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

I am just posting the things I have seen. People who have bad experiences to tend to be far more vocal, but if there weren't bad experiences there would't be these vocal people. Lots of people reporting backorder products and other shady practices.

Looking over some of those negative reviews I was struck with how many times people went back to revise their ratings upwards from the original one star rating to five stars.
 
Looking over some of those negative reviews I was struck with how many times people went back to revise their ratings upwards from the original one star rating to five stars.

Hmmm, I'm not seeing that. Wonder why they were 1 star to begin with.
 
MAP? Whoa, that's something I have very strong feelings about :mad: Once an item is sold and paid for it's no longer yours to control.

All that MAP pricing doers is ensure that the consumer can not price shop to get the best deal, which means that they are almost positively not getting the best deal possible :(

Phil

VIOFO is looking to build a long term brand and form a network of "quality" sellers that honor and will support the 1 year warranty. If everyone sells at the agreed (already low!) fair to everyone price, they are good to go as a regular seller. (And no blood bath price wars start)

Of course a new seller can drop the price of stock they now own as low as they want but why should VIOFO continue to supply them with MORE product then? (Especially if they sell low and don't provide support after 30 days) VIOFO has full control of who they sell to the second, third time around etc.

I understand that customers want the absolute best deal and lowest price but there is a long term VIOFO seller relationship and support network that is being built here along with a new brand. If there is no profit you can expect no support.

There is a reason why some of these other bottom of the barrel low price dashcam companies are failing and going out of business over seas.

OCD Tronic is doing their part to make VIOFO successful long term.
 
Hmmm, I'm not seeing that. Wonder why they were 1 star to begin with.

There are a couple right on the first page of your consumeraffairs link.

They look like this: rating.png

Obviously, the unhappy customer's issues were resolved to their satisfaction, hence the revision from one star to five. Looks like they can change the number of stars on the site but not go back and edit the review.

Edit: Apparently, you can add to your review even if you can't edit it, as with these examples. Interesting how many increased review ratings there are.

As far as back-orders go I have a real issue with places like Banggood that claim items are in stock only to tell you they were not available after you've placed the order. You can get stuck for months without your item that you've already been charged for.

If a vendor states right up front that an item is on back-order before you place the order, I'm good with that, especially a company you can contact by phone and speak with live person.

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IMHO the vast majority of reviews found on all seller's sites are either fake or worthless in nature. One must sort past that kind of crap to find a modicum of truth, and even then you haven't got much to go on. Not just Adorama but everyone :(

Phil

personally when looking at reviews on any site I tend to ignore all the 5 star and all the 1 star reviews and just look at the 2 to 4 star reviews, they're the ones that seem to come across as the most honest, fake reviews are a business category in the themselves on Amazon, I'm sure other sites suffer the same sorts of problems as well
 
personally when looking at reviews on any site I tend to ignore all the 5 star and all the 1 star reviews and just look at the 2 to 4 star reviews, they're the ones that seem to come across as the most honest, fake reviews are a business category in the themselves on Amazon, I'm sure other sites suffer the same sorts of problems as well

That sounds like a reasonable approach. Personally, I tend to ignore these kind of reviews altogether because they are simply not an accurate sampling of the overall population of buyers. Only a small percentage of people are motivated to leave reviews at all, positive or negative.
 
That sounds like a reasonable approach. Personally, I tend to ignore these kind of reviews altogether because they are simply not an accurate sampling of the overall population of buyers. Only a small percentage of people are motivated to leave reviews at all, positive or negative.

This is called the "head in the sand" method.
 
This is called the "head in the sand" method.

Well no. It's avoiding skewed, unreliable internet noise, friend. Basing decisions on such data without at least taking it with a healthy grain of salt is downright foolish. In the case of Adorama, I base my decision to purchase from them on three and half decades of actual positive experience rather than a small biased sampling of people who likely had a single bad experience and wish to publicly vent about it.
 
this is the same seller that only offers 30 days warranty and then pushes customers to the manufacturer for warranty, even though that's in China, better for anyone looking for one of these to buy from somewhere where you get real warranty support like @OCD Tronic or @CaptureYourAction

That is incorrect. Adorama offers a 30-day returns period - which is not dissimilar to other equally reputable retailers in our field. Customer warranties are provided by the manufacturer - again, this is normal retail practice. On our own-branded products we offer a minimum of 1-year warranty.

Helen Oster
Adorama Camera
 
I've been dealing with Adorama for 35 years. They are one of the two largest and most knowledgeable professional camera dealers in NYC. (the other is B&H Photo) I've visited their store on W18th Street many a time. They have branched out onto more consumer oriented camera products like dash cams but they are not generally in the business of servicing warranties from Chinese vendors... or Nikon and Canon for that matter. Still, they are as solid and trustworthy a vendor you will ever find. If there is a problem or you don't like the camera and want to just return it they will take excellent care of you. The have carried the full line of Viofo products for quite some time now.

Anyone who purchased the WR1 for $69.00 has done very well for themselves. I almost bought one from Adorama at that price but ultimately decided against it, yet the temptation to buy one for the same price as a Mobius 1 was crazy tempting.

I appreciate @jokiin's efforts to steer business toward his "network" but people should be aware of good alternatives and question why he is "smearing" a firm like Adorama.

You know, the fact that the product category of dash cams is so iffy and unreliable and failure prone that there would even be a need for the kind of "over-the-top" level of customer service that is touted and heavily promoted as a business model and as a sales tool here on DCT is something we all should think about.
Thank you!

Helen
 
That is incorrect. Adorama offers a 30-day returns period - which is not dissimilar to other equally reputable retailers in our field. Customer warranties are provided by the manufacturer - again, this is normal retail practice. On our own-branded products we offer a minimum of 1-year warranty.

Helen Oster
Adorama Camera

yeah, as stated, you look after things for 30 days, then push the problem off to China
 
a loss leader is generally something you have in stock (legal requirement in our market, maybe yours is different) just to get the customer in, really only applies to brick and mortar retail though, not online sales, buying online people will just buy so no real advantage to selling something below cost

advertising something you knowingly don't have is called bait and switch, after they collect the money and you find out there's no product to offer the alternate offers start happening

there is also the possibility that they just screwed up and advertised the wrong price, that doesn't get around the fact that they're advertising a product that they haven't got coming but could still explain the below cost pricing, mistakes do happen, that still doesn't get around the fact that they only support the product for 30 days though and that is something that should be taken into consideration when ordering
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!
 
yeah, as stated, you look after things for 30 days, then push the problem off to China
Can you please advise which retailers give full 1-year warranty support for this manufacturer, in place of the manufacturer warranty? You are welcome to email me: Helen@adorama.com.

We always give consideration to matching to other retailers pricing etc and I'll be more than happy to look into this for you if any of our competitors are currently offering more favorable post-purchase customer support.
 
They didn't get any from us, and we will not ship to them due to limited quantity for first batch.
Are you saying you will not be shipping ANY inventory to us at all, at any time in the future? If so, I need to inform our Purchasing Department, and have your products removed from our website asap.
Please email me to clarify: Helen@adorama.com
 
Can you please advise which retailers give full 1-year warranty support for this manufacturer, in place of the manufacturer warranty?.

you are the first retailer I've heard of that are doing 30 days warranty on this brand when purchased in the USA, Spytec did for a short while offer 90 days but have recently changed that to 12 months also, most likely they extended that when it was pointed out that other local sellers were supporting 12 month warranty
 
Can you please advise which retailers give full 1-year warranty support for this manufacturer, in place of the manufacturer warranty?

OCD Tronic fully supports the one-year warranty on all new VIOFO products sold. (and other brands as well). We provide a No hassle repair or replacement service. Forcing your own customers to get warranty support from China is not very nice to the customer or the factory.
 
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Interesting thread.

I was reading the reviews for Adorama on resellersratings.com and although their rating is 9.27 out of 10, very many of the good reviews are fake. One or two sentences with nothing specific, like "Great products and shipping".

I only write reviews if the product or service is bad or if it is exceptional. If it is exceptional I am going to say why and not just some generic stuff like "Great customer service".

The negative reviews say they purposely oversell and then cancel the backorders with no notice and they say Adorama has admitted they oversell. Also reports of being sent used stuff as new and only being offered a partial refund.

I am thinking they must offer customers a chance at a sweepstakes for writing a review because it is obvious so many are fake.
a) Reselleratings feedback process does not allow for fake reviews as each one must link to an Adorama order number.

b) Short reviews are NOT unusual; post-purchase, all Adorama customers are sent - at random - a feedback form. Currently this may be from Reselleratings, BizRate, Shopper Approved, Deal Crunch, PriceGrabber or Shopping.com. It isn't therefore at all surprising that a satisfied customer will write just a half dozen words.

c) Adorama does NOT purposely oversell. What on earth would be the point of that? It only causes bad feeling from our customers, plus a whole load of additinal work for the Customer Support Teams.

d)It is certainly against our policy to ship out used items as new. We ship back returned items to the manufacturer for refurbishment, or sell them as open box or use as in-store demo models
The manufacturers and distributors, who supply to Adorama, and of course, other retailers, do allow the return of equipment as new, because of over-stocks, exchanges etc. This can be a particular issue after the Christmas holiday when we all need to balance out our inventories. Even if we at Adorama are completely thorough when packaging up these items for return, there is no doubt that less scrupulous retailers could well be receiving returns, trusting the customer's explanation that they never opened the box - packaging them up for return to the manufacturer or distributor. These items then form part of the inventory for sending out to other retailers.
We can't inspect the contents of every package received into the warehouse. If the manufacturer doesn't check the equipment before sending it back out, from the customer's perspective it is us who looks bad, even though it may well have not been our fault.
At Adorama we do have liberal return policies and there is no doubt that on occasion this is taken advantage of - although this does not exempt us from more closely checking any and all returns, some retailers don't.
The problem is that we are all relying upon humans to carry out the required procedures at every point in the transaction, which can, and does, result in mistakes at any place along the line.

If a customer receives an item that has cosmetic damage - whatever the supposed cause eg shipping damage - then yes, we will offer a decent discount for the customer to keep it. Many customers like this option. But if they prefer to return it, we will send an ERL, without question.
 
I am just posting the things I have seen. People who have bad experiences do tend to be far more vocal, but if there weren't bad experiences there wouldn't be these vocal people. Lots of people reporting backorder products and other shady practices like used equipment being sold as new, canceling orders but then are sent and customer billed, billed more than once, order canceled but no credit to credit card, not able to get a refund on returned products.

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

One of two things are going to happen. Either the orders will be canceled or the cameras will be sent eventually. Neither is necessarily bad. Hopefully they will come through.

Now if they cancel orders but still charge credit cards or do something like buy defective used cameras for pennies on the dollar and sell them as new, that is a problem.
I can categorically confirm that I am NOT outsourced to the Phillipines!

I can also categorically refute that Adorama does NOT cancel orders but still charge credit cards, NOR does Adorama buy "defective used cameras for pennies on the dollar and sell them as new".

Adorama Camera has been in business for over 35 years, and we ship around 10,000 orders per day. That would not be the case for a dishonest or disreputable business.

However, since it sounds as though you have experienced less than stellar service at some point in the past, rather than go back and forth on this forum, would you like to email me directly: Helen@adorama.com with details of the problem?
 
you are the first retailer I've heard of that are doing 30 days warranty on this brand when purchased in the USA, Spytec did for a short while offer 90 days but have recently changed that to 12 months also, most likely they extended that when it was pointed out that other local sellers were supporting 12 month warranty

We do NOT offer 30 days warranty. We offer a 30 day returns period. This is not the same thing at all.


We offers 30 days returns on most items in our inventory - excluding the following: DJI products, X-rated used gear, Merchandise missing the original Universal Product Code (UPC), Software, Film, Paper, DVDs, Bulbs, flash tubes, Batteries, Ink cartridges, Notebooks, Netbooks, Tablets, iPads and Computers, Memory cards, any item which has been removed from its "blister-pack", Printers once toner has been installed, Underwater equipment once it has been used in water.

 
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