Has anyone ordered from them?
They have steller ratings from the usual rating places, but New York + Camera + cheep prices gives me the “skeevy grey market” vibes.
Brian
Well, I bought a lens from them once but it was from their B&M store, not the web site. Good lens, nice and cheap. Never had a problem with it.
It’s been a while since I’ve dealt with them (and I never had any issues). But I know of friends/relatives who have used them several times, and they are definitely on the up and up. They have a good return/exchange policy, and do not deal in grey market stuff.
They’re know to be quite reputable. I’ve ordered from them many times with no problem. I’ve also found that their delivery times are almost fast enough to defy physics. Even normal delivery usually gets to me in a couple of days. A good choice if you’re going on vacation and decide you need that extra lens or photographic doo-dad in a hurry.
I’ve dealt with them many time. Excellent service, the staff are very knowledgeable.
I’ve only web-ordered from them a couple of times, but both times I rec’d the order promptly.
FWIW, Yale sends photography students there for supplies (and equipment if necessary).
They’re one of the best camera shops you could hope to do business with.
They actually do deal in some gray-market stuff, but they make it pretty ovbious that it’s gray-market and won’t be supported in the US by putting a red “IMPORTED” tag on the item descriptions. Even more to their credit, they seem to only deal in gray-market when the item is otherwise not available in the US - PAL format video cameras, for example.
I’ve never had a problem with them, and I’ve bought… I don’t know, maybe fifteen hundred dollars worth of stuff from them. In my experience, they’ll mark their stuff as greymarket if it is, and most of the photo-people I’ve talked to consider them the gold standard for any camera store, not just mail-order.
These are the folks that all other camera retailers are measured against. I’ve ordered from them many times, all good experiences. You won’t go wrong with them.
With all the high ratings I figured it was OK, but I wanted dopers opinions to make sure.
thanks.
Brian
(ordered a Canon powershot A610)
I bought a lens from them some years ago and had no problems. Another good one is Beach Camera.
I bought my Canon Powershot S70 from them, and, before that, a nice set of Yamaha speakers for city apartment. I’ve generally found knowledgeable salesfolks who will talk the merits of the equipment and how it compares to equipment produced by other manufacturers (including both lines that they carry and lines that they don’t).
They’ve been great to order from. I think I placed my first order with them in '78 or 79, and more recently I’ve bought from their web site as well as by calling.
I have been in the store once, IIRC, but I think it makes more sense to decide what you want by reading about products, and then ordering from them.
I think they’ve had regular and greymarket versions BOTH available for some things I’ve ordered. It’s like deciding whether to get insurance or a service contract for something. If you really can’t afford to lose it (like a house), then maybe you should get the insurance - but if you can afford to lose it, like a toaster or a printer, then don’t buy the insurance/service/whitemarket, because on average it’s a poor deal (which is why they sell them).
I’ve bought over $5,000 worth of stuff from them over the years, both in person and on their website. Never had a bad experience.
About two years ago, I ordered a video camera from them, online. It was a refurbished camera, and a very good price on it. Right after I placed the order online, I got a call from one of their customer service reps, to “make sure everything was okay with my order”, or something like that. It quickly became pretty clear that the REAL reason for the follow up call was to give me a very, very, very hard up-sell to get me to purchase a few hundred dollars worth of extras; extra batteries, lights, etc… I knew what I needed and what I didn’t need, and hard-sells don’t work on me, so I held firm that I just wanted the camera. The rep made it pretty clear that he thought I was an idiot for not wanting the extras, insinuating that I’d be sorry later, expressing utter amazement that I was buying the camera without this other stuff. He didn’t actually come out and say I was an idiot, of course, but I sure got the impression that’s what he was implying.
In the end, I got the camera I wanted, at a very good price, with none of the extras. Which is obviously good, but to be honest, I was so annoyed by the hard-sell to get me to buy the extras, that I personally wouldn’t buy from them again. Your milage might vary, obviously, and clearly a lot of other people here had very good experiences with them, but I wanted to offer mine.
I’ve bought a lot of stuff from B&H. There’s only one thing that’s a little weird, since I’m not Jewish: They don’t accept online orders between (I think) sundown Friday and sundown Saturday. But the things I’ve bought from them have been reasonably priced and shipping is very fast.
Anamorphic, are you sure that was B&H? I know a lot of the NY camera stores do that kind of upsell, but I’ve never heard of B&H trying it. They’d lose a huge amount of the goodwill they’ve built up over the years if they pulled that sort of stunt.
I’ve bought a couple of cameras and accessories from them, and they’re great.
They’ll accept the orders just fine (since the website is fully automated.) They just don’t have anybody working in the warehouse over the sabbath, so they won’t ship it until Monday.
Even if someone was in the warehouse, if an order came in after sundown on Friday, it still wouldn’t be on the UPS truck until Monday. The major issue would be for people trying to buy things on Saturday in the store, as they close at 2:00 on Friday and all day on Saturday. But that’s not unique to them.
And my experience regarding post-sale “upsell” calls has been like Telemark’s - absolutely none. And that was most recently with buying a “naked” digital camera - certainly ripe for the upsell to add memory sticks, a case, lens cleaner, and so forth. All I got after completing checkout was an email about a minute later with my order details, and later that afternoon, an email from the UPS Quantum system with the tracking number.
I got my Canon Powershot on-line through them because I had long heard of them as the standard. It happened to be during a holy week or ten days so I had to wait for it but no biggie.