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.