An Update (The Letter Part 2)

A few days ago I posted a candid account of my experiences thus far with B&H Photovideo (which can be found here).

Since then they have been in contact with me (primarily through email as the time difference makes any other communication quite difficult) and have taken on board most (if not all) of my concerns.

They are currently re-lodging a request with Fed-Ex for the refund that was promised, personally I suspect that it will not be successful, but I think the lesson here is to not use Fed-Ex for my international shipping requirements in future. They are decent at getting something from A to B, but add in any requirement of actual customer service in there and they fail quite terribly (which is a shame really as it's the "last-mile" that most clients get to see)

In addition to this B&H are going to cover the cost of returning the defective camera to them, including the return import fee, as I mentioned I was quite surprised when this was offered during the initial RMA process (as it's not documented on their RMA website) but I am pleasantly surprised they are following through with it.

Interjection:

I feel having worked quite closely in a customer service field myself has given me some appreciation for (and value of) actual good customer service. The company I worked for prided itself on being the very best at what it did and there was a real cost associated with that, especially when a consultant would promise the customer something we might not be able to deliver upon, but we would then endeavor to satisfy anyway simply as reassurance for our customers that we deliver upon our promises (essentially what good customer service boils down to).

/Interjection

Now, B&H were recommended to me by a good friend of mine and despite the order being quite large I had confidence in their ability to deliver. In addition to this I had heard they were very good if you do run into any problems. Which is why I purchased from them rather than some HK discount operation...

When I received my camera and it was faulty all of that seemed to fly out of the window and despite the problem having very little to do with B&H (it says a lot more about Canon's quality control more than anything) the outcome could have been quite the nightmare, if they hadn't handled the situation so professionally and with such empathy.

The RMA process was quite straight forward, I simply described the defect and indicated that I wanted a replacement unit and not a refund a few days later (the time difference adds about 24 hours to any responses either direction) it was approved.

Since then I've been in contact with the B&H customer service department a few times and they have really done an exceptional job of looking after something which, considering the physical distance between us probably could have been easier to just fob-off.

I think I need to summarize this post before it becomes a novella, but I think quite simply if you are going to be buying any photography gear, B&H will be able to help you, not only that, in the event you do have any problems they'll be there to make sure they are resolved.

TL:DR version

- Awesome customer service (or lack of) does have an explicit cost (either to you or the retailer)

- B&H have really gone the extra mile to make sure I'm happy and my issues are resolved.

- When buying online ALWAYS consider the customer service/returns side of things as-well as it could cost you a lot of money.