Coz he's a fuckwit?

Maybe he bought a "grey market" camera and he had to send it back to the
vendor? Or maybe he was clueless bought a grey camera and Olympus USA is
charging for out of warranty repairs?

Don't you have anything else to do besides flame?  You guys are losers.
The camera was never wet.  It was never out of my posession.  This
mode dial problem is well documented.  See this site -
http://www.wrotniak.net/photo/c5050/c5060-dial.html

My second digital camera was an Olympus, took great pictures, never a
problem, great company, great service.

The only reason Olympus would have far more to lose is if there WERE
systematic defects, and it looks like quite a few people are having
similar problems (most others though, ARE getting their cameras fixed
for free without much fuss).

Personally, I'll take a Canon or Nikon body before I consider Olympus,
myself.  I know a friend who has a C-5060WZ as well, and while it hasn't
developed the same problem (at least I don't THINK it has), it HAS
developed an issue with its LCD screen that causes it to work
unreliably.  She's also mentioned it "acting weird" in general from time
to time, but nothing specific.  Seems to be a flaw in the tilt-pivot
design of the screen.

Between that and my experiences with the interface when I tried to take
a few shots with it (and ultimately gave up and pulled out my Nikon
7900), I just wasn't impressed.

I have to say that having had three point and shoot olympus, a 35mm
and two digi it went like this. 35mm okay, slightly soft pics as a
rule. c-220 zoom paid about half price for this 2mp point and shoot
and generally impressed with its simplicity though sometimes
disappointing performance with muddy colours etc.

Now we come to my C-725 superzoom. I bought this in a closing down
sale, I just had to try it for that 8x zoom and I had also read
somewhere that it had manual focus. It has manual just about
everything else, but not focus and it really needs it as the pics are
50/50 at best as to whether they'll be in focus. It has just three ISO
settings and all but 100 iso are too noisy to be any real use. The
incident of red eye with flash is more prominent than with the c-220.
when doing macro with flash the lens' length causes a large shadow on
the image. There is an obvious vignetting on pics. I have noted on
blue skies a mark in the lower right corner which looks like a thumb
print. But the single worst point about this cam is the damned
chromatic aberration. Here's a detail from a pic I took a couple of
days ago, note the lovely grey band on the inner edges of the lad's
face, neck, torso etc. This was actually a lovelier shade of violet
before I used PSP to remove it but it's so wide it has left him with a
grey band instead of a thin edge.

http://groups.msn.com/OtherSides/statuary.msnw?action=ShowPhoto&PhotoID=707

I didn't find enough info on the camera before I bought it but once I
knew what to search for I found others complaining of this problem and
the fact that the cam doesn't seem to like taking pictures of people,
which again is 50/50.

I wish i could afford to just throw the thing away and get a decent
cam but for me that's out of the question, but I must say I'm almost
scared of taking pics with this cam now as I never know whether I'm
wasting my time and possibly losing a once in a lifetime opportunity
when a one off shot comes out badly marred.

I also have to say when it is on the ball it is REALLY on the ball,
but those are the rare occasions.