Pardon me while I get off on a little bit of a rant here. There is a lesson here, one that's valuable to every business owner no matter how big or small your company is.
For the past few years our main camera has been the Panasonic SDX-900 DVCPro 50 camcorder. It is, in my humble opinion, the best looking standard-def camera ever made. It has an amazing 24p 16x9 mode with incredible shadow 
detail. This camera is so good that it had allowed us to put off buying HD camera gear much longer than we thought we would have to. Most of our projects get delivered online or on DVD, and this camera is perfect for delivering top-notch pictures for those circumstances. If we needed to shoot in actual HD we rented a Varicam or CineAlta. (We're in the process of executing our HD upgrades...but that's another blog post!)
Well, as sometimes happens in this biz, we were out in the field and a case fell on the SDX-900's soft bag (while the camera was in it), and the viewfinder snapped off. You can see in this picture where the metal sheared. A little gaffers tape got us through that shoot, and I wasn't all that stressed about the situation. It was an honest accident, and budgeting for repairs is just part of doing business.
I had my favorite repair shop, Contract Video Specialists, email me a parts list, and I put in an order for the replacement part. As you can see in the picture, the broken part is a piece of stamped metal, with a Panasonic logo and some plastic where the tally light shines through. There are no electronics, and Panasonic doesn't make you order the whole viewfinder.
My friend from Contract Video called me back.
"Are you sitting down?" she asked me.
"Yes."
"How much do you think that part costs?" she teased.
Now, having been in this biz for more than a handful of years, I'm used to paying premium prices for parts. It's just something you've got to live with, since you can't comparison shop for these things.
"I dunno...a couple hundred bucks?" I responded, launching us into the High/Low game from The Price is Right.
"Higher..."
"Three Hundred?"
"Higher..."
"Four Hundred?"
"Higher..."
"Five Hundred?"
"Higher..."
"Six Hundred?"
(At this point I'm laughing, because of the absurdity of the situation.)
"Seven Hundred?"
Seven hundred dollars, my friends. That little scrap of stamped metal costs seven hundred dollars. Let's all take a moment and let that sink in. (Hum the Jeopardy theme, if you'd like...)
My friends at Contract Video were apologetic, and sympathetic, and just as shocked as I was. But I had no choice, of course. I needed to part, so Panasonic got my $700.
But here's the thing, and the lesson in this tale. I went into this expecting to pay a premium, expecting to pay much more than the part would be worth in a non-pro-video scenario. Like I said, paying high prices for replacement parts is just a part of doing business, and we budget for it. Up to three hundred dollars and I wouldn't have been shocked. A bit annoyed, perhaps, but not shocked.
But seven hundred bucks? Sorry, folks, we've crossed the line from premium pricing into aggressive profiteering. It's unreasonable, and it's seriously soured my view of Panasonic and my feelings on owning this camera. Just like that, in one quick, silly stroke of greed, Panasonic burned through years of built-up good will they had earned with me. Now, when someone asks me what I think of my Panasonic camera, my stories are tempered with warnings that, yes, the gear is high quality, but be prepared to bend over when it's time to buy parts. (Sorry...that's an image none of us needed...)
By the way, I emailed and snail-mailed Panasonic about this, figuring at the very least someone would want to know how ultimately short-sighted this pricing policy is. Never heard back from them. Which, of course, makes it even worse.
We all have our thresholds when it comes to pricing and customer service. What's yours? Do you have a good feel for what your clients are willing to bear? Is it really worth dinging them for that double-overtime rush charge, or is it sometimes better to be the hero, to come through in the rush situation and earn their loyalty and trust? (It depends on the client, IMHO...)
What do you think?
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Screwed by Panasonic (So tell us Dave, how do you REALLY feel?)
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1 comment:
Pay now or pay later...
I have a JVC GYHD100 that went in to the shop for a firmware upgrade so as to make it not break timecode literally hundreds of times per hour (Now it's only about 4/hour) and it got shipped back with a pinched VF cord so it had to go back again. It's recently had a broken viewfinder (That they say they'll fix for free as it broke exactly where everyone else's did) the top handle is loose (You have to remove the entire side of the camera to tighten it down) and it's now back into the service department for a $1100 tape drive.
Other than the terrible build quality it's a nice camera...
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