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Forum: Ask B&H Photo!
03-30-2011, 02:30 PM
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Hello Henry. I really appreciate your open discourse here; I think it's invaluable to the community. However I think B&H does have to shoulder some responsibility here. Firstly, the comparison with Amazon is only marginally valid. We all know prices can change in an instant these days, and simply adding something to your cart is not a price guarantee. That said, Amazon's product page never mentioned an instant rebate or a promotional period. The questionable nature of this (for me) comes from advertising a week-long $100 instant rebate on the product page and raising the pre-rebate price by $100 less than 2 days into the week.
The larger issue though is not the price increase; rather it's the customer service, for which B&H is wholly responsible. I know B&H can provide quotes which lock prices in for 4 weeks, and apparently you will also match competitors' prices. Yet between my e-mail exchange with B&H regarding the purchase (while the price was still $1299) and the Amazon/Tristate prices, I was still later told by 3 different people that the $1299 price could no longer be done. In fact 2 separate B&H employees attempted to tell me that the $1299 price never even happened.
I run a small store. We don't even do a tiny fraction of the business B&H does, I'm sure. But I know that if a product incurred a price increase while one of our associates was essentially mid-conversation with a customer regarding purchase of said item, there's no way we would suddenly refuse that customer the original price. Beyond that, for all the speculation about Pentax nudging Amazon and B&H to raise their advertised prices, both retailers are still well within their rights to privately offer a customer an unadvertised discount on any product for any reason.
I'm sure I will make purchases from B&H in the future. All my previous experiences with B&H have been great ones. In fact, I currently have a 31mm Ltd I'm testing for focus problems which I will be able to return or exchange if necessary because of B&H's emphasis on customer satisfaction. It's just that in this particular instance, the entire experience was extremely disappointing.
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