litemakr wrote:They are indeed creating innovative and affordable cameras (with some glaring and still unaddressed flaws). That is awesome and I mostly love mine. But they are also terrible at communicating with and showing appreciate for their paying customers. They don't acknowledge technical flaws in the cameras and the way they ignored customers who waited months and months and months for cameras is inexcusable. Implementing a massive price cut shortly after finally shipping MFT cameras to their most loyal and patient customers who paid full price is a bad move. They should have waited. They should also be sympathetic with those customers who are angry about it.
Being innovative does NOT excuse bad customer service and what appears to be flat out contempt for the people who have spent thousands of dollars on their products and trusted them to deliver what they promised when they promised. They have failed on both of those fronts. People are very justified in their anger. Blackmagic isn't a charity, they are a business and people pay good money for their products. They aren't giving them away or losing money in the name of art. This idea we should be "grateful" to them is utterly absurd.
When you buy something for $3000, you have a right to expect it to work as advertised and to be delivered when promised. That cost in relation to a RED or any other camera is irrelevant. If I buy a $10 DVD on Amazon and it is scratched or doesn't arrive on time, I get top notch customer service immediately. I don't get lesser customer service because I didn't buy the $20 blu ray. You spend $3000 on a blackmagic MFT camera and it doesn't arrive for 8 months, there are no shipping updates, emails are ignored, the camera doesn't work as promised, there is no communication about when things will be fixed, and then the price is cut by $1000 a month later with no acknowledgement of the loyal customers who just got screwed. That's BS.
I talked to several of the blackmagic folks at NAB this year and they seemed like a decent bunch. So the contempt they seem to display towards their customers is a mystery to me.
i disagree, and here's why. this is a cheap camera to begin with. it was cheap before the price dropped and its cheaper now too. you act as if you've lost massive amounts invested in this. i argue that if you say this its because you're a budget film maker who has less disposable income than some of our friends in Hollywood. now thats an assumption and i could be wrong. also there is nothing wrong with being in a low-budget. but the cinematography industry is not made for low-budget customers.
dslr cameras have made cinematography more accessible, this is true, but this entire industry is based on lots of gear that costs boat loads of money.
they are not a camera company. they are a post company. the best way to sell post products is to have your customers use cameras that shoot in RAW format, cause then they get the most out of what blackmagic sells and color grading with their software makes more sense. but selinse RAW cameras are hard to come by at an affordable price, they make some cameras. not so they can enter the camera game, but rather in my opinion to sell you their post equipment that is compatible. so they drive the camera price as low as they can to make the cost of their post equipment more affordable.
its a bridge to get us to purchase their other stuff and to set us up to need their software and increase their clientele base. I'm not convinced that its bad business. keep camera costs down and hope for their sales to go up and they might up sell us on other equipment down the road.
I'm not convinced its bad business because everyone bought it. therefore, when they purchased it they agreed by voting with their cash that they felt it was worth it to pay that amount, especially because the cheap cost of the camera meant you could make back your investment faster by getting paying jobs. anyone that isn't getting paying jobs or got this camera as a hobby? well they are early adopters I'm afraid, and that was a gamble and risk you took when you put down your pre-order.
i do not agree with the statement that the customer is always right. i believe thats a bunch of crap. the customer has no idea what they want. that's what advertising is for, to tell the customer what they want. they have done a masterful job of telling the consumer to want their products and its working, and they now take our money hand over fist.
when a company with that much power to push the button in your brain that is labelled "buy our camera now" decides to tell you "ya know what guys? we don't need as much of your money as we thought we did to make profit margins." the response should not be like this in my opinion. i think it should be, "thank goodness you didn't realize that from the # of cameras you push out the door that you could be charging twice as much!!! thank you for not deciding to take more of money by jacking the price up!"
need we all be reminded that the closest comparable cameras by way of feature set costs thousands upon thousands of $$$? i don't write this post to sound negative of mean but realistic to the reality that any perceived inconvenience was voluntarily entered upon when the consumer makes a purchase
Sat Aug 03, 2013 2:30 am
