I’ve just spent part of this evening re-organising my domain name and one of my old blogs to import all of the old posts into the current blog incarnation. Whilst doing that I noticed the original post about thedigitalcamerashop.co.uk and how many comments it has received so far. It made me start thinking about what DCS say about their own customer service procedures, well according to the FAQs on the website, they should be quite a good company to deal with:

Q. When can I expect my delivery?
A. You can track the progress of your order using our on line tracking facility.

The so called tracking system is the basic of the basic, no based on my story which you can read about here, this is my tracking status to this day:

25/02/08: Received @ 16:01
26/02/08: Status = Part Dispatched
22/07/08: Status = Dispatched

Yeah – great!

We aim to deliver all orders as soon as possible. Orders received before 13.00 Monday to Friday for items that we hold in stock will generally be dispatched from our premises the same day. Orders received after 13.00 for items that we hold in stock will generally be dispatched the next working day (excluding weekends).

‘Generally’, what that seem to mean is, if we have it in stock (unlikely?) then they will ship it out asap, or if the supplier has it in then again, it will be shipped pretty damn quick, however, god forbid you order something from the website which they don’t stock and neither does the supplier – you either won’t see it, or it will take a looooong time. They don’t run a live stock system which makes me think that they don’t actually stock items themselves otherwise, how hard could a stock system be from them?

Should an item be out of stock or a special order we will obtain it as soon as possible. We will inform you via e mail if an item is out of stock and give you the opportunity to cancel your order.

No they won’t, I received nothing more than a small note on the bottom of the delivery item for the part delivery I received. Easily missed but I definitely didn’t receive an email. If my order hadn’t been part shipped and both items were out of stock then I wouldn’t have received any correspondence by the looks of things.

We normally dispatch items using a 48 hour parcel delivery service.

See above.

Despite our best efforts to deliver as soon as possible, unforseen circumstances could lead to a delay in delivery of goods. Any dates / times specified are approximate and should not be taken as guaranteed.

So, basically they don’t really have an idea of when you might get your items, they also won’t keep you upto date, leaving you the ‘customer’ to chase them.

One of the other things that is annoying with the way DCS does business, they take your money immediately whether they will be delivering your goods the next day or the next month – not a bad way to earn a little interest, no matter how small that might be.

One of the directors has recently setup another business which seems to as of yet, be currently in testing and not live however based on the past performance I would be wary about doing business with http://www.camera-box.com/.

Obviously all of this information is my opinion and is based on either my experience of DCS or from information obtained through a credit check.

Enjoy.

Well, for those who go off recomendations when deciding to use a new company, here’s one to avoid – thedigitalcamerashop.co.uk. This is my story of why.

On the 25th of Feb 08, I placed an order with thedigitalcamerashop.co.uk for a Slik Pro 700 DX and a Manfrotto 676B Monopod. Total cost was £117.89. The online shop didn’t have a live stock system so I had no idea if either of the items were in stock, that wasn’t really and issue as I reaslise that small businesses can’t have the same or similar setups as some of the larger online shops + waiting for a week or two wasn’t really an issue either!

A few days later, a parcel arrived for me Prompt delivery I thought. Upon opening the package, I realised that I’d only had sent to me, the Slik tripod. So, the next day I called up to enquire about the Monopod as I hadn’t had any notice that the Monopod was out of stock – or so I thought. The person who took my call was pretty rude and after I’d quoted my reference number ‘kindly’ pointed out to me that it was printed on the bottom of the delivery note that the Manfrotto would be delievered in a few days due to a lack of stock. FIne I thought, I got the main item I was after and as mentioned before, I could wait a few days.

A few days came and passed, no Manfrotto and no contact from thedigitalcamerashop.co.uk, something I later find out not to expect from thedigitalcamerashop.co.uk, no contact that is – oh and no Manfrotto either but more the lack of contact

Weeks later and no frotto still, no contact still so I thought, hey, I’ll check on the status of the order so again I gave thedigitalcamerashop.co.uk a quick call only to find out that, surprise surprise, they didn’t have it and still didn’t know when it was going to turn up. At this point I just cancelled the remainder of the order and went into Jessops and bought one.

Some months later I was checking through my bank statements and thought I’d make sure the refund had gone through for the Manfrotto knowing what thedigitalcamerashop.co.uk was like with their lack of contact. Fail, they hadn’t refunded me! So again, I called and this time got voicemail, time, after time during that day. No phone call back and to be honest, I very much doubt I would have got one so I emailed them to ask them what was going on. At this point they were quick to respond – with a basic apology and a promise to refund me the remaining balance of the order. Great, I also asked them to refund me the delivery cost for the order due to the 5 months they’ve now had my money for the order with no contact on what was happening.

22nd July 08, They responded, yipee! They agreed to refund me the cost of the Manfrotto – how could they not but they totally ignored my request for the delivery charge to be refunded so I emailed them again, asking once more, for the delivery cost to be refunded, to this day, they’ve ignored that email as well.

So, in short, avoid buying from thedigitalcamerashop.co.uk, they DO NOT contact you when asked or to give you any updates on orders which don’t get processed immediately, they have no idea about customer service and don’t seem to care one bit.
DO NOT USE thedigitalcamerashop.co.uk!

8. Use of Your Content

a. Adobe does not claim ownership of Your Content. However, with
respect to Your Content that you submit or make available for inclusion
on publicly accessible areas of the Services, you grant Adobe a
worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and
fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other
remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate,
publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in
part) and to incorporate such Content into other Materials or works in
any format or medium now known or later developed.

For now, I’d recommend avoiding using the service until they resolve this which they are doing according to sources.

I’ll try and give it a whirl this weekend and post my thoughts.

It’s good to see software companies embracing online technology other than google, it seems to be the way a lot of things are going nowadays but how it will all work out is still anyone’s guess!

Would I recommend them now, not in the slightest, their staff are rude and abrupt on the phone when I called up to see about what they could do for me on another – more expensive lense price wise. So onto my experience.

I’d been looking around for a new lense for my Canon 350d, originally I had decided on a EF70-300mm f4-5.6 IS USM but after reading review after review, most people seemed to be suggesting that the 70-200mm f4l would be a better buy, especially if coupled up with a teleconvertor. So I changed my focus onto one of these lenses, more expensive but obviously it’s an investment more than a cost decision.Looking around for the best price and somewhere that had it in stock led me to www.warehouseexpress.com, I had a look at their ‘bargain basement’ page and came across the lense people were recommending but with the nice addition of IS – Canon’s Image Stability system which would allow a few stops lower. They had it on the site priced at £414, bargain I’m sure those who know, would agree. I loaded up my cart over the course of a day, trying best to assure myself that this was a good choice and checking around to confirm pricing. I left things until a day later before deciding to go for it so again I loaded up the virtual shopping cart with the lense, a Slik 700DX tripod and a Manfrotto monopod and finished off the order process.

For the next hour and half, I kept checking back to my email expecting a order notification – I never did. Instead what arrived was the following

“Many thanks for your recent order with ourselves.

I regret to inform you that we are now sold out of the-Canon Ef70-200mm F4.0 L Is USM and unfortunately this item was the lastone. I’ve cancelled the order, and no payment has been taken from yourcredit card.

Please let me apologise for any problems this may cause.

For alternative items please visit our website or call our sales team on

01603 486413.”

Short sweet, doesn’t seem to really make sense in saying they’ve sold out and this one is the last one???!!! Anyway, I called them up to see if they could offer something similar to what I had ordered for a reasonable price. The lady who answered the phone was in the least bit helpful, all she could do was read a list of lenses from the website which were similar in specs to what I had asked for – I’m capable of doing that myself. I told her they weren’t really what I was after based on the price of my original order and specification so I ended the call. After looking around for other suppliers I decided that I would just plump for the non-is version as I had originally intended.

Ebay and a lot of other stores were all selling this lense for quite a lot less than could be bought from warehouseexpress.com so I thought I would give them another call to see if they could do anything on the price. I got through to a chap this time who mentioned they price matched with certain companies and asked me where I had seen the price. I also mentioned about my cancelled order and then as soon as I mentioned it was from Amazon, he said we don’t price match with them so I asked about another company to which he just point blank said ‘NO’, ok nice customer service skills here. I once again mentioned how I’d not long ago had my other order cancelled due to a fault on their part and could he look at offering me the lense at a slightly reduced cost, the answer again was quite categorically ‘NO’. At this point I’d had enough of speaking to them so ended the call and went and sourced the lense from another company – well done warehouseexpress.com, you lost out on a £500 order all because you seem to want to quote the classic Little Britain T.V show: “Computer says no”. Got the lense from another company for cheaper, also ordered the tripod and monopod from elsewhere for again, cheaper.

So folks, my advice, avoid warehouseexpress.com.

Hoping to be able to make use of it pretty soon as I’ve got a christening to go to on in a few weeks so maybe I’ll get asked to take some photos for the occassion

Anyway, at the moment I’m just trying to read as much as I can on how to take better photos as I’ve got a long long way to go. So if anyone has any decent reading material they have found online whether it’s for digital photography or not then I’d appreciate it if you could post them here please.