Helping Out The Best Way They Can
I'm sure anyone that follows my blog remembers this little fiasco. One of the things that I never took the chance to comment upon was the nature in which the damage occurred and the subsequent reaction from one of my (continued) favorite vendors of photography equipment, BlackRapid.
To briefly summarize, my Canon 5D was attached to my BlackRapid dual strap when it tumbled into the mud and died a cruel death. It would have been incredible easy for me to place blame on a failed product (the strap) and, in fact, my initial reaction was to tweet out that I was upset about the integrity of the strap and what happened to my fallen comrade.
BlackRapid caught wind of this tweet and asked me to contact their customer relations department and explain the story of what happened. As a real quick aside, Photographers need to understand one thing: there does not exist a company that has a better social media presence in the land of photography than BlackRapid. I've never once tweeted a mention of them and not had a response, they've helped our photo walks on numerous occasions, and they're just generally good folks to have as someone that you follow on twitter.
That being said, I obliged their account and contacted their customer relations department. I was put in contact with a real sweet gal that goes by the name of Susie. Susie read my story and immediately sprung to action with a sympathetic ear. In light of the events, I never blamed BlackRapid for the death of my camera. It was a freak accident, and nothing more. Despite that thought process, however, Susie offered to replace my strap at no cost to me. I could not stress enough to her, time and time again, that I didn't fault BlackRapid, but her persistence in assuring I was pleased with their level of response was unmatched by any company I've ever dealt with in the past. Upon jokingly asking if they had a "replacement camera program", I would not have been surprised to have her respond with a resounding "YES!" (Edit: They don't)
BlackRapid gets an A+ in my book and, because of that, I cannot recommend their products and service enough. They've really done a bang-up job in supporting me through these troubling times and their products, along with an amazing customer response team, will keep me coming back to them every time I need something new that they produce.
Thanks, Susie.