I've only had my Canon T4i for less than 2 weeks and just found out that it is one of the models with the defective grips. This really irks me and I'm wondering if I should wait until I am getting noticable discoloration on the grips before I send it off? What do you think?
Also, I only found out from this site about the problem grips and have no idea how to send it or where to send it to. Advice please...
Though it may "irk" you, EVERY company will have a problem with their products sooner or later (and most have lots of problems.) All the other camera companies also have their issues.
In some cases, the company sits in denial... because a single consumer can't really do much about it. This has to wait until enough consumers boil over that someone tries to get an attorney to take on the case as a class action. In those scenarios, the attorney wins (they get their legal fees) and everyone else gets some "settlement" -- usually in the form of some coupon for an absurdly tiny amount of money and ONLY valid toward future purchase of a product. But the value of the settlement very seldom sufficient to get the company to fix the problem - but hey, the attorney got paid. Surely you would not have preferred that scenario (not unless you're the attorney who made all the money.)
Frankly I would be happy for two reasons:
1) The defect in no way impacts the function of the product nor does it impact the quality of the images.
2) Canon owned up to the problem without a fuss and is making things right for the consumer at no cost to the consumer (other than the inconvenience of not having a camera for a few days.)
Sure it would be nice if Canon had never had the problem at all, but keep in mind, Canon doesn't make the grips. Canon is only guilty of using the grips. Unfortunately, the defect is such that it wont be discolored right away... it takes a while. So Canon would have no way of knowing this was going to happen. Had their specs been followed and had the batch of rubber had the right composition, it would never have happened at all.
All things considered, this is not a bad outcome. I would consider this a sign that the vendor you purchased your product from is actually REPUTABLE and cares about their quality and their image.