are only sold for Japanese markets and are not meant to be sold outside of Japan and as such none of the official distributors outside of Japan are not willing to supply service or spare parts for Olympus housings. All the housings bought outside of Japan are considered as "gray market" products which gives Olympus an easy way out should any problems occur with their housings. Funny thing is that Olympus Singapore was willing to sell me a new housing, but no spare o-rings. You can get o-rings from some of the "gray market" shops or use generic o-rings, but this leaves me still wondering why bother with Olympus, if they are not willing to support their products. 

This warning is within top three most downloaded documents every month. My site gets about 80000 - 120000 hits monthly. Using keywords "+olympus +consumer +warning" in http://www.google.com will give you 3-5 links to my page within top ten links. Hopefully this warning will get Olympus to wise up and start to support the products they are selling and supply spare parts for their housings also outside of Japan. From my web page logs I can see that once and while somebody from Olympus Japan is accessing this page, but so far they have not changed their policy. The housing itself served me quite well over 18 months and about 300 dives, producing around 7000 underwater photos which can be seen at http://www.snuuba.com

More info about problems with Oympus housings can be found from the chat room at http://www.scubadiving.com or e-mailing me sami@olympussucks.com

Sami Turunen