Gear Barrel Assembly Bent?

[JustinL]

Hi everyone, yesterday I dropped a few lens and a body off at Canon USA in Jamesburg NJ for a check and clean (Free with CPS). They called me today and let me know that my 70-200 f2.8 is usm II had a
"bent gear barrel assembly" and needed to be fixed. I told them to just go ahead and do it for a whopping $323 (over $500 without CPS).

But I wanted to know if anyone else has ever had this happen and how it happens considering I pretty much baby this thing. I want to make sure I don't let it happen again.

Thank you.

 

[Overread]

It's a well built lens and normally fairly sturdy - thing is something devices can have internal problems that act as weak points but which haven't fully broken or cause problems as yet. They then sit there and sting people when you send something in for a check up and find that there is something wrong even though it likely was going to keep working fine for ages (or could have broken the next day). What might have caused it could be anything, and it could have been caused before it became yours (a drop at the factory/wearhouse/bump in postage/dropped in the shop etc...).

Sadly we are often all at the mercy of repair centres when it comes to highly complex devices.