carpedick

So, I’m a little flustered/floored at a recent experience that I had with a Ritz Camera employee. And not even just that, but then subsequent experience trying to complain via their website. The response I received? “We are sorry to know of the kind of service you received at the store. It is unfortunate, and we truly regret the inconvenience. However, RitzCamera.com and the Ritz Camera stores are two separate companies, and we work with different policies.”

Upon contacting them via their live chat, I was told the same thing. Not only that, but that they couldn’t give me the name or phone number of the manager or store. Interesting, since I can click on “Store Locator” on their website and enter my zip code and have the phone number right there, instantly available to me. Apparently, the technology on their website exceeds their abilities. Quite a paradox.

I’m sorry, but I think at the least, if you’re going to provide the store information via your website, so that you have an intrinsic link. Then maybe you should have a few other details about the store as well. Crazy, right?

Basically, I was contacting them because of a recent bad experience that I had at their store. Here is what I wrote them:

Recently, I went to your store at 22nd and J Streets in
Sacramento. I spoke with a sales associate by the name of
Josh. I was checking to see if I could hold and check out
the build quality of a Canon 70-200 f/2.8 IS lens, a
$2000 lens. I was told that a contract was being
negotiated, but that no canon lenses were currently
available to view.

He then told me that I could see the comparable Nikon
lens, but that “after seeing this, the Canon will feel
like a toy” I don’t appreciate this. I understand that
there are those that like Nikon and those that like
Canon, and when weighed against each other, the 2 are
basically equal. So to turn around and blatantly tell me
that the product I was looking into was crap, was a
little unnecessarily biased and didn’t need to be said in
order to explain to me why the item wasn’t in stock.

Additionally, only after having told me this, and showed
me the Nikon lens, did he tell me that btw, there is a
Tamron lens that would work for the Canon. Which in my
mind, should’ve been the first thing he mentioned after
telling me the Canon lens wasn’t available. Rather than
taking the first attempt to show me a lens that wouldn’t
work and then to subsequently bash the product that I was
looking for.

I understand that opinions are what they are. It would be
appreciated if in future discussions with sales staff,
that they were a little more even handed when it comes to
discussing the differences between brands, rather than
outright bashing them.

And that somehow couldn’t even be bothered to elicit a response giving me the manager’s phone number or email address at the store. It’s ridiculous and poor customer service at best. Complete BS at worse!

Tags: asshats, camera, customer, lens, photo, photos, ritz, service

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 11th, 2010 at 9:41 am and is filed under Life, journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.