[epa4wd]

I'm not liking it so far.....

First, I've encounter a few issues with the website

1) crashed while checking out on Sunday (site was down with a message on frontpage for about 10 minutes after that)
2) You can click the "Live Chat" seconds appart and sometimes you'll get a message that Chat is Closed and sometimes Open.
3) Customer Service chat working hours is innacurate, right now from those hours it should be open and it isn't.

Ordered four item which appear as stock on the website, now I check and its partial shipped, so 25% of my order is shipped, not sure what the hold up is on the other 75%. Website says they would contact me if there was an issue with my order. Not shipping 75% of the order seems like an issue to me, but no one has contacted me. I know that they ship items from different warehouse, not sure if thats the issue with mine, cause as I said above, I have received no contact from them. I payed for 2nd day shipping and I will probably receive them by the end of this week or early next week, which sucks if I would have known I would have not payed for 2nd day or probably would have ordered from some place else.

I know the website has good reviews and that is what motivated me to go ahead and try them, specially since they are part of this forum, which I spent a lot of time reading through and really like a lot, I'm not saying that in my opinion they are bad, just that I prefer places more straight foward.

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Last edited by epa4wd; 12-28-2010 at 09:55 AM.

[epa4wd]

Just as a heads up to everyone, one of their representatives let me know about their issues with their current weather and delays due to that.

Unfortunately they haven't figured out that this is something that customers should be made aware of (not all of their clients live on the states), maybe by simply putting an announcement on their website as they have done before with their christmas schedule and other holidays, or at least to us here since they are part of the forum, a message here would have been great and I know one of them has been around the forum today.

This is an issue which they obviously failed to let me know and their other clients, and without consulting me as the website clearly states they would have for any issues on my order, 25% of the order was shipped, pretty much tying my hands for cancelling the order (since part of it is already on its way), now I'll have to wait about a week or more to get 100% my order having paid for 2nd day, if I was contacted, I would pretty much said I understand.. and move on someplace else.

Nice...

From receipt:

"All orders are subject to approval by our verification dept. We will notify you by phone or email
should your order be delayed."

EDIT
everything shipped hopefully here by thursday :\

[henryp]

Thanks for your feedback. We regret that any aspect of your recent transaction was less than ideal and we appreciate the suggestions and observations you posted. We're sharing them with our web management people. It's my personal goal to make new and different mistakes in the future and not repeat tired old ones. :-)

Customer feedback helps us understand how to set priorities for situations like this. Thank you.

From receipt: "All orders are subject to approval by our verification dept. We will notify you by phone or email should your order be delayed."

The sentence "We will notify you by phone or email should your order be delayed." refers specifically to verification department issues. I am sorry that was not more apparent.

[epa4wd]

Thank You for writing back, I've also received some emails from B&H, as I said on those emails and now here just for the record, my main point is communication. I can understand that maybe putting up a message on the website announcing possible delays on orders due to weather, you may lose some orders, but for me I would prefer losing an order and not a client.

I just hope than in any future order any delays on an order I will be contacted, because after all you stated on the receipt that you would, so its not like I'm asking for any special treatment, you have already commited to your clients to do this by writing it on the receipt.

Merry Xmass and Happy New Year!

[raz-0]

Dude, we got 20-30 inches of snow in the area with winds gusting to 80mph. Pretty much anything that broke was staying broke unless it could be fixed remotely. This didn't just apply to B&H. Pretty much everywhere had a state of emergency declared. In some of the NYC metro areas they were limiting CPR attempts by ambulance crews because so many were stuck, so few were available in the first place, and so many calls were coming in. That's not even getting into the number of power outages and service degradation for telecommunications.

I think when you've hit a point where emergency services are saying "sorry, but you've hit the 20 minute limit for resuscitation, gotta move on" when the usual limit is 60 minutes, a bit of a hiccup when you are ordering something off a website on a holiday weekend isn't really much of a screw up.

ETA and you could pay for any expadited shipping you wanted. At some point UPS or FedEx or any other carrier will jsut say sorry... nope. EWR terminal for them was essentially shut down for 2 days.

[epa4wd]

Sigh.... Raz-0 you dont get it. Not everyone lives in continental US, right now I'm on a tropical island with my nice tropical weather. You can't expect everyone around the world to be up to date to what is going on in NY or any other state. B&H has clients from all over the world. If you are telling me that they can't put a message on their website or on this forum, informing about their current weather issues and possible delays on orders, I'm not buying it, specially when they have logged on the forum in the past few days not one of them has said anything, nor any of their online Chat employees has said anything about possible delays due to weather. If they haven't said anything is simply because they choosed not to do so, not because of lack of resources.

As I said, I understand the issues that weather has brought to them, but my problem is not that, its their failure to communicate it. The time they have taken to answer emails, replying this thread, they could have use it to simply put up a message, a new thread here or a message on their website saying: Hey we are getting hit with pretty bad weather, there may be delays on orders for the next couple of days. Now have they done that? No, are they going to?, looks like Not.

So anyone outside of the US, who is unaware of their weather issues, will place orders thinking everything is fine, just to get surprised when their orders are delayed, without ANY communication from B&H as stated on their website they would for any delays on orders.

Honestly in my opinion, not saying that it is this way or not, looks like they prefer not to say anything in order to not lose any orders that might be placed on the next couple of days, but for me, I would prefer to put up a message and lose some orders instead of losing clients. But thats just me, I tend to think a bit more far ahead.

[magkelly]

Blizzards, hurricanes, and the like, they're awfully inconvenient things sometimes, aren't they? ;P No offense but did you read the weather reports at all before you ordered? There were hundreds of people stuck at airports over the holiday. A large number of very unfortunate people got stuck away from home and even in the subways and there were no buses running to rescue them. There were people walking in through 3 feet drifts in extremely uncomfortable temperatures just trying to get home.

Not exactly the best time to be ordering camera equipment and expecting 2 day delivery. I'm amazed that the big stores there actually stayed open at all through some of it so people that could actually make it there could actually shop for Christmas and make returns after. Given the current conditions in NYC I think they all deserve a medal for even showing up for work at all!

Cut them some slack. They're doing all they can can't very well control Mother Nature or depend upon the mail services right now. Things are just getting back to normal and it might be a while yet before things are running normally.

Personally I need to order a new $6 tripod head for one that a friend found in a junk pile at Goodwill and gave to me and as it turns out B&H is the only one who has it anymore, but there's no way I'd order it right at this moment and expect it to be arriving quickly. I figure B&H probably has their hands full right now.

It's really not that important given that I already have a working tripod that's halfway decent. The one my friend found looks a bit better, but I can wait a bit to get it up and running, and there's really no sense in expecting prompt deliveries under these conditions. It's the dead of winter and while miracles do happen I suspect they seldom involve USPS, UPS or Fedexp!

[epa4wd]

Blizzards, hurricanes, and the like, they're awfully inconvenient things sometimes, aren't they? ;P No offense but did you read the weather reports at all before you ordered? There were hundreds of people stuck at airports over the holiday. A large number of very unfortunate people got stuck away from home and even in the subways and there were no buses running to rescue them. There were people walking in through 3 feet drifts in extremely uncomfortable temperatures just trying to get home.

Not exactly the best time to be ordering camera equipment and expecting 2 day delivery. I'm amazed that the big stores there actually stayed open at all through some of it so people that could actually make it there could actually shop for Christmas and make returns after. Given the current conditions in NYC I think they all deserve a medal for even showing up for work at all!

Cut them some slack. They're doing all they can can't very well control Mother Nature or depend upon the mail services right now. Things are just getting back to normal and it might be a while yet before things are running normally.

Personally I need to order a new $6 tripod head for one that a friend found in a junk pile at Goodwill and gave to me and as it turns out B&H is the only one who has it anymore, but there's no way I'd order it right at this moment and expect it to be arriving quickly. I figure B&H probably has their hands full right now.

It's really not that important given that I already have a working tripod that's halfway decent. The one my friend found looks a bit better, but I can wait a bit to get it up and running, and there's really no sense in expecting prompt deliveries under these conditions. It's the dead of winter and while miracles do happen I suspect they seldom involve USPS, UPS or Fedexp!

Looks like you don't understand my point either. Everytime you buy something online you check the weather? No. Specially clients who DO NOT LIVE IN CONTINENTAL US. When you order something from China do you check the weather on China? yeah right.....

As I said for a million time now, I understand the issues due to weather, but they HAVE LOGGED IN THE FORUM, and not ONE of them has said ANYTHING about the issues they are having with weather. So don't try to tell me that they don't have the resources to inform.... because they obviously do.

Heck they even put up a shinny new banner of 2011 New Year deals, but a message about possible delays........ No.. huh..

The point is simple.....

If I had known about the issues, I would have understand, but they FAILED to inform when they could HAVE, as simple as that.

I worked in the Enrollment office at the local university, we would get about 13,000 applications from all over the world, we get hit with unexcpected things, Hurricanes, student strikes heck you name it, what did we do being an office of only 6 employes, we put a message on the main page informing about current issues, heck I could even do it directly from my iphone without getting up from bed, it would take about 5 minutes top.

[magkelly]

FYI, when I went looking for the piece for the tripod that I needed there was actually a bit on the page about delays and such, but actually I wouldn't have had to go look it up, about the weather. The bad weather over the holidays has been all over the news. You can't hardly open a newspaper, turn on the TV, hit the web, without seeing pics of NYC, London etc snowed in. It's bad all over the place not just in NYC.

I wouldn't think B&H would have to shout BLIZZARD conditions at the top of their store page at this point for people to realize that they might be experiencing the effects of said bad weather but I think in their defense they did have a few words posted on their website about it. I saw something up there when I went to look up the piece anyhow.

No offense, but choosing 2 day mail in December with major snow happening all over the globe isn't very practical without checking the weather. It's not exactly balmy in most of this part of the world right now. FYI, I'm still waiting on a gift that was shipped to me well before the 15th. I'm still getting Christmas cards from friends elsewhere and from the postal marks I'd say hardly any of them were mailed late.

I don't think it's fair under the circumstances to roast B&H for not getting something to you in 2 days and from what I saw they DID let people know there would be potential delays. I mean what more can they do?

[epa4wd]

Again the "roasting" is for not informing, not for not getting here in two days. It wasn't until about the third email that I was told about the weather. I was at first upset that 25% of the order was only shipped, after knowing the situation, I was upset due to the fact that there was no notice, even though according to them they would have noticed me about delays and issues, said so right in the receipt. If they had lack of staff a message on their website as recommended above would save a lot of trouble to them and to me and anyone else unaware of the situation, specially when the situation had been going on about 2 days according to someone on their staff.

What can you do? Again, simple as in the first page nice message the same as they do about holiday schedule informing about the possible delays, I don't think that is too much to ask, I'm not asking them to build a monument, a text message on top of the first page would not take more than 5 mins, that is not asking a lot.

As I said before, I understand they are doing their best, but they could save a lot of headache by simply having done what I said above. At the office we wouldn't get bombarded with emails and calls from students because by visiting the website they were up to date with what was going on. For us at the office, we would feel that not informing them would result in a waste of their time and ours.

B&H has already apologized by email, for me this is a done deal, no need to keep this going further, I have accepted their apology, maybe I should have look up the weather, but the resposibility is not 100% in my side, I think its good gesture to their clients to announce possible delays due to whatever X factor, even more when they already commited to it by their comment on the receipt. I do feel they do care about their customers, otherwise I wouldn't have received any apologies, so I wouldn't mind giving them another chance in the future.

Again this is a done deal no need to keep this going when both parties already resolved the issue.

[apac]

No offense, but choosing 2 day mail in December with major snow happening all over the globe isn't very practical without checking the weather.

I think this is the first time I have ever heard of anyone checking the weather when ordering online to decide which shipping service to choose. I think you are being unreal here.

I agree with epa4wd, come on B&H is running a business here and as epa4wd said it only takes 5 minutes to post a message (which can be done remotely from home or anywhere in the world) in their main page. If that would have been available to epa4wd he might have chosen a slower delivery service and save some $$$. Also give him/her the option to shop somewhere else, but NO, B&H deliverately chose to do a partial shipment to lock him in.

Also I don't think epa4wd is trying to roast B&H here he/she is just trying to express his frustation given the fact that B&H has a policy in place (which is clearly written in their invoice) that states that they will notify you if there are any issues with your order. They did this to me some time ago with same deal, they shipped partial order and didn't tell me the last item was on backordered, which I didnt find out until I called back because I received only part of the order. An funny thing even though the item was in backorder it still showed "in stock" on their website.

EPA4WD I hope you receive your order soon and thanks for posting!

[epa4wd]

Thanks

As metioned before this is a done deal, I've received an apology from B&H, this is a done deal no need to keep this going, I would prefer for the thread to be close because no good can come out of it anymore, its pointless to keep arguing about a matter which has alread been solved.

[Todd Adamson]

TBH, I check the weather when I am ordering something this time of year, at least if it's something I need in a hurry. I agree it would be nice to be informed immediately if a package was delayed, or especially if an item isn't in stock.....up to date stock info is important.

B&H is a huge operation. IMO, they do amazingly well for their size. I have ordered countless times from them, with no glitches. There's always room for improvement, right?

Now, if they would only recant their Judaism and start letting me order on Yom Kippur.....LOL

[DogLover]

Yep, B&H may have made a mistake here, but they are one of, if not THE best photography/electronics retailer on the internet.

[Jasvox]

Caveat emptor means "buyer" beware, not seller disclose everything including the weather conditions. Next time, order local.

Jason