Polaroid Customer Support

Regrettably, I am posting about a yet unresolved situation with Polaroid. A few weeks before Christmas last year, my mother-in-law purchased a Polaroid A500 digital camera. It’s a fairly nice, compact little digital camera and was rather inexpensive at the time. For about six months, it held up pretty well.

However, recently, the camera seems to have lost its mind. Every single time you turn on the camera, the date and time have reset themselves to 10/01/2003 12:00:00 a.m., and the camera prompts you to fix it. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the camera won’t actually let you change it from that screen. You have to exit that screen, then go back to the main menu, then choose to change the date and time.


I searched the Internet quite a bit and found a lot of people experiencing the same problem with the camera. Unfortunately, however, I was not able to find a solution to the problem.

Therefore, I contacted Polaroid customer support through its Web site on Dec. 17. I got no response other than the auto response that says something like “We received your query and will respond as soon as possible”. After hearing nothing for over ten days, I decided to “update” my query yesterday. I have still got no response from Polaroid customer support.

I tried multiple times to call their customer support hotline, but I always get a busy signal during their relatively short business hours (I think they’re open for six hours on weekdays and 4 hours on Saturdays; closed on Sundays).

I understand that we had a holiday in between, but I still would have expected some sort of response. The most frustrating part of it is the fact that it seems to be an extremely common problem and no one seems to have posted any sort of permanent solution. I’m almost certain that it’s just a matter of replacing some sort of internal battery, but I’m not sure whether that’s something I can do myself, or if we’ll have to send it off to a Polaroid service center.

I am extremely frustrated with Polaroid’s customer support as of yet. Unfortunately, after searching the Internet for some feedback about its customer support, I have also found a lot of other negative reviews.

My recommendation: If you ever plan to purchase a Polaroid product, you should do so with the full understanding that you will have to do all troubleshooting on your own. Do not expect any serious assistance (if any at all) from the Polaroid customer support.

I would honestly recommend that you not even purchase Polaroid products, since you never know what sort of problems you might run into. I read one horror story about a consumer that purchased a Polaroid product that only worked for about three or four weeks. They then, after much tribulation, sent the unit to Polaroid for repairs. A few weeks later, they got the “repaired” unit back, which worked for another couple weeks and then failed again. Then, after much more trouble, sent the unit to Polaroid once again for repairs. At the time of the consumer’s post, the unit had been at Polaroid for almost six months, and the consumer couldn’t get any response whatsoever from Polaroid, nor could they get the unit back in order to try to return it to the retailer from which they’d purchased it.

If I ever hear from Polaroid, I will update you. I am not holding my breath, however.

6 Responses

  • allen

    darnit – why is support always so poor? :( we have to turn to other people online to help us because the companies do such a poor job.

    is this of any help – down on the bottom
    http://www.fixya.com/support/t201686-time_date

  • I don’t know why support is always so poor, but Polaroid really seems to take the cake. I’ve dealt with some bad customer support in my day (the issues I had with HP, which were sufficiently resolved, dealing with Nextel on multiple occasions to figure out what to do with my cell phone, dealing with the power company because it took over a month to activate my electricity at my old house, etc.), but I’ve never dealt with anyone as bad as Polaroid.

    Now, to make matters even worse, it appears as though my support request has been purged altogether. I clicked on the link to “check the status” of my question, and found that my question has been removed.

    I think it’s time to take this matter to the next level, but, unfortunately, I’m not 100% sure at this point how to do that. Time to do some digging.

    Thanks for the tip, Allen, but I had already seen that. Unfortunately, all that “solution” does is tell you how to set the date and time. It doesn’t tell you how to stop it from happening every single time you turn the camera on.

  • Audrey Knudtson

    My husband bought me a polaroid dvd player on may 28th, my birthday was June 10th. It worked for a few days and then it play for about 15 min. and then stops The model number is 13ba1-02501-a-00r.
    I took it to Walmart, and Th 15 day warranty had just passed. I called the 800 number in the manual, and the lad’t y said it doesn

  • Audrey Knudtson

    My polroid dvd player will, only work about 15 min. I havent had it long, just over the 15 day warranty. The model number is 13ba1-02501-a-00r. Is there anything that can be done about it.

    Thank you Audrey

  • Polaroid it the worst! I will never buy from them… They completely ignored my web request for help, and then just closed the ticket! NEVER BUY POLAROID!!!

    Here is the message history from my ticket

    Message History

    On 8/14/2009 3:34:15 PM, Larry B. sent:
    Ok, so now its 8/14.. And still no response.. Clearly I made a mistake buying Polaroid.. A mistake I will never make twice.. I will also make sure everyone I know and talk to does not make the same mistake.. You have the worst customer service I have ever dealt with.

    On 8/3/2009 3:55:15 PM, Larry B. sent:
    This is now a week and a half old with no response.. Its starting to become clear that I made a mistake in purchasing from Polaroid..

    On 7/29/2009 1:11:39 PM, Larry B. sent:
    Is this query going to be reviewed?

    On 7/25/2009 8:47:26 PM, Larry B. sent:
    Hello, Since the purchase the DVD player in this combo tv does not function correctly.. For example when a dvd is inserted, it simply plays the preview but never goes to the main menu. What can I do to correct this?

  • marijke

    I think the little internal battery soldered on the the board is dead. You could try to replace it if you have micro-solder tool but might fry the board. Mine does the same thing. i don;t bother to reset, but it does mean that when i download pix, they all end up dated 03.

    However, mine just decided to no longer boot up at all, even with brand new batteries it is deader than a doornail. It worked one day and didn;t the next. I haven;t found any luck with fixing this problem. Any ideas? I opened the camera up and checked the board, etc. No obvious broken wires or fried components.