The last time I had Hasselblad NJ repair one of my Hassies (about a year ago), it came back dirty. Dust all over the place inside, fingerprints on the focussing screen. I'm meticulous about keeping my cameras clean, am certain it wasn't like that when I sent. I was really surprised. They repaired seal.
Their prices seem unreasonable, too. If you can find a reliable independent repair person, you might be better off.
I would like to amplify on my own experiences with Hasselblad New Jersey, all within the past three months, so people can make an informed decision. I do think their prices on body work are reasonable--they seem to charge a flat $250 for the service (major parts being extra--and *those*, I found, can be fairly expensive, but probably not out of line with what others are charging, based on what David Odess quoted me on a simple plastic part that I ended up having 3D printed instead for way cheaper). That is less than what my local indy repair place, Kiwi Camera in Orlando charges for service to a body. And Hasselblad's two-week turnaround time is lightning speed in comparison. (Kiwi does great work and are super nice folks. But they did take over six months to repair my 500CM, and knocked $40 off the $280 quote because it did take so long.)
However, Hasselblad charges more--$300--to inspect and service a lens. And I *did* have a problem with their service on that. Let me relate the whole story:
I had a 553ELX that I used daily in my portrait studio, with an ancient Sinarback 54M on it. One day the tripod on which the camera and the 120 Makro-Planar were mounted on got pulled over and landed on my hard tile floor. The camera body was jammed, and there was nothing I could do to remove the lens. So I got in touch with Hasselblad, and sent the combination off to them. The initial quote to repair everything was $1,645.94. Which about caused me to keel over.
After catching my breath, I observed it was broken down this way: diagnostics and service to the lens was $300 (as mentioned above), plus $91 for a new mount ring. Service on the camera body, again as previously mentioned, was $250. But they also wanted to charge $692 for a new body shell, which they said was cracked in two places. They also wanted $219 for a new battery compartment door--it has the usual problem of the contacts burrowing through the insulating material and shorting out against the metal cover itself, which I had "corrected" by slipping bits of plastic sheeting under them, like everyone does. It *is* nice to know they still have those parts in stock, but that was excessive so far as I was concerned.
So I told them I would basically write off the 553ELX, but I did want to get the lens serviced back to factory specs.
They sent everything back to me in about two weeks, the damaged body and the serviced lens. I immediately noticed two things about the lens: one, there was a prominent hair-like object stuck to one of the internal elements which was not there before I sent the camera off--pretty hard to see how they could have missed it (if I could attach a photo directly to this post, I'd show you). And two, the Bulb setting did not work properly. When the shutter was triggered on Bulb, the lens shutter simply opened and closed promptly.
I contacted Hasselblad, and they sent a return label so I could ship the lens back to them on their dime. They kept it for about 10 days and sent it back to me again. On arrival, the hair was gone and the bulb setting worked fine.
However, this time I discovered that despite all my best efforts, the flash sync port--which *had* been working when they first sent the lens back to me--could no longer be made to work. I couldn't get it to fire my radio trigger, my digital back, or my studio strobes directly when connected to the lens. I wrote back to them and pointed out I'd used three different cables to connect the lens to the various devices, and all those worked fine on my other lenses, but they simply would no longer work on the Makro Planar. They wrote me back kind of intimating there was nothing wrong with the lens at that point, so I shot videos of me using my other lenses successfully with the gear, and the lens they had just sent me failing to work in the same way, and sent them to Hasselblad.
So once again, they paid for me to send it back. When it got there, they told me it *was* working with their test strobe, and sent *me* videos of their tech doing that. I said I couldn't explain that, not knowing the internals of a Hasselblad lens, but it certainly wasn't working for me--as they could see--and suggested that maybe if there was some loose connection in the lens (perhaps a solder joint had cracked or something when the camera & lens got knocked over) that there was an intermittent fault, and jiggling during shipping had knocked it out of place on the way to me, and back into alignment on the way back. The upshot was that they replaced the sync post in the PC socket and sent it back to me. And it's worked fine out of the box and ever since.
After I decided not to repair the 553ELX, I used my 500CM in the studio for a while, but I looked around for another 553ELX as it works perfectly for studio use, and I wanted to preserve my 500CM for shooting out and about. I found one from a highly reputable seller in Taiwan that was advertised in mint condition, and bought it for a total of $430 including shipping. When it arrived, it turned out that while the camera *was* in beautiful cosmetic condition--it looked brand new, practically--the upper auxiliary shutter curtain didn't retract completely. (That had happened with my first 553ELX and David Odess fixed that for me--which cost $337.57 including shipping, and took five months to get back, in 2015.) I informed the seller and they offered me to send it back to them to repair it, or they could knock $100 off the price. I chose the refund, as I wanted to just get the camera working ASAP, and I sent *it* off to Hasselblad in New Jersey.
While I wasn't entirely happy with their first work for me, certainly, they *did* eventually get everything in order and they paid for all the shipping both ways. So it didn't cost me anything but a bit of extra time, as I had other gear I could use in the interim. The price for the body service was reasonable, the turnaround time was fantastic compared to everyone else, there are so few people who service the motorized bodies nowadays, and theoretically, they *are* the experts on servicing them. So from my point of view, despite the problems, it still made sense to use them.
I sent the "new" 553ELX off to them, asking them to repair the fault and give the camera a CLA. They serviced it and returned it within two weeks, and it has worked perfectly fine since. I've no complaints whatsoever about my second go-round with Hasselblad, and I was entirely satisfied with the price and the speed of the repair. I definitely would use them again, particularly for a body service, as waiting 5-6 months--or more--to get a camera that I use regularly back to me is a bit intolerable.
