Toronto Photography Meetup Group

So I wanted to start a thread to show some great examples of customer service from photo companies. Earlier today I emailed thinktank regarding some missing accessories from my bag that I wanted to see if I could buy from them. I have the airport security v2.0 bag and I really was sad to see that when I bought it I did not get the tripod accessory straps or the rain cover. Firstly I emailed them asking if I could buy these separately directly from them and they responded literally 17mins later! Secondly they are going to ship me these pieces free of charge! I thought this was he best customer service that I have ever received. Most companies with good records still only reply back within a day or so. But 17mins! That is just impressive. I can also recall querying really right stuff a few months back about some questions I had about some of their products. They were also very quick to respond as I sent them an email after hours and I bad a response back right after they opened in the morning.

What I would like to know is if anyone else has experienced great customer service and support from any other photographic retailers or companies so that we can all see who we may want to deal with from this side of things. More than often we hear horror stories but never anything good so here is where we can all find out about those companies with great service on top of having great products

Jay Schuster at Downtown Henrys is a wicked guy

I've had similar results from Lowepro. I think that someone went through all of the boxes of their photo vest at Henry's downtown location and removed a specific necessary strap, because none of them had it. Later checking at other store locations showed that they were present. I went back and forth over the course of maybe an hour and a half, with their customer service department, in order to figure out exactly what was missing (maybe 3 emails each way, including one with a picture of everything that was in the box). Less than a week later I had the required strap in my mailbox, at home.

I found SmugMug's support folks very helpful and friendly. And they get back to you within an hour or two of your email and then carry on a dialogue with you until the problem is resolved. Compare that with Flickr - it took them 2 months to get back to me, so you can understand why I switched to SmugMug.

This morning I was kicking tires at Vistek downtown and two sales people offered to help. On the second floor and the third floor.

Yeah right! Nice try! We know you're making that stuff up! LoL, just kidding.

AHAHA.... I only ever get help on the third floor and only from 2 of the guys as they already know me. Otherwise as we have all heard they suck at helping ppl in there.

But as an update to my ThinkTank help I just received an email from USPS saying that tomorrow my package ships out. As they also stated it is FREE of charge! I have got to give them a big props for this one as this is awesome!

I've found Tanner on this site incredibly fast in responding to concerns I had about this site.

You should have gone out and bought a lottery ticket after that!!

haha, missed opportunies

Aden Camera on the west side of Yonge (I've only been in this store). I found the person there patient and friendly.

Henry's Mississauga - I've dealt with Seelochnie (I still can't pronoune her name correctly) for a few years now and she's been great to deal with.

Amazon is also very pleasant to deal with. On 2 occasions, the items I had ordered never arrived, and when I wrote them about the missing shipment, they just sent me a replacement without any questions asked. The return process is also very smooth and painless. Vistek has a few things to learn from Amazon.

Dell.ca - I've purchased several items from them and I've never had an issue and shipping is very quick.

Crutchfield.ca - I've bought stereo equipment from there but they also sell photo items. Shipping is super quick and pleasant to deal with.

Alienbees.com - Their customer service reputation is second to none. Their shipping is amazingly quick. Nothing bad I can say about them.

Costco - I love their 90 day return policy and they never give you a hassle when returning items.

2 orders in 8 years is not bad. I blame it on Canada Post anyway

Oh yes, forgot about AlienBees. They have awesome customer service and follow up. It actually feels good to buy off them.

+1

I found the northern store (of the two on Yonge street, the one north of the swiss chalet) to be a great place to shop. The staff has been extremely patient with me, letting me take out and test multiple copies of the same lens, or multiple lenses at the same time to compare. And I've never felt pressured to purchase, or felt like they felt inconvenienced by my pestering. Plus, they have great prices, which doesn't hurt...

my guy at henrys tells me that Aden's profit margin on the Nikon 50mm f/1.4 AF-S is 8 points (8%). i could care less because i got my pm, but it is a little low for retail, isnt it?

I understand that margin is pretty typical for lenses. The margin on filters is astronomical and that why they always push you to buy a filter for your lens. In general I would say the profit is more in the camera accessories, rather than the camera bodies and lenses.

Profit on any add ons - bags, filters, WARRANTIES huge profit there