Complaint Review: Ritz Camera

As a current store manager with over five years experience with Wolf Camera I have seen just about every type of customer service issue possible. After reading this report and all of the others included here, I would first and foremost like to offer my apologies for anyone who has been mistreated or felt like they have been misled. There is too often a disconnect between customers and employees which leads to a us versus them attitude on both sides. This is absolutely the wrong attitude. I try to promote a feeling of community in my personal interactions, my store's interactions, and my district's interactions. Ideally every store in the world treats you not only with respect as a customer but also as a friend. This is my personal outlook and the way I conduct business. I am truly sorry if anyone working for our company has wronged anyone here intentionally or unintentionally.

I feel that I may be able to offer a bit of insight into the repair issue here as well as some of the other complaints reported on this site. We as a company contract most of our repairs to outside service providers. These providers often do a wonderful job repairing cameras and returning them to the store. Occasionally repairs take longer than what would be called a reasonable amount of time. This is unfortunate but is usually caused by a few things as follows:

1. The repair requires parts not immediately available (on order from a manufacturer).
2. The repair facility is not authorized to conduct a repair. Some manufacturers will not license many (if any at all) repair facilities to repair cameras under warentee. These repairs have to be sent back to the manufacturer to be fixed.
3. A repair gets caught up in shipping. Sometimes a repair is not picked up/shipped back by our shipping company immediately because of some clerical/automation error. Very occasionally our shipping company loses track of a package altogether.

Again the repairs that fall into the above categories represent a very small percentage of our total repairs, but just the same these issues do unfortunately occur. My district and my store makes every effort to take care of our customers in every aspect. We try to keep an open line of communication between our employees our service providers and our customers. In addition I try to do everything reasonable to help my customers out.

Unfortunately not all of our employees understand all of our policies. Sometimes this is due to a lack of training and sometimes we hire people who just do not want to perform to the best of their ability. Again I apologize if you have been mistreated by someone who falls into this category. Every company occasionally hires people who do not work out. Unfortunately in today's world it is also very hard to remove employees who do not perform without clear and repeated documentation. Sadly we live in fear of litigation with all of our relations, but I want to emphasize that these employees represent a very small percentage of our total staff. Most of our employees are kind, courteous, and very helpful.

With regard to rebates (which seem to represent a majority of the complaints here) I am sorry if one of our employees made a mistake, didn't give you the complete rebates forms, or one of your rebates wasn't honored. Usually these problems arise from a lack of communication. That is that the rebate stipulates some sort of condition (a camera and printer bought at the same time indicated on the same receipt), or the rebate is for a certain time period. Sometimes we make mistakes, and sometimes the customer makes mistakes. Sometimes we are stuck between a manufacturer and a customer. Here again I try to do everything reasonable to accommodate my customers.

Rebates ideally serve two purposes. First of all rebates make unaffordable things affordable. Secondly manufactures hope to recoup the cost of rebates through accessories (you get a printer for free, but you pay for ink and paper). There is absolutely no incentive not to honor a rebate. The costs incurred are too high (mad customers, bad experiences, refusal to buy from certain manufacturers, and refusal to shop at certain locations). I apologize if anyone has had a bad experience from rebates, but I assure you that there is no valid reason to not honor them.

My job, my coworker's jobs, and my company's success are all dependent upon one thing. You. Without you the customer myself and thousands of other people are unemployed. My job is to provide the best service possible to keep you coming back to me. There is no incentive for me to lose customers and every incentive to gain them.

My name is Dante. Come on down to Raleigh, NC and see me. I'll do my best to get you taken care of.

I empathsize with this consumer because his story is repeated all too often at Ritz/
Wolf Cameras'. He is exactly right that the repair process takes way too long.
Employees find this out the hard way, sending Camera to the "Home Office,"
of Ritz camera and are often told vaguely that it's in process. They have to repeatedly call the repair "inside," number and about one person handles all the repairs it seems for the whole company. Sometimes finding out where the camera is takes repeated calls, and when it's finally located, they may say oh it's at Sony or Panasonic, or oh we're waiting on it to be "replaced," and that always seems
to take a minimum of 8 weeks to have a Warranty honored. It leads to Irrate customers in some cases, and some have to get the District Manager involved and they too seem to be held captive by their own repair department. It is the biggest soar spot I believe within their whole system and causes the worst impression on what could have been an acceptable experience for the customer.
The store employee is often talked down to and treated poorly by their own repair department. It was so bad for me at one time I wondered why they offered repairs at all if they cannot get them fixed or replaced in a timely manner to keep their good and formerly happy customer (s). It has made many employees look bad and is extremely unfair to the local store and especially the customer.

You're right. Corporate does not respect its employees. They work 9-5 hours M-F whereas the average hours of the five stores that I've worked at is 9-8. Many corporate employees won't even answer the phone for us at 4:50.

Repairs are contracted to outside companies, and they are contracted by district. I've worked in a store in South Carolina, and they used to send their cameras to Greens Repair in Florida. Customers used to have to wait months before they saw their camera again. They now do their repairs through a company in Georgia, which has a faster turnaround time. I'd recommend contacting management about them changing repair facilities.

Here's a breakdown of time. The store is suppose to wait three days before shipping your camera off to repair in case you change your mind. Then UPS picks it up, and it is usually a week before the repair company receives the camera. If it has to be sent to the manufacturer, that's one week of shipping to the manufacturer, some time for them to repair the camera, and one week to ship back to the repair facility, where they will spend some more time seeing if the manufacturer has actually fixed the camera. Then yet another week to ship back to the store.

Some repair facilities also like to finish a bulk of repairs from one particular store and send them back together, but if prompted by the store, they will send individual cameras back. Another common problem is that if your camera is an older model or a model with unique parts, the repair company has to order the part and wait for that to come in before being able to repair the camera.

Sadly, the best any employee can do for you at a store level is loan you a camera and keep calling corporate and the repair company.