Re: Do not buy from Cardinal Camera / Greentoe! You have been warned.
I can see interactions going both ways with he owner of Cardinal. I will explain by telling you a little story.
As a preface I will say that I have bought two items from Cardinal Camera. In both cases I got a good price, and prompt service.
On to the story.
In May, in response to an email offering a discount if I called, I pre-ordered the new Tamron 70-180mm f2.8. He did in fact give me a nice discount, and said that I was #5 on the list so my order would go out with the first shipment. I paid in full at the time of the order.
All good so far.
I never did receive a confirmation receipt for my order, or any other form of acknowledgement. I did see the transaction against my credit card.
Tamron announced that shipments would begin on Friday May 15th. In absence of a confirmation from Cardinal, I called on Monday May 11th to confirm that all was OK with my order, and I would still be shipped in the first batch.
Everytime I called the phone would be picked up and slammed down before I could say a word. Over the next few days I called more and more frequently, all with the same result. I really started to get worried. But I kept up with my attempts to get through.
Finally, on Wednesday May 13th in response to a slammed down phone call, I got a text message. I won't quote it here because it consisted mainly of swearing, and name calling. It also said I had already been refunded on my order. Confused, I checked with my CC, and no refund. Now I was really getting confused and concerned.
Still unable to get through by phone I responded to the text saying I didn't understand his anger, and didn't receive any sort of refund. After some more back and forth texts it became apparent that he had me mixed up with some other customer because our phone numbers were similar.
Thankfully I had kept my part of the conversations polite and professional through some pretty rude texts, even though I was angry about being treated this way. To his credit, he did profusely apologize when his error became clear to him.
As far as my transaction was concerned, it turns out my lens had shipped the preceding Monday, and arrived on Thursday the 14th. Almost a week earlier than promised. Had I not called to get status I would have considered the whole transaction exceptionally good service. It is not often you get a discount, and early shipping on a preorder for a high demand item.
I don't know the details of the transaction with the guy I was mistaken for. But I am guessing he would come down on the never do business with these guys. For sure a customer should never be spoken to in the manner he did when he thought I was him.
While this experience does show me that in a problematic transaction management at Cardinal may be a bit volatile and not handle things in a way that would be called professional.
Maybe these opposite kinds of customer experiences are the reason for the strongly polarized views that are being expressed so strongly in this thread.
Aug 22, 2020 at 10:49 AM
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