Adorama has the WR1 for $69+FS but is on backorder.

I was speaking in general, not specifically about Adorama, but backordered items seems to be the biggest one.

Unfortunately, we are in the hands of the suppliers on this one. we can't sell what they don't send to us!
 
But they do......I've been doing this job for coming up 10 years; I know our customer base and their purchasing patterns. Do you by chance follow 'Slick Deals" Or 'Consumer Affairs'? If I had a $ for every time I've read that phrase.........

For example; Canon gives us an excellent deal on 5,000 photocopiers. So good that it gets posted on Slick Deals and members place multiple orders (6, 7, 8 copiers) because they plan to sell them on eBay and turn a nice profit - and why not? In the 20 minutes after the deal is posted our website goes into meltdown and can't update fast enough. And the guy who gets in there just a bit too late doesn't get his order filled because we simply didn't have 5,001 copiers. We had 5,000. So for sure he will "never buy from Adorama again". Until the next deal is posted, and he does.....

I do follow Slick Deals. Why not have a limit per customer of 1 or 2? If the price is that good of a deal they will still sell out and you will have many more happy, and potentially repeat customers.
 
I do follow Slick Deals.

so you know exactly the scenario I'm talking about! I have a presence on over 650 different forums, shopping sites, Flickr groups etc. And that phrase is used over & over on SD, but really nowhere else!

Why not have a limit per customer of 1 or 2? If the price is that good of a deal they will still sell out and you will have many more happy, and potentially repeat customers.

On some items we do. But it won't help when, even if we limited to 1 for each customer - per the example above - if we have 5,000 units and customer 5,001 doesn't get one!
 
This is very disturbing.

I posted -

"By the way their customer service has been outsourced to the Phillipines while B & H still has theirs in New York".

To which you replied -

"I can categorically confirm that I am NOT outsourced to the Phillipines!".

To anyone reading this you are implying I was wrong and you do not have customer service reps in the Philippines.

Then when pressed, because I suspected you were telling half truths or lying by omission, you post =

Yes, we have a call center. And having worked with the previous equivalents who were based in the NYC office a number of years ago - and currently having ongoing responsibility for listening to and rating a selection of calls from the call center every week alongside Senior Managers - I can state without reservation that Adorama customers are getting a much better service from my colleagues in Manila than they ever did previously. The staff are hard-working, determined to please and have an enviable work ethic. I'm proud to call them my colleagues.

We have customer service reps in both Manila and NYC. But maybe we don't need huge numbers of CS reps, because by far the greater percentage of orders are place, filled and shipped without issue!!

This is the stuff that ruins credibility. It is evasive and shady. So when you say you ship 10,000 orders a day, maybe 9,999 of them are returned but you aren't saying that.


As far as I know, we don't. The relationship between retailers and suppliers is complex, and not all of our supplier relationships are identical. It isn't the case that we buy for 'X' and sell for 'Y'

There is that evasiveness again. You should have just said you buy in volume so get good deals, or that you offer loss leaders to get people you hope will be repeat buyers, or that you sell a few at a loss to generate interest in the product in hopes these buyers will tell others how great the product is
 
...or that you offer loss leaders to get people you hope will be repeat buyers, or that you sell a few at a loss to generate interest in the product in hopes these buyers will tell others how great the product is
Why should she say that if it's nothing more than something concocted by your imagination? Talk about something becoming 'disturbing'... :rolleyes:
 
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so you know exactly the scenario I'm talking about! I have a presence on over 650 different forums, shopping sites, Flickr groups etc. And that phrase is used over & over on SD, but really nowhere else!

I am beginning to see your real job is damage control.

On some items we do. But it won't help when, even if we limited to 1 for each customer - per the example above - if we have 5,000 units and customer 5,001 doesn't get one!

Limit one per customer and you have 5000 happy customers and X unhappy ones who didn't get the deal. Let a customer buy 6 and you have less than 1000 happy customers and X+4000 unhappy ones. Doesn't sound like a smart business plan. Things just aren't adding up.
 
This is very disturbing.

I posted -

"By the way their customer service has been outsourced to the Phillipines while B & H still has theirs in New York".

How is Adorama Customer Service "outsourced to the Philippines" when the Adorama Customer Service Manager - who is for the greater percentage of his time is working in the NYC office - manages the team who are in Manila?
How is Adorama Customer Service "outsourced to the Philippines" when we have customer service team members based in NYC and NJ?

Adorama ships to over 200 countries worldwide; so, the store is in NYC.......the distribution center is in NJ......having some of our Team Members in a time zone which is 12 hours ahead of NYC has enabled us to respond faster and more effectively to our customers' needs. Not sure why you find that disturbing. (I don't suppose Amazon team members only work out of offices in Seattle Washington, but presumably they are managed from there).



You should have just said you buy in volume so get good deals, or that you offer loss leaders to get people you hope will be repeat buyers, or that you sell a few at a loss to generate interest in the product in hopes these buyers will tell others how great the product is

I did not say it, because it is not the case. We do not sell anything at a loss.
 
I am beginning to see your real job is damage control.



Limit one per customer and you have 5000 happy customers and X unhappy ones who didn't get the deal. Let a customer buy 6 and you have less than 1000 happy customers and X+4000 unhappy ones. Doesn't sound like a smart business plan. Things just aren't adding up.
Limit 1 per customer and sell 5,000 units to 5,000 customers - customer 5,001 is still going to be shouting all over SD that he didn't get to buy his Canon copier to resell on eBay at a profit
 
I am beginning to see your real job is damage control.

Again, you are incorrect. Most of the forums I have a presence on are related to photography, and I'm there to offer help, advice and support to photographers.

But you clearly have your own agenda, here today.
 
they include cards with their products telling you not to take it back to the retailer where you bought it but to contact the company.

The real reason for this is that the retailers bought cheaper products to make themselves larger profits, but suddenly found themselves neck-deep in returned products which they could do nothing with until they got a RMA. Sometimes their contracts stipulate a limit to how much can be returned in a given time period. Sometimes their contracts have them document the disposal of the junk, to be done in such a manner where the product cannot be repaired and sold again, for which they will receive a credit (and that credit rarely exceeds the retailer's costs by much) . Sometimes the expenses of returningarre not worth the effort when you consider crating and packing costs (which tells you what the product is actually worth :eek:) The larger retailers no longer bother trying; they simply warehouse the broken junk and call in an auctioneer to sell it off when they run out of space :(

Having in-country warranty service means nothing unless the warrantor can actually do product repairs. My first dashcam died shortly after I received it. The US seller quickly RMA'd it and soon I had another which they claimed to have tested but was actually DOA (apparently all they dud was a power-on test; the problem happened after that when trying to record). I spoke in person on the phone to their head service technician who could suggest no more than using the reset button (which I'd already tried). My Ham radio and electronics background doesn't extend to digital stuff and certainly not digicams, but I knew more than he did :mad: 3rd time the charm, they expressed me a new cam and it was great. Had I bought that exact same model direct from China it would have cost about half of what I paid. In effect it's clear the US seller had about a 100% markup. For that level of profit the seller could have at least had knowledgable people on staff but they didn't (and they still don't but Viofo and others still happily supply them with cams to sell anyway).

So by paying twice as much as you need to, you might get someone who sends you cam after cam until you get one which actually works.
Now let me be clear- I know that had I experienced the same thing with a Chinese seller the warranty process would have nearly equaled the torment of Hell and the time it all took close to an eternity too, so there is some value in the local seller concept, but it's only of much value when things go wrong. Which with good products doesn't happen very often. At the moment money is short here, but in having an extra cam I have time to deal with a longer shipping and warranty process. I can afford a discounted cam or one from China, but I cannot afford one which costs substantially more while giving no more real benefit to me.

When retailer "A" can sell me a WR-1 for $70 and retailer "B" wants $100 for the same product and also claims that "A" is selling below cost then there's something very screwy going on. Can it be that retailer "A" is paying less per cam than retailer "B" and can thus afford the lower selling price while "B" cannot? Is "A" lying about making a profit? Is "B" lying about their costs? Or is the manufacturer giving different prices to different retailers while claiming fairness? If "A" and "B" are both buying direct from China there should be very little difference between their shipping costs so that can't explain away the anomaly. And if the product is good, almost nobody will need to worry about using their warranty so the actual expenses for that must be marginal and nearly equal too.

I have no idea of what is really happening here but it's quite obvious that either the WR-1 can be sold for less safely, or that there is some dis-ingenuity going on and probably in more than one place. Which is really sad as all this is definitely affecting this cam adversely when of all things present, it is the only thing involved here which so far has done nothing questionable.

I feel bad for the poor little camera :cry:

Phil
 
Adorama does not charge a customer until an item is shipped. So you can confidently place a back-order, and if the manufacturer doesn't supply us within your desired time-frame, you can cancel at any time.
In the meantime, your order is locked in at the advertised price - and it will ship out to you as soon as we receive inventory!

Well I remember the time I put a good order in on a Pentax K20D and I was very happy until I read this email.
So lesson learned, Adorama don't think there is agreement, if there don't like it.

Pentax.JPG
It's called a loss leader, you greenhorn! ;):)

Hmm it was to me:(. Lot of wasted time and no deal at the end.

So if you find the price to good to be true, it probably is.
 
Well I remember the time I put a good order in on a Pentax K20D and I was very happy until I read this email.
So lesson learned, Adorama don't think there is agreement, if there don't like it.

View attachment 32089


Hmm it was to me:(. Lot of wasted time and no deal at the end.

So if you find the price to good to be true, it probably is.

People who ordered the WR1 while that price was posted will get one when in stock. No indication this one was a typo.

Did you really think 240 dollars for a K20D was a realistic and accurate price?
 
Did you really think 240 dollars for a K20D was a realistic and accurate price?
I think it was a very good deal.
I have done that before, to see the price was put back in normal range after I have bought it.

Some people stand by there word, other ... well you see.
 
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You know this whole accusatory kefuffle over Adorama's initial $69.00 pricing for the WR1 is misguided and off target. The reason I say that is that as soon as I heard about the WR1 I went over to the FoxOffer web site where the WR1 was initially listed at $80.00. For Adorama to list it initially for about 10 dollars less is completely within the normal level of pricing you might ordinarily see from them. Not long after I saw it on FoxOffer, I went back thinking I might buy one from them but the price had now jumped to 99 dollars. I think maybe Viofo was trying to decide what price to ultimately offer the product for or something like that. For people who don't know FoxOffer and Viofo share an intimate relationship. Maybe Adorama's initial pricing was based on a different cost basis than they were ultimately provided?

Perhaps Viofo or FoxOffer might enlighten us about this?
 
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Foxoffer, GitUp, Viofo, all the same company

Yes, that's what I meant by "intimate relationship". ;) I think most people don't know that. I think that 80 dollar original pricing for the WR1 on FoxOffer is the key to this entire controversy.
 
Yes, that's what I meant by "intimate relationship". ;) I think most people don't know that. I think that 80 dollar original pricing for the WR1 on FoxOffer is the key to this entire controversy.

I would have thought it was more likely just an error, they sound like they're willing to honor that for anyone that backordered so good for those people I guess, the cheapest I've normally seen from a USA sellers is Spytec but generally $10 over the China pricing, have never seen a local seller do cheaper than China pricing which is why I'd be more inclined to think it was just an honest mistake rather than some sort of preferential pricing, the other Viofo models they list are all priced pretty much like everyone else there so it does lean toward being a one off situation I would think
 
I would have thought it was more likely just an error, they sound like they're willing to honor that for anyone that backordered so good for those people I guess, the cheapest I've normally seen from a USA sellers is Spytec but generally $10 over the China pricing, have never seen a local seller do cheaper than China pricing which is why I'd be more inclined to think it was just an honest mistake rather than some sort of preferential pricing, the other Viofo models they list are all priced pretty much like everyone else there so it does lean toward being a one off situation I would think

Yeah, maybe Adorama but for FoxOffer to list it for 80 bucks begs the question. Wish I had grabbed a screen shot. I thought 80 dollars would be the price so I was thrilled.
 
Yeah, maybe Adorama but for FoxOffer to list it for 80 bucks begs the question. Wish I had grabbed a screen shot. I thought 80 dollars would be the price so I was thrilled.

yes maybe the price that was listed was based on an assumption, it seems whoever listed it didn't even know there was no stock for them to order so it doesn't sound like there was much in the way of confirmation at the time
 
yes maybe the price that was listed was based on an assumption, it seems whoever listed it didn't even know there was no stock for them to order so it doesn't sound like there was much in the way of confirmation at the time

Either way, I think that FoxOffer's initial listing at 80 explains to some extent Adorama's listing at 70 however it may have all come down. For Adorama to sell a product for 10 to 12 percent below other's pricing is pretty normal. If FoxOffer had it for 80, and raised it to 99, Adorama should not be vilified for offering it at 69 and then raising it to 99.
 
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