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The importance of shopping locally


Eric Fletcher S.O.C.

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Last year I switched to a Preston Follow focus after having a Scorpio for 10 years. While the Scorpio was a great unit getting it serviced was a pain. The best service in North America is in Burnaby Canada at David Hable's Cramped Attic Technology. The pain for me was shipping the unit out, not just out but to Canada out. Customs had to be dealt with each time, meaning even a simple repair was a three day out of service and that's if the customs paperwork was filled out correctly.

 

Today the difference of shopping locally was really driven home. Yesterday my first came to me because he was having an issue with the power switch on the my HU3, I told him to call Preston and see if they might have a field repair idea or if we need to send it in. The answer was to send it in. So this morning at 10am my HU3 left set thanks to Transpo and they ran it down to Preston and dropped it to them at 11am. At 2pm it was done, come pick it up. At 4pm the HU3 was back on our set, repaired and updated, not only was the power switch repaired but they also replaced the OLED display and the three buttons below the display.

 

Allow me to restate this. What was once a three DAY repair, is now a three HOUR repair. Plus now it's in trusted hands 100% of the time, no freaking out about shipping.

 

So in the future when you hear an old timer say "Buy Locally" think about the hassles you will be preventing and the peace of mind you are buying.

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I've had the same level of service from Preston, Tiffen and Bartech with either a walk-in repair, phone tech support and/or overnight service there and back. I'm sure there are other companies as well but even from the "outback" of Las Vegas having LA area vendors and service support within a four hour drive has saved my tail more than once!

 

Robert

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It's all understandable when you are living in the USA, however, the rest of the world has to deal with international shipping and Customs, all the time.

So I buy internationally, trying to find the best equipment and it basically does not matter where it comes from, as long as it is not from Thailand :lol:

That's not completely true, I do make and design my own stuff here as we have also very capable and reasonably priced machinists.

 

Next week I will receive my own designed Steadicam base, the guts from a Master but the outside is my own vision..... and for a very good price!

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I broke off my channel selector of my bartech and emailed Jim. I could not believe the new selector was at my doorstep the second day in the morning. ( i lve in europe and jim in the US )

 

Second thing is that its like rob already mentioned. Its the US for us, there is not much in europe. I rather deal with customs then dealing with my supplier in the UK who denies my problem.

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oh hey :) maybe you should check out the forum guildlines section then :)

 

quoted from rule section:

 

Do not cross-post. Posting the same or similar message in more than one place in the forum is not acceptable. If done by accident, please contact a forum Leader or Administrator with a link to the post and we'll remove it.

 

cheers

Josh

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