NY Camera Store Offers Bribe to Fix Amazon Rating
Published by Jason May 5th, 2008 in Gadgets. Share This
Wow. I wrote a bad review of Cameta Camera and they offered to PAY ME to take it down.
Really the depths these guys will sink to knows no bounds. I recently purchased a Nikon D3 from Cameta Camera, via Amazon. I trust Amazon with these purchases and they’ve never really let me down. The one decent local camera store in Marin never has much in stock and I wanted this camera body to arrive in time for a special event (plus I just hate the city.)
I know NY area camera stores are notorious, but this one had the D3 in stock and said it’d arrive on time. How bad could it be?
Well for an extra $75 in shipping they basically tossed the D3’s box from Nikon loose in a larger box and sent it along. It got here on time but the box looked like a cow had sat on it. I was kind of shocked — but the D3 was fine. Nikon’s packaging was pretty good.
I called Cameta, they were just flat out rude to me. Grumpy and bitchy like an Amazon buyer didn’t count and if I had the camera and it worked, why was I called. I decided to leave an Amazon review. The text of which is in the email I am about to block-quote. I was shocked, within 1 day of leaving this review to get back the following response from Cameta. Know ye this — they sent it AGAIN 1 day later as if I may have missed it.
Bullshit. $75 back is nothing compared to the risk they took with a $5000 camera that is likely to become an extension of my arm. This thing is going to be my best friend — I’ll carry it everywhere. If the D3 had shown up broken, I’d have been so sad AND the hassle of sending it back and waiting for a new one would have made me extra sad.
From: Auctions On Behalf Of maryann
Sent: Monday, April 28, 2008 11:18 AM
To: ‘jweisberger@***.com’
Subject: Amazon Order 103-2015980-719****Dear Jason,
We are writing you in regards to the recent order placed through Amazon, shipped from our company Cameta Camera. We have become aware that you had an unpleasant experience with our company according to the feedback that you left as seen below:
“Rude on the phone. Really, Really, poorly packaged. I think they could have used enough bubble wrap or packing materials when sending a $5k camera. It was shifting around in the box. Would not buy from again.”
After looking into the said situation, we are not sure who you spoke to. However, we are looking into the situation as customer service is our number one priority here at Cameta Camera. In addition, we are also going to be speaking to the shipping manager in regards to how the unit was packaged and shipped. We also have the following option to offer you as a remedy.
We are ready to issue you a credit for $75.00 back to your Amazon account (which is the original freight paid). Our’ only concern is that in the past we have made an accommodation for a customer but they have left us negative feedback anyway. If you would be willing to remove your negative feedback remark to our account (and then email me to let me know that it has been done) I will issue the credit right away. We pride ourselves on good customer service and we are willing to work with you.
If you do decide to remove the feedback left in exchange for the refund please follow the instructions below.
Removing Feedback You’ve Left
If you’ve left feedback on a Marketplace or Merchant seller and would like to remove it, you can do this through Your Account. Please note that feedback cannot be edited, only removed; once you have removed feedback for a seller, you will not be able to post new feedback for that seller.
Go to http://www.amazon.com/your-account.
Find the pull-down menu next to “View by Order.” Select “Orders placed in the past 6 months”, and hit the “go” button.
After you sign in, you’ll find a listing of your recent orders. Select the relevant order and click the “View order” button.
You will find a feedback section 2/3rds of the way down the page. To remove feedback, click on the “Remove” link in the feedback section of the order summary.
You may only remove feedback if it is 60 days or less since you left the feedback.
We thank you for your time and consideration and hope that you can resolve the issue as soon as possible.
Kindest Regards,
Maryann
Customer Service
Cameta Camera
Clicking the Photo opens a screenshot of the email.
Just wondering why you decided to purchase it through Cameta and not any of the other Amazon merchants? Shipping options? I’m constantly scanning online camera deals and Cameta has come up more often than most of the other Amazon featured merchants for having poor customer service.
Cameta was the only shop who had it when I ordered.
interesting how they have the “how to remove feedback” link handy to paste right into an email
I love hearing people repeat the mantra “customer service is our number one priority” right before they ask you to do something that is the antithesis of good customer service. If it really was their priority, they’d take their lumps in reviews and step up their game, actually be nice on the phone and attentive to customer needs.
COMPLETELY off-topic, but i noticed the dock icon and it happens to coincide with a need i have …how’s the mac cisco vpn client these days? haven’t tried it in a few years (it was shit then) but need to recommend something to a client.
I just had a similar Amazon partner experience with a DVD player. It showed up looking like it had been used abused, then returned and re-sold as new. It had scratches on the front, a dent in the side, and the remote and batteries were loose in the box. The merchant authorized a return and when they got it back they implied that I had done the damage myself. They “generously” agreed to refund my money so long as I didn’t leave negative feedback. Fortunately for them I believe the feedback should reflect the overall transaction, and since my money was refunded it worked out alright for me in the end, but this feedback ransom crap that has become standard in online transactions these days needs to be fixed.
@thaddeus - CiscoVPN for Apple works but is screws with Back to My Mac pretty severely.
@Brian This is even MORE disgusting. After I left a bad review they are offering to pay me to change it.
I had a similar experience with another e-Bay seller, fedtuc-us, for a camera grip battery pack. The product box was wrapped in paper and shipped. No added protection. One corner of the box got crushed, but the grip did not. When you pay for shipping and handling you expect the item to be protected from damage. I gave them a neutral feedback review: “Product was fine, but no extra packing. Product box just wrapped in paper.”
They responded: “Thank you for an easy, pleasant transaction. Excellent buyer. A++++++.”
About two weeks later I got an e-mail from e-Bay with the fedtuc-us request to drop the feedback as follows: “We will give you a discount on your next order provided that you withdrawn the natual feedback. Thank you.”
I don’t think so.
I actually think that was a very reasonable thing for them to do. Who knows who you talked to. I don’t know the store, but assuming they have a number of employees the person who answered the phone could have been an entry level retail employee making $7.00 who was out all night drinking the day before because he doesn’t care about his crappy job. So when you called he was rude. Well when you left the feedback it got someone higher ups attention and they took care of the problem. I have found that if you call people or email they are less likely to respond, but if you ever take the time to send them a hand written letter, you would be amazed at the kind of discounts people will send to you to make up for your problems. Clearly the shipping thing was an issue but it sounds like they are at least going to look into the problem. I would suggest that you change your feedback, because it sounds like they are giving you good service now.
Yeah. I had a similar experience. I bought a cell phone from an ebay seller, GSMunlimited. After two defective phones, being forced to pay return shipping on both, they agreed to refund me. But they got me to retract my feedback *while I was on the phone to the customer service rep*. I was so sick of dealing with them over the past couple of months that I just did it.
Unreal. Good customer service would have refunded you the shipping as a good-will gesture, not as payment for removing a bad review. They deserve all the bad press they get from here and from Boing Boing.
@Jason. No, your experience was not “MORE disgusting” than Brian’s.
Your incident amounts to having someone being rude to you and then receiving an apology plus an offer of money. Granted this is hardly a classy way to do business, but it’s hard to see how you can compare receiving damaged goods, being called a liar and having a (richly deserved) refund ransomed for positive feedback with what happened to you. Get over yourself.
@Brian, Gilbert is right. I shouldn’t have devalued your experience
@Gilbert, I am pretty sure Gilbert and Sullivan could identify the difference between “an apology and an offer of money” and a bribe. These guys are trying to subvert the reputation system. I don’t give a damn about my experience or I’d have taken the $75. I just want people to know about this abuse of the reputation system on Amazon. The way their email is written, it is clear I get no money until I remove the review.
We recently purchased a bunch of Nikon gear from Cameta Camera (via Amazon) and had a totally pleasant experience. The items were reasonably price, arrived quickly, and was well packaged.
I think Cameta should have handled the request regarding the negative comments better as offer money for the removal just does not “appear” proper regardless of the circumstances.
Glad that you got the D3…eager to see what you think of it!!!
Well…to be fair, it sounds like they are offering a REFUND on the freight cost, since you were very unhappy with their haphazard packaging and subsequent shitty customer service. However, I fail to see how that refunding a shipping charge could be considered a “bribe”. Many people would just leave the review up out of spite, especially after blogging about it, otherwise people might call you a “sellout”. I guess it boils down to this: if $75 is a drop in the bucket to you, you might want to stick to whatever moral code that’s goading you to charge this particular windmill and let your review stand.
Full disclosure: This is the opinion of someone who refuses to buy anything from any Amazon Merchant at any time, due to customer service issues with everything I’ve bought from them, not to mention the irritating separate shipping charges. I hate the Amazon system to hell.
Assuming Igor is right, that Jason had a fluke encounter with an underpaid plebe but when arm-twisted they were willing to give you ‘decent service’ — Jason is clearly still right in posting his experience and posting negative feedback. If it was a fluke then I’m sure the feedback system will reflect it.
As for ‘decent service’ — Essentially, the vendor is asking you to help them undermine the amazon feedback system and essentially help them lie to future customers. Not exactly a sign of contrition, and I would argue a far worse thing for a company to do than having something accidentally damaged in shipping (sloppiness vs. sliminess… although you got both!) Yet another slug in the ‘don’t order from NY camera stores’ bucket. Thanks for sharing your experience, here.
There’s also the point that the shop’s offer is cheap-ass. They risked a $5000 camera and ticked off a $5000 customer, and they offer you $75, conditionally? Pfft! The really classy response would have been to refund the that $75 shipping cost unconditionally, and then ask nicely, if you’d amend the feedback to include that. If they really wanted you to erase the incident, they should have been prepared to offer a couple of hundred bucks worth of memory cards or whatever, on top of that.
It’s not that most companies should try to bribe customers out of bad feedback, but if they do, they need to recognize that it’s naturally expensive! And of course, it does allow for a certain amount of abuse by customers as well…. Thus, the more “balanced” response by a company, would be to usually refund the shipping, but otherwise take their lumps on the ratings. And try to do better next time….
@Igor: No. The reasonable thing for them to do is to give him the $75 refund THEN request that he consider removing the negative feedback.
As much as you hate the City, do you hate having to deal with the BS of a shady Amazon seller less? Food for thought.
As a native New Yorker and an Israeli dual-national, believe me when I say that you should never, ever do business with NYC camera stores. Never. Not in-person, not over the phone, not over the Internet. These are the same clowns who will offer to sell you something, and then make you stand there and wait while they call the “warehouse” to find out if it’s in stock. (there’s no warehouse). They’ll then try to sell you a Somy camera, or a Polaroid from 1996. New Yorkers walk right past these places, and for good reason!
I have just had a similar experience, the company sent the wrong item after a long delay, sent the correct item eventually arriving almost a month after the promised date. I gave accurate feedback and received similar offer to refund shipping for revised feedback.
Is this society fallen to such low levels as to lie for money?
They’re doing it wrong, but I think this is a new trend in internet customer service. Just this year I complained online about a minor inconvenience at a local big chain hardware store, and they Fed Ex’d me a $25 gift card overnight. Then, I complained about a credit card’s executive service website being inaccessible online to new members, and they didn’t fix it for a more than three months, and I complained every few weeks during that time, until finally someone took notice, the website was fixed and they sent me a $100 gift card in a week.
I do not know what the problem is here, this isn’t exactly surprising. Company’s do this all the time in order to fool customers into believing they are a better company than they really are.
Yes, it sucks that company’s do this but it is not worthy of a big fuss.
Online feedback has become a joke. I mean, an eBay seller tried to sue a buyer for leaving him neutral feedback on eBay (http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2008/04/24/ebay-lawsuit-over-neutral-feedback). eBay pissed sellers off when they made it impossible for them to leave neutral / negative feedback for buyers.
Well, customer service is essentially dead and has been for awhile now. This kind of shit comes as no surprise, sadly.
Question: aside from posting this publicly to shame the company (and I agree with this), did you respond to the e-mail, Jason? What did you say?
RainyDayMagazine: I don’t suppose you mentioned that you work for or own a magazine or webazine when you made your purchase? Of course you are going to get excellent treatment. Why would they risk giving a bad experience to someone who can post a bad review of their company up on the web?
Jason: Glad you got your equipment. Is there any reason that you went through Amazon for this purchase? I mean, I know Amazon is great and all, but for the most part, if I see that Amazon is deferring my order to a third-party vendor, I search elsewhere for my purchase. It’s not that I don’t trust the third party (well, actually, I don’t) but it’s just that I shop at Amazon for Amazon, just like I shop at TigerDirect for TigerDirect, not Lee’s House of Electronics.
The only real bad experience I’ve had on eBay was with a seller who decided that what I paid for wasn’t worth what the auction ended at (it was a standard auction, no reserve, etc.) so they cancelled it, 30 seconds before it ended. Their reason: “the item is worth more than this.” Ebay is setup so that sellers can do this without penalty (except they lose their posting fee, I think) but if a buyer were to drop in at the last second and remove their bid, Oh No. You get emails from the seller *and* from eBay telling you that you can’t do that. It’s a violation of the Terms of Service.
So, the seller gets cold feet about the sell and they can cancel but if the buyer gets cold feet, tough. Deal with it. You can cancel your bid but you have to tell us why you are cancelling and if it’s not in our approved list of reasons, your bid might not be removed.
Don’t get me wrong: I use ebay *alot* and it’s gotten a little better in the past but I just feel that an auction house should be a little more “neutral” in how the auction plays out. If I am cancelling my bid, the next lowest bidder is still going to win the auction and there is a chance someone else will come in a bid. Removing my bid is *not* the end of the world. However, if someone is selling something which can’t be found anywhere else (easily) and they decide it’s worth more, they can remove the auction, no problem.
Dave Harmon is right. The correct thing for them to do is just offer a refund of the $75, along with a polite request that you amend your feedback to acknowledge that they tried to address it. Making the refund conditional turns it into a bribe.
However, if it was me, and a $5K camera showed up in a box that “looked like a cow had sat on it”, I’d be asking for their returns department.
do you have a direct link to your review at amazon?
I am shocked by the people who don’t think it is a bribe. To offer money on the condition that someone do something immoral, I don’t see how anything could more clearly be a bribe.
Hi Guys
as one whose job it is to seek out customer reviews on web sites, forums, blogs etc, thought I should add my thoughts.
I’m no way going to comment upon the practices of another store, except to say that this is the first negative comment I’ve read about them.
I’m with Igor on this one. I can certainly recall mistakes I’ve made at work - (fortunately none of them led to me being dismissed), and hopefully if any of those mistakes impacted negatively on anyone outside the firm(s) I worked for, my actions didn’t cause the morals or ethics of an entire company and every individual in it to be slated, unfairly.
Sure, there has to be a line of responsibility, in any business, Hi Guys
as one whose job it is to seek out and respond to customer reviews on web sites, forums, blogs etc, I wanted to add my thoughts.
I’m no way going to comment upon the practices of another retailer, except to say that this is the first negative comment I’ve read about them.
I’m with Igor on this one. I can certainly recall mistakes I’ve made at work in my youth - (fortunately none of them led to me being dismissed), and hopefully if any of those mistakes impacted negatively on anyone outside the firm(s) I worked for, my actions didn’t cause the morals or ethics of an entire company and every individual in it to be censured.
The bottom line is, you can bet that there’s a lass in a customer service department, somewhere in NYC right now, & maybe her manager too, who are wishing they’d made a different decision.
Titus, Adam - give us a break, please! Not all NYC photographic stores are the same! I’m proud to work for Adorama, a company with a commitment to offering not only affordable options for photography enthusiasts, but also to excellence in customer service. Nevertheless, we get it wrong sometimes - if we didn’t, I guess I’d be out of a job!
I do sometimes wonder, though, what is a negative posting meant to achieve? Is it only ever intended to warn prospective customers to stay away from that retailer?
Research by US firm TARP, [Arlington, VA] shows that for every 26 unhappy customers, only one will lodge a formal complaint. The research goes on to state that on average, each dissatisfied customer will tell 10 people, who in turn will tell 5 others - so potentially 1,560 people will hear about at least one of the experiences of these dissatisfied customers.
The Internet enables one customer’s words to be passed, anonymously, on to thousands of other customers and potential customer within minutes. It’s a scary prospect for many companies, and I’m sure that countless retailers around the globe are trying to find ways to deal with this.
When I read a customer complaint or negative review I view it as an opportunity to create something positive for both Adorama and the customer. The goal is to create a win-win solution, so that our customers feel listened to and valued - we can improve our service to customers, and continue to supply our customers with the goods they need.
’nuff said that on that - if you ever have a problem with an order from Adorama, I’d be delighted if you’d like to contact me directly to see if I can resolve it for you: helen.oster@adoramacamera.com
Sincerely
Helen Oster
Adorama Camera Customer Service Ambassador
I participate in the Amazon.com merchant program myself.
The feedback system Amazon has implemented is archaic, and is apparently geared towards causing their merchants to fail. There is absolutely NO recourse for receiving a negative feedback except to ask the customer to remove it. Amazon will do NOTHING about it, even if it can be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the negative feedback is incorrect and unwarranted.
Hundreds of customers buy products from me every month. You’d be amazed at the things that garner negative feedback. If ANYTHING goes wrong with the transaction, the first thing that these customers usually do is leave a negative feedback. If the customer is not home when it was delivered, or if the UPS truck got hit by a train, if California Wildfires are delaying their precious package, or any number of situations that are completely out of the merchant’s control arise, the result is usually a negative feedback. You would be absolutely floored to hear some of the ridiculous reasons that customers leave negative feedback. And in this highly competitive Amazon.Com merchant marketplace, ONE negative feedback can impact your sales by 90%. That is not an exaggeration.
And if that’s not bad enough, 3 times out of 5, even if you bend over backwards to resolve the problem (which I always do, even if it costs me money), the customer will not remove the negative feedback.
That said, what this merchant did is obviously against the terms of service for an Amazon Merchant account, and if the order was as poorly packaged as described, this merchant definitely deserves the negative feedback. But, I can understand why they would try to offer a rebate or discount for removing a negative feedback. They should have their merchant account shut down for trying it, but I can see why they did.
I have bought many times from them… and they have been great every time! the customer service was awesome and the tech worked extra hard to locate a special cable. I think anyone could have a bad day and you did. They offered a refund and shipping too. Just remove the negative post and move on with your life…its to short to worry about this stuff.
Don’t worry be happy
When will any of you learn your lessons? Apparently never !
I have been in the photo business for well over 30 years now, both as a retailer (in a brick and mortar building, as they call it) & as a Professional commercial shooter.
There’s NO such thing as a good deal on the internet, at least when it comes to photographic equipment. I’ve seen and heard every single excuse in the book from you whiners. At least twice a daily, I hear some pathetic sorty of a consumer great deal on the interent - gray market, nothing in the box but the camera, no warranty, bait & switch.
Anything that’s too good to be true? IS !
Wake up kiddies, go and SEE an authorized professional dealer. Or keep your whining to yourselves.
I think the request from the store is fair and ethical. The original complaint is now being dealt with at the management level. I understand his irritation with the service, but to be fair to the store, Jason should have requested to speak with the store manager and given them the opportunity to make it right before posting a negative comment.
The complaint has obviously moved up the chain of command at the store and the customer service manager has likely dealt with the staff’s attitude and training problem.
Unfortunately it’s often the lowest paid, youngest and least experienced employees that have the greatest impact on customer service (shipper, receptionist, clerk). From the store’s perspective, the actions of two (inexperienced) employees combined with a negative posting is affecting all the employees at the store, including those that work hard at doing their best and take pride in their work. That may not be fair.
You’ve received an undamaged camera on time and have been offered free shipping. Accept the offer and remove the negative posting.
i just want to point out a few things
1) Cameta is not, by any means, a “shady nyc retailer”. they are actually based in amityville, ny, which is in Long Island (i remember this b/c of the infamous book/movie/movie). They just happen to do a lot or sales through ebay.
1b) Cameta is an authorized nikon retailer, not like the shady places.
2) i purchased a d50 kit from them years ago and was super happy with the CSR.
3) they have a 8.69/10 lifetime rating http://www.resellerratings.com/store/CametaCamera
cj
Visiting from consumerist.com…I love the “blame the victim” attitudes here.
Jason got a poorly packaged item, called the vendor, and was treated poorly. It’s not his obligation to fight up the food chain to get a manager to set things right (and I doubt that it would’ve been set right). He owes the vendor NOTHING beyond paying promptly.
As a few others have said, the company should have credited the $75, and THEN asked if he would amend/update his feedback to show that he was taken care of.
Bad companies won’t change unless their feet are held to the fire by people who try to do the right thing.
Generally, if the store’s in New York, and it’s not B&H, J&R, or Adorama, I wouldn’t bother with them.
B&H.
I fail to understand why anyone purchasing a D3 would do so from a company whose long-term reputation has proved considerably less than stellar– or why anyone should be surprised at the result of doing so.
Since the early 1970s I’ve been buying photographic/darkroom/studio equipment from the ONLY two companies I’ve found to be absolutely reliable– Adorama, and B&H. Granted, their prices are not the lowest, but one’s purchase arrives on time, exactly as described, and are securely packaged.
The sales staff of both businesses ranges from very good to extremely bad– Adorama lost a $12,000 sale last year (and very possibly my future business) when the sales rep couldn’t be bothered (and said he was “too busy”) to answer my questions about some professional video equipment, and so I made the purchase from the far more willingly helpful salesman at B&H– but, fundamentally, both companies are reliable and can be trusted to deliver as promised.
You couldn’t pay me to do business with Cameta. And I can’t quite bring myself to sympathize with someone foolish enough to spend that kind of money without first bothering to find out with whom he was doing business.
Just add to your Amazon review that they are giving money for negative reviews - and see how long they will last :)
Lesson #1-buy from B&H
Lesson #2-buy from Adorama
Lesson #3(not really a lesson)-you got a great camera from a crappy retailer.
I did a “Buy it Now” on Ebay for a Wacom airbrush and the seller insisted on immediate payment and I used Paypal. I waited and waited, wrote to them a couple of times, and then after weeks with no response, I gave a bad review. Immediately, they wrote me and told me to remove the rating (which I didn’t think was possible) and that they were backordered. In the email they sent, I realized they had a larger online store. I thought the seller was an individual by the name, etc. So, I looked at the online store and they had plenty of them in stock. I took a screenshot showing the items in stock page and emailed them. I said don’t tell me it isn’t in stock when you say here that you have x number of them. I got a really gushy letter then, promise of immediate shipment, no shipping charges, etc.
They also asked me to remove the bad rating. I didn’t know how to do that but I posted an additional comment that I did receive the item that I had previously reported as not delivered.
I guess you have to learn to be the squeaky wheel to get anything anymore. I worked for years in retail and it really aggravates me to see how some businesses either hire anybody randomly or either don’t take pride in their reputation. If I had to hold a mirror up to an employee to make sure they are still breathing, they need to hit the door. C’mon people, what happened to our standards and reputations?
Thanks for exposing this. To the minor extent that I had considered purchasing from such lesser known outfits that offer too good to be true prices, this seals my decision never to do it.
Just wondering how much they will offer you now, to remove this post ;-)
I’m going to have to stick up for Cameta.
I bought a D300 kit from them a month ago. I paid $150 less than retail for a boxed, USA camera. No catches: not refurbished, not used.
I agree that their packaging could be a little more robust. However, both our cameras work. You got what you ordered: a working camera.
You got a grumpy CSR because you were complaining about something unimportant. I mean, honestly, “the packaging was damaged” is now a valid reason to complain? That’s what it’s there for.
Quit your whining and go use your new (fully functional) camera.
Same experience on eBay.
Purchased an item that consisted of 3 seprate parts.
Paid immediately upon auction ending.
Shipping speed and packing fine.
Only 2 of items were in the package.
Email asking for 3rd item unanswered for over a month.
Negative review, praising punctuality, but noting no email response and missing item.
Email response refusing to send missing item (it will cost too much because it is heavy was the excuse), with and offer of $25 to remove the review.
I went out and spent $40 to buy the missing part, because I needed it now.
Seller posts a bad review on me, claiming “It was clear this customer was never going to be satisfied”.
Too f*ing right I am not satisfied. I did not get what I paid for and they tried to
bribe me to cover up their mistake.
Sadly, this is online trading, and until there are laws covering this sort of behaviour and an instance to which one can lodge complaints, it will continue.
If I had the name of the seller at hand I would happily publish it here.
Mike Hammer
I think that if they want to get rid of your review they should have such great customer service that the one bad review gets buried under 100 good ones. They shouldn’t be let off the hook for a measly $75.00.
As the Support Manager for my company I know that it’s much harder to provide A+ service, but sooooo much easier at the end of the day.
I recently bough a canon xti, macro 100mm and a ring flash from adorama.
Even though I live in mexico, I received the products in just 4 days!!!
That place is amazing, I will buy with them again, that’s for sure.
I bought a demo Nikon D80 from Cameta and had no issues whatsoever. Not sure I see why you were so upset considering the camera wasn’t damaged. The gorillas at UPS or Fed Ex would have gotten my wrath. I don’t think the $75 refund in exchange for removing the NF is unreasonable, considering the camera arrived OK. Why you paid $75 for shipping is a mystery unless it was for overnight delivery. I agree with the other poster who states that a seller is pretty much at the mercy of a disgruntled customer when receiving NF–whether it’s valid or not. Much ado about nothing here.
Well I’m about to buy a camera so lets get this straight. If I buy from Cameta, there is a possibility it will be poorly packaged. There is also a possibility the customer service will be rude and unhelpful and just to top it off, the best resolution the next level of staff can come up with is a refund on shipping.
What I would want to here from Cameta is a sincere apology, a decent offer of compensation and a 100% guarantee it would not happen again.
Lets face it they screwed up but nothing is set in stone, if they have 90% or so posative feedback there must be some staff who know how to run a retail opperation. Its not too late, give the chap something good to say about you.
it seems to be these all were pay from diffrent parties for good and bad comments.
To CJ: Well a 8.69/10 Rating doesn’t sound bad until you call into question how many other poor customers were bullied into erasing justifiable, fully earned Negative Feedback. if 20-30% of the Neg’s are removed by this practice, then maybe they should be receiving 5.-7.0 . No one erases GOOD feedback. I had a similar experience with Cameta, same deal…they called 10-15 times, “offering me” the same quid pro quo- I told the guy, “you seem to be really interested in what went wrong now, could care less when I called twice or sent the 4 emails”…I guess the moral of the story: You want someone to finally listen, Give them horrible feedback…then wait for your phone to start ringing. BTW, I hung up on the slimball, insulted. I hope my comments cost you a few sales a day. They are staying.
Another notoriously horrible chain of stores (www.camerasinc.com) did nearly the same thing to me. They were the only one that had it in stock, I called to confirm it was in stock, then I ordered. Of course they didn’t have it & to make matters worse send a sub that was a different brand (all without ever even emailing me. I left the neg review and they tried to bribe me to remove it from Amazon. Instead I added it to nine more review sites, one site per day, and emailed them the links. They called, they emailed, then they threatened. Genuinely despicable crowd. Avoid http://www.camerasinc.com and their retail stores.
Thank you Jeff for posting your complaint about Cameta. There are probably many more who have complaints about Cameta but who are afraid to speak out.
As far as the “good” reviews here, they can possibly be store employees or relatives of employees and no one can prove otherwise. I am not saying they are or are not but suggesting that readers use their imagination here and their common sense.
Yes, demanding that he take the feedback down is yes, dishonest, and yes it sounds like a bribe for sure.
Any reputable store, would give the refund immediately, and might later ask them to please take the negative feedback down..but even more so, a reputable store might say, please write good feedback that the problem was resolved. That is what a reputable store would do, but even so, rather a reputable store would not be in that position in the first place.
Anyone who has shopped at B & H knows the difference between a reputable store and one that does customer service like you described above.
Thanks for your post. CONGRATULATIONS for bringing this Cameta thing out into the open. Others should speak out if they had similar experiences with Cameta , and speak out without fear of reprisals or anything from Cameta or Cameta sales or relatives. That is just a suggestion not a statement.
Here is the funny thing, instead of congratulating this guy for sharing his experience, you question “why” he bought from a particular place. That is like calling the victim the problem here.
Why does anyone buy from anywhere? They make choices that is all. We cannot condemn aperson for his choice of “Where ” he buys something -that is so irrelevant. What is relevant is this:
He had a very bad buying experience from this store, Cameta.
He complained about it, wrote bad feedback..
and now instead of you commenting on “cameta should not have done this”
you comment . “why did you buy from amazon”..
So irrelevant.
All that is relevant is that he paid good money for a good product.
He complained and the store -according to this guy’s post, basically
bribed him to take the feedback down.
Now, ponder this, how do we know that cameta has not “paid” or offered refunds
to anyone here who has posted a “good ” feedback or “good review”.. We have no way of knowing that , correct?
Buyer beware…Go to B & H..be safe rather than sorry.