I bought a camera from 86th Street Photo & Video (www.86photovideo.com) for an unbelievably low price. I noticed that the accessories were a bit pricey though, so I did not buy any accessories. A couple of days later, I received an email from [email protected] asking for me to call a representative due to a billing question/discrepancy.
When I called the representative, he told me that they did not have the month of my credit card expiration. This was odd, because most web sites due data validation to prevent a customer from leaving fields blank. It's much more cost effective for a customer to see an alert online then to have to staff a call center just to handle missing data field calls.
So I gave the representative, Clark, my credit card information one more time and he complemented me on my purchase. Then he started to tell me how miserable the battery life is on the camera and he tried to sell me a new battery. I had read the reviews of the camera before purchasing it. I knew the battery life by heart too, and the numbers that he told me were not at all close to the reports that I read in the reviews. Then he told me that there was a sale on lenses, but I declined that too. I told him that I wanted to get the camera first before I bought any accessories. His over-eager voice turned quickly to one of impatience and he assured me that my order would be processed quickly.
Not even a minute after I hung up the phone, I received an email that the shipping department received the order request and that the camera was backordered. It would take up to 3 more weeks for the cameras to be back in stock. I picked up the phone and called Clark one more time. When he picked up and he asked for my order number, I politely identified myself and he rudely put me back into the phone queue! The next person to answer was clearly not Clark. I asked to cancel my order. The charades were over. I would not give-in to their up-sell tactics and I would not wait 3 weeks for a camera that seemingly magically vanished from stock in front of my eyes.
It is coincidental how Clark knew the battery life of the camera by heart, had all of my information in front of me, and knew enough to tell me that the camera is very popular. He knew all of that information, but did not know that they were out of stock. It is even more coincidental that the shipping department attempted to fulfill my order instantly upon my conversation ending with Clark.in all of my experience of purchasing items online, no shipping department is that quick, very few web sites have credit card validation errors that require manual intervention, and no sales person is that rude to customers.
They have lost my business. Forever.
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