B&H Tech Support

MattKing said:

I see it having its place.

The benefit of consulting a large group of end users is that they will together have, in total, more and wider experience and knowledge about the use and application of the product than any single retailer will.

If your intended use of a product is at least slightly unusual, it is great that the retailer tries to put you in touch with a large number of users, because someone else may have tried just that.

It should not be used to replace answers from someone on staff who is familiar with the product manual and the usual uses of the product.

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But then the shop in some ways turns into a cooperative. And those have a different price policy as shops aiming at maximum profit.

Also these days we had a discussion here of the labour policy of B&H. I'm not sure B&H would like their "shoppers" involving themselves in that as with explaining their goods.

Thomas Bertilsson said:

I think if you're in the business of selling photography equipment, you should also be able to support it.

I work for a tech company, and am often referred to because I know a lot about what I'm doing. I take pride in that, and when I don't know the answer to a question, I do research to find out.

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Henry from B & H has stated that they send out 20,000 packaged every day. Every. Single. Day. You except them to have enough staff to support that number of customers?

No thanks. I'll go to the manufacturer if I need help. B & H has low prices for a reason.

Thomas Bertilsson said:

I was curious what others thought about this method of offering tech support. As usual I'm in a minority with my opinion, which I don't mind at all.

If it were my business I'd never allow it.


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A user forum is not "tech support". Certainly not in an official capacity. Retailers do not provide tech support. Never have. The manufacturer provides tech support. A retailer as a courtesy can offer to assist people but their expertise is severely limited compared to the manufacturer.

If you have many customers it is your business to serve these customers. Big business also means big service.

MattKing said:

I see it having its place.

The benefit of consulting a large group of end users is that they will together have, in total, more and wider experience and knowledge about the use and application of the product than any single retailer will.

If your intended use of a product is at least slightly unusual, it is great that the retailer tries to put you in touch with a large number of users, because someone else may have tried just that.

It should not be used to replace answers from someone on staff who is familiar with the product manual and the usual uses of the product.

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It is very unreasonable to expect B & H to have staff that are fully experienced with the entire product line that they sell. How can a staff of dozens (?) know tens of thousands of products?

AgX said:

If you have many customers it is your business to serve these customers. Big business also means big service.

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B & H consistently provides amazing service. I've shopped with them since the late '80s and have never once been less than 100% satisfied.

One time I bought a camera from B & H, had it shipped to my corporate HQ. Someone brought it over to China where I was living. I noticed that the camera had several hundred shots on the shutter and emailed Henry, asking him if this was normal? *BEFORE* he responded to my email, he immediately credited my card with $100 and then replied and asked if I wanted to exchange it. I didnt think it was that big a deal since the hassle of moving the camera back to the US would take weeks, I declined and still have that camera today.

That's service.

RattyMouse said:

It is very unreasonable to expect B & H to have staff that are fully experienced with the entire product line that they sell. How can a staff of dozens (?) know tens of thousands of products?

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Why then buy from a retailer at all?

Then a manufacturer should install a webshop and offer all expertize they have,

The only benefit a retailer could offer would be advice on chosing between products of different manufacturers. But then a retailer still likely woud be biaseed for economical reasons, as margins depending on order-volume per manufacturer.

If I walk into a Lowe's or a Home Depot, and I have questions about a product, there are usually quite a few people who can help me on the spot.
I expect them to.


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If you go to the B&H website home page they clearly invite customers to call or live chat for advice. And their New York radio ad used to always mention how the staff would help you since they're all photographers, etc. etc. etc. I usually already know what I want so I've not availed myself of their offer.

I have shopped there for almost 30 years and see no reason to stop. I also get the emails but there is no obligation to participate, and as a previous poster mentioned you should be able to opt out entirely. Other retailers do this too, like Amazon. It's just another version of the Product Review.

Perhaps my expectations are too high.

But I do think that when I support a business with my hard earned dollars, I expect something of value in return. I don't feel as though I'm just paying for the product, but I pay for product, good order and shipment processing, and support when I need it.
If I have a problem with something I buy from them, I expect there to be a knowledgeable person there to help me with it. Asking customers to answer questions from other customers doesn't give me the best confidence that they will be able to.

To me it gives the impression that they aren't investing enough resources to support the products they decided to carry in inventory.

I'll continue to purchase from B&H; I don't see much reason to stop using them. And on it goes...

Thanks to all who contributed to the thread. You helped me see the big picture of customer expectation.

Thomas Bertilsson said:

If I walk into a Lowe's or a Home Depot, and I have questions about a product, there are usually quite a few people who can help me on the spot.
I expect them to.


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Not my experience at all. Often the person I ask is clueless and I have to wait for them to find someone who *might* know the answer. I get far better service from B & H than I ever do at Home Depot.

Thomas Bertilsson said:

Perhaps my expectations are too high.

But I do think that when I support a business with my hard earned dollars, I expect something of value in return. I don't feel as though I'm just paying for the product, but I pay for product, good order and shipment processing, and support when I need it.
If I have a problem with something I buy from them, I expect there to be a knowledgeable person there to help me with it. Asking customers to answer questions from other customers doesn't give me the best confidence that they will be able to.

To me it gives the impression that they aren't investing enough resources to support the products they decided to carry in inventory.

I'll continue to purchase from B&H; I don't see much reason to stop using them. And on it goes...

Thanks to all who contributed to the thread. You helped me see the big picture of customer expectation.

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I've spent well over $20,000 dollars at B & H throughout the years. I challenge you to find any competitor of theirs that carries as many products and provides a better level of support. They do not exist.

Every time I have contacted B & H they have done whatever it has taken to make me satisfied, including facilitating the return of what I had just purchased. I dont return much to them after I have bought it but the few times I have went beyond smooth. They happily took back items I was not satisfied with.

I just bought a 52" TV from B & H and am prepping to buy a Plustek 120 scanner from them, once I decide to commit to that device. Maybe next week.

Good for you. Is there anything else you'd like to add to win your argument?


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Thomas Bertilsson said:

Good for you. Is there anything else you'd like to add to win your argument?


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No reason to get snotty. If you cant answer a question then perhaps simply just accept that.

hi thomas

some of the good folks who work in a big box hardware store ( the ones you mention )
have given me OK advice about everything from framing, building, plumbing and electrical work
but i have also gotten not so good advice from the same stores. the ones who
i was lucky enough to talk with, and who gave me good advice were people who were put out of
business by the big box store, they had their own electrical or building or plumbing &c businesses before,
found themselves out of work, swallowed their pride and went to work with the people that did the deed. others who i got
not so good advice from, well, they were clueless and admitted they were, well, probably going to give me bad advice,
and if i was lucky, someone else saw the struggle ( a customer? another employee ? ) and offered some advice (like a drive-by)
... the times, i didn't buy anything, i went to a coffeeshop
to regroup so i didn't totally waste a 30-40 minute drive out of my way to get stuff that i needed but was a little unsure
of exactly how to translate the books i owned, websites /utube videos i sort of digested ( or partially digested ) on
the subject. i will say, the staff was friendly ...
one of the stores, well they were kind of crabby, and you would go in there wondering why people who hated customers worked
in customer service &c ... its like anything one takes the good with the bad, and i certainly wouldn't say all of my
experiences there were good. i will say my purchasing experiences at b+h have been good, their customer service is good
and over the years they have sold me quite a bit of "stuff" but i woudn't really go to their sales staff about advice or
how to use things because i understand they are sales staff ( not out of work photographers or "a pro shop" where one would expect
staff to have a better understanding of some things, or customers to offer a drive-by while standing in line ) and sales is what they do best.
if they want to have some sort of out of store advise thing, or knowledge-base about using stuff i think that is OK ...
i would probably just call the manufacturer

I suspect the B&H's e-mails serve as much as a way to keep customers engaged with their site and drum up more business as it does to provide technical support.

There are many cases when crowd-sourced support can be much more useful than retailer or manufacturer support. Manufacturers may design a product for general use and label it "compatible with most SLR's", they do not test it with every possible model. For a consumer who wants to know "does this work with my gear", crowd-sourcing allows a person who has used that particular combination to say "yes it does", "no it doesn't", or "this is what you have to do to make it work".

Just got a new B&H catalog and was puzzled to find pictures of a sink, bottles, tanks and reels under the "Dry Side" of Darkroom Equipment page.

A matter of crowd intelligence failing...

MattKing said:

The benefit of consulting a large group of end users is that they will together have, in total, more and wider experience and knowledge about the use and application of the product than any single retailer will.

If your intended use of a product is at least slightly unusual, it is great that the retailer tries to put you in touch with a large number of users, because someone else may have tried just that.

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If you look at the question forwarded by B&H to Thomas, it is

1. neither a question about anything particularly strange or unusual. It's about a person trying to slap an off brand mirror lens to a very common digital crop camera, something that's done a gazillion times every day. At least one or two people in B&H staff should definitely know about this topic enough to answer such a question.
2. nor is it a topic of Thomas's core photographic interest, which is AFAIK not teaching newbies with mirror lenses and digital crop cameras, but artistic analogue photography at the highest level. I can imagine that this support question ticked him off just like many linux experts who get pestered by inane windows support questions ("how do I install drivers for this US$ 5.99 Walmart webcam?"). I can also imagine Thomas would have happily answered a forwarded question about the tonality of some particular B&W paper or processes, without starting an APUG thread about it.

Some may rejoice at the low prices offered by B&H and continue to do business with them, but this doesn't mean everybody knowledgeable now has to do unpaid newbie tech support for them.

As a former supplier to B&H, I can assure you that they take customer support and employee training seriously. As a B&H customer, the sales reps I have talked to were very knowledgable.

In my experience, when these questions come in thru their website, they try to answer the question themselves. If they can't, the web team contacts the B&H product buyer and asks for a manufacturer technical contact and then forwards the question to that contact. Some of their products are purchased thru distribution and they may not have a direct relationship with the manufacturer.

So why do they send these questions out? Probably because no one at B&H really knew of this B&L lens would work perfectly on a 7D and they don't have a good contact at the manufacturer or the manufacturer didn't know the answer. You have to cut B&H a little slack. How many products do they sell? 10,000? More? It would be impossible to know everything about every product. There also is a chance that a customer that purchased the product has used it in the same way the person asking the question want to use it.

B&H is a sales organization. You can't expect too many people on a payroll that big overall to all be specialists at retail wages. I don't take anything for granted, certainly not posted reviews, and even less published reviews. I know how the system works. There is an art to sorting out factual information from generic fluff, and that requires linking up with experienced people who seriously use the same things you're shopping for. I'm going through that hell right now, trying to accelerate teaching my replacement(s) before I retire; and he has thirty years of experience to begin with, but still a long ways to go. Pass down what I can while I can. But my customers depends on the accuracy of information. Hundreds of thousands of dollars can be at stake. It's been fun. But I want to drift off into the sunset of a safe light. Time to move on.

Amazon has been doing this for a few years now. I've answered some of those queries where I thought the information was likely to be obscure, and I've been sure of the answer (e.g., Q: "Does this new fuel pump replace the original one on this thirty-year-old camp stove?" A: "Why yes, and it's even better. I bought it because my old one cracked, and it works perfectly.") It's probably faster to crowdsource the information from verified purchasers in some of these cases than to send the potential customer to the manufacturer, which is what the merchant would likely do, though perhaps not in the case described in the original post in this thread.

Amazon and B&H are competitors, so I'd imagine that this is just B&H keeping up with Amazon by offering a similar kind of service for online purchasers.

In the shop, I've found that there's a range of knowledge on the floor. The lighting guys really know their stuff, and the counter staff in used cameras and professional cameras usually are experienced with the equipment they sell. The 35mm SLR/DSLR sales staff are a mixed bunch. As the darkroom section has gotten smaller, the sales staff there tend to be knowledgeable. The film counter has always seemed to be an entry-level position, with one or two managers who can answer serious questions as needed, but maybe that's improved as film has become more of a niche market.

mdruziak said:

As a former supplier to B&H, I can assure you that they take customer support and employee training seriously. As a B&H customer, the sales reps I have talked to were very knowledgable.

In my experience, when these questions come in thru their website, they try to answer the question themselves. If they can't, the web team contacts the B&H product buyer and asks for a manufacturer technical contact and then forwards the question to that contact. Some of their products are purchased thru distribution and they may not have a direct relationship with the manufacturer.

So why do they send these questions out? Probably because no one at B&H really knew of this B&L lens would work perfectly on a 7D and they don't have a good contact at the manufacturer or the manufacturer didn't know the answer. You have to cut B&H a little slack. How many products do they sell? 10,000? More? It would be impossible to know everything about every product. There also is a chance that a customer that purchased the product has used it in the same way the person asking the question want to use it.

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Welcome to APUG

Thank you for providing probable cause.

next time you argue with a brick and mortar store about BH pricing, you know where the gap is.