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Thanks everyone for your input.
The key advice was to engage with Very's twitter team - and then talk to them offline via a webchat. The guy I spoke to was charming, intelligent and really understood the problem - a first for this particular company.
I didn't get the whole £200 (I think they'd probably have been losing money on the camera at that price), but settled for £100 plus a 50% discount on some other bits & bobs I will need.
Add to that the free 5 Year warranty that Panasonic are now offering and it hasn't ended too badly.
Time to unbox the camera and get snapping
sunny dave xx