Re: [Leica] Bad experience with B&H *website*

["Mike Durling" <durling@widomaker.com>]

I've ordered plenty of things, mostly film and supplies, from their website
with no problems.   The stuff usually arrives in two days even with economy
shipping so I don't see how the voice orders can go faster.  They do call to
verify your first credit card order.  You must have caught them on a bad
day.

BTW their store is worth a visit if you are ever in New York.

Mike D

- ----- Original Message -----
From: "Satish Kumar" <satish_kumar@hotmail.com>
To: <leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us>
Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2001 11:54 PM
Subject: [Leica] Bad experience with B&H *website*


>
> Folks,
>
> I have had terrible luck with the B&H website today, wasting about 3 hours
> of my time total (mind you, I am talking only about the
> website, I have had no real experience with B&H itself).  I have heard
> really good things about them here and elsewhere (which is
> why I went there in the first place), and I want to know if anyone else
have
> had similar problems.
>
> First time, I spent about an hour and half looking through the products
> placing about 20 items on my cart (film, lens, processing
> mailers, etc.) and then suddenly, I got an error saying that somehow it
was
> unable to access my shopping cart.  Going back, forward
> trying to get a cache of my shopping cart didn't work, in fact, it didn't
> even allow me to get back to the main page unless I opened a
> completely new browser window (no "open link in new window" tricks),
> amazing!  I called them, and after talking to three people, I
> got to a guy who said, well, I got to register to prevent such things from
> happening, so OK, I registered.  It seemed to work fine after
> I registered -- when I had to step out for sometime, it said that my
session
> had expired, but when I logged in again, the items were all
> there fine!  So, I spent another hour getting the items I already had and
> some new items.  And I had to step out again, and when I
> came back in it asked me to log in, and boom the shopping cart is empty,
and
> all the items are gone!
>
> Based on my experience, here is my recommendation:
> 1.  As far as possible, place an order by phone instead of through the web
> (though they seem to be a little impatient and hurried on
> the phone, except for one guy in the film section who answered my
questions
> patiently -- I wonder since film was the cheapest of all
> the items I was buying).
> 2.  If you use the website, register for an account before you place any
> items on your shopping cart.
> 3.  Write down or print a copy of the items in your shopping cart every
once
> in a while.  I feel like a fool for not doing that being
> bitten the first time around.
> 4.  Btw, I did a "live chat" and the guy ("David-B") who told me that
orders
> placed on phone ship faster than orders placed on the
> web, so that might be yet another reason to do things the old fashioned
way.
>
> Btw, I am no newbie to the internet that doesn't know how to perform a
> simple shopping cart operation -- I have been working with
> the internet since well the number of websites could be counted with the
> fingers on one hand, well maybe two hands, when there was
> no Yahoo! and no "We have the largest collection of teen porn on the web"
> ads on the newsgroups (ah, those times!).  And this is
> really the first website where I have had problems like this in placing an
> order (usually they have that part of the site all debugged out
> quite well :-)
>
> -Satish
>
>
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