Today I got a message from a distributor who sells cameras as I enquired about a time-lapse camera that I was interested in. It sounded like the ideal solution for me and as well a new model was supposed to come out. I didn’t see it available for sale for some reason though at this particular distributor.
So I sent an email to them asking when they would be carrying it and the price. The response I got was very surprising. As it turned out, apparently the camera did not live up to their expectations while having some extreme negatives in terms of operational reliability that made them not want to carry the product or sell it to people for the time being.
That’s kind of surprising as usually any company would be willing to sell a product as simply the vendor. If you as the retail store sold Apple’s newest iPhone that did not get rave reviews usually stores would leave that between the customer and manufacturer to determine if the product itself was worth it. Unless there was a blatant security or safety hazard for selling the product of course.
I have to admit though, as a customer I was highly impressed that the business was actually willing to do that. They then suggested what could work as an alternative solution. I am inclined to want to try and buy my equipment from them if possible since it demonstrates extreme honesty in not wanting to sell what they feel is a bad product.
Larger companies probably would be able to do that since they often have purchasing agreements. This is the first time I personally seen anyone approach it in this way.