Jessops .. a tale of Customer Service and a good Tamron 17-50 gone bad

Alpherah

Alpherah

Alpherah

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24 Jun 2008
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Sigh, is there any company out there with worse CS then these guys?

Scenario is as follows:
I purchased a Tamron non VC 17-50 2.8 as your aware from previous posts here, the first copy was /fail, so got it replaced. The second copy was spot on!

Anyway, 2 months down the line and this second copy starts having focus issues, back focus at at 50mm and front focus everywhere else.

Just happened completely out the blue, no damage to the lens at all (which, thankfully, Jessops agreed with).

So, I know its not against the law for them to demand its sent off for repair rather then replace, but with it being Xmas would it really of hurt? Im not fishing for refunds i just want a lens which works dammit, and it would have been so useful this time of year too =(

So anyway, let me rant a bit about the process in store.
So i go in and say its got focus issues, so they take the lens and put it on a D7000, put it into auto, point at some random lens about 20 feet away, looks at the LCD and decides "nope, looks fine to me".

After some moaning, he repeats the test with a lens about 3 feet away, checks the LCD and nope "looks fine to me". I mean he took a literal glance, didn't even zoom in on the area for christ sake and its not exactly a good way to test focus issues.

So I moan again, and he goes to see his supervisor.

Guy comes back with a tape measure and tripod. Sets up the tape measure, puts the camera on the tripod.
Finally i think .. but then i spot the error.
He's still in Auto mode, so he can't control the focus point .. tried telling him but he has none of it.

He takes the picture and, yup, the camera has chosen the bottom focal point which is hovering around the 6 CM mark on the tape measure, rather then the centre one which is significantly higher up.

"Woah" the guy proclaims. "This lens is front focusing by about 4 CM!"..

No, its not that bad, your just an idiot.

So after all this, they tell me its got to be shipped to Tamron and its a likely 8-12 week turn around with it being the xmas season.

Shocking, contacted Tamron direct in the end, they estimate i should have it back second week in Jan, so 4 weeks or less really.

/rant.
 
Tbh dont listen to Jessops when they estimate the time it will take for things to be repaired/serviced. I took out the cover for a camera I purchased from there and when that needed a service they estimated 4-8 weeks which was annoying as I had a holiday to Cornwall in 3 weeks. They had my camera back within 2 weeks which ofc was great for me.

Not saying they have good customer service because they are far from good like many high street retailers think I was just lucky with the above.
 
I've only had to deal with them once when my first 7D started to randomly error and the mirror box would continue to flip up and down after the shutter fired. It was a couple of months old and sods law it was a random error that I couldn't reproduce in the shop.... I thought it was going to be a hassle but they exchanged it there and then on the spot. This was in the Newbury branch and I had actually purchased the camera online.
 
I used to be a branch manager for jessops, but this was about 3 years ago and they are now under new owners and have undergone a lot of changes. For something 2 months old I probably would have just swapped it tbh, but that is against protocol strictly speaking

There is a reason my store used to smash it's targets though especially with repeat business from big spenders, the customer service we delivered was an exception rather than a rule and I hired staff that actually knew what they were on about. In general I wouldn't trust most staff, even managers, much more than curry's staff, but then again the pay isn't great either so it was only ever a stop gap for the knowledgeable folk
 
Ahh tamron non VC 17-50 2.8, Very rare to get a good batch going by my experience and many others. I wouldn't even risk buying one atleast it's a second hand well tested spot on lens!.

I finally got my refund from the company that sold me that junk, 4 months later...
 
Jessops seem to have good customer support in the shop but are abysmal via call centres and online. I had terrible support from them, despite spending nearly £1000 with them!

However in the shop in Wrexham there is or was a very helpful Irish woman. Recently she split open a pack of lens cleaner kits for me so I could buy the lens pen I needed after getting goop from the sea on my other one. She was very pretty too :D
 
Just to update, it got returned and i went to collect, took my D90 and D3100 to test it on, so if its still acting up i can rule out the "it your body!" argument, or so i thought.

Anyway, i collect and test in store (tape measure test again, but i was allowed to do it this time) and its still front focusing by a huge amount =/ store manager tells me its my cameras which annoyed me.

Fortunately there was someone in store with his D300 who let me test on his body, and guess what? still front focus problems.

So eventually Jessops let me reject the lens as being 'fixed' and send it away again.

Just had a call from Tamron asking me to send my D90 in so they can correctly calibrate it to my body.

Fingers crossed.
 
Jessops may sell cameras but like the purple computer shop, it doesn't mean their staff know anything about them lol.

London Camera Exchange are just as bad, my girlfriend tried to get her Nikon D300 replaced as the shutter kept sticking, every time she took it in they couldn't replicate the problem, finally my girlfriend got it to stick, she had to take a photo of it on her iPhone before they'd believe her, thankfully she got it replaced
 
Jay794 said:
Jessops may sell cameras but like the purple computer shop, it doesn't mean their staff know anything about them lol.
Click to expand...
This so much.... I used to work in Jessops part time over the xmas period a few years back and there was one guy that knew absolutely nothing.
He managed to get some poor fool to buy a 5dmk2 based purely on the Megapixel figure. It was actually painful listening to explain how anything worked :(
Everyone else in the store were photographers with their own SLRs and such so it was a nice learning experience :)


@OP - Hope you get the lens sorted eventually. Sounds a nightmare :/
 
Mixed bag with this lot for me, like most high street retailers. I accidentally omitted next day delivery from an order on their site and they were pretty helpful over the phone, I had to reorder but they cancelled my previous order as promised (how often do you hang up and the guy on the other end obviously completely forgets what he was going to do for you and it never gets done?!)

Another time I just wanted to collect an accessory and I was in a rush to catch a train, it would have been a 30 second transaction, she knew what I wanted and that I was in a rush but there was someone else in line before me, fair enough, the problem was he was buying an SLR there and then but had little idea of what extras he wanted, so rather than get me out the way she tried to sell him stuff he didn't need and warranty etc to boot, I had to leave in the end as there wasn't anyone else around and I was going to miss my train.

The funny thing was when I actually went back to get what I needed they tried to flog me a warranty, free prints etc for that too and the process of buying a £30 accessory took about 15 minutes and I had to give over address details and what not.


Sounds a bit of a nightmare for the op though.
 
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Remember when my brother went to jessops for a lens. They tries to sell him an older version of the lens for £60 more than the newer one, all the while saying it was the newer version.

I honestly don't know how the company is still going as from others I have talked to this isn't an unusual experience.
 
Update 3

Just got the lens back for a second time, seems to be much better this time though thank god.

Only managed a quick test in-store with the old man as a test subject haha ;)


Father by Alpherah, on Flickr
 
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