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Disappointing Black Friday promotion - UK relevance only?

snusmumriken

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Harman's Black Friday offer email offers 15% discounts on Ilford products. However, every product listed on their website is only "Available in stores", where I presume the discount would not apply. The 'store locator' provided on the site is 100% useless. I don't know how to pass this information to Harman, because there is no contact email adress, so I'm posting it here in the hope that they will see it and be able to improve their website.

Normally, I'm content to pay standard prices, grateful that there are still Ilford analogue products to buy. But like anyone, a Black Friday offer is always gratefully received ... if it works!
 
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Can you post a link to the Harman 'sale'? I searched but didn't find anything about it.
 
logan2z said:
Can you post a link to the Harman 'sale'? I searched but didn't find anything about it.
Click to expand...

I don't think the promotion applies outside the U.K. so anyone connectíng with a device outside the U.K. will not see it

pentaxuser
 
Black Friday is past its heyday. Once businesses established that the Friday after Turkey was a day to spend money they figured out that people will spend like drunken sailors deal or no deal. There are no screaming deals anymore. Take your 15% off and be happy. I think the last time I got a true black Friday deal was in 2008 at Sam Ash. I still have the $85 guitar that has a slight paint blemish.
 

I have the e-mail from Harman which even gives the product code to be used at the checkout so clearly it is meant for driect Harman customers but you are right there is no mention of it on the site

Unless someone at Harman has realised something has gone wrong or someone tells it that is doesn't show up on its site then it will be disappointed about no apparent customer interest

pentaxuser
 

You seem to have missed the OP's point. Harman says there is 15% off but then make no mention of it on its website so the Op cannot "take it off and be happy"

pentaxuser
 
snusmumriken said:
It was an email promotion, so I can’t really - sorry.
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It's ok, I just received the email, except it says 10% off using the code BLFR25 at checkout. I haven't tried to use it yet, however.

Edit: The discount code works for me. However, when the shipping charge is tacked on to the order it brings the price to within $2 of what I paid from B&H with free shipping. So it's really not much of a deal.
 
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Black Plague Friday is a nice day to be about and about in the hills or along the shoreline with a camera, while the bedeviled mobs are either glued to their computer screens or trampling each other in flu infected retail stores.
 

I have just ordered from Ilford and found the box to put in the code BLACK25 just below the total price when starting to pay.
I had to scroll down a little for the offer code box to be visible.

If you still cannot find the box, I wonder if your VPN location may be set for another location outside the UK?
The 15% discount is for UK.
 

Just so I can be clear about it: Did you see any mention of the 15% announcement on the site when you opened it or was it a question of ordering as you might when there is no % off and then finding that the code reduced the price at the checkout by 15% ?

If it was the latter then this seems to be a change to what Harman has normally shown which is an announcement when you open the site

Thanks

pentaxuser
 
@pentaxuser

I received an email from them with the 15% off code Black25

There is no indication of any offer when you go to the web site.

Put my items in the basket, then when I went to view basket the last item at the foot of the page was the total price.
If you scroll down below that the offer code box appears.
Put the code in and the discount appeared.

There is free shipping when you spend over a certain amount. I forget how much.

So it would appear that unless you are on their emailing list you would be non the wiser about the discount.
 
BobUK said:
There is free shipping when you spend over a certain amount. I forget how much.
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There doesn't appear to be a free shipping option in the US. I added over $600 of merchandise to my cart and a shipping charge was still added to my order.
 
pentaxuser said:
You seem to have missed the OP's point. Harman says there is 15% off but then make no mention of it on its website so the Op cannot "take it off and be happy"

pentaxuser
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Or I didn't read and used the opportunity to soapbox.

Take your pick.

Enjoy your turkey.

I'm snowed in here.
 
Harman are their own distributor in the UK. That is not the case for most of the world, who get their Ilford and Kentmere and Harman products through other distributors like Amplis in Canada.
And if you access the Ilford Photo website from the UK, it apparently adds a web store option for you - an option that is not available in North America or, I assume, many other parts of the world.
So that email is essentially from Harman as UK distributor, and only provides a benefit to those who are recognized as UK customers.
I've added a qualification of sorts to the thread title.
 

The email I received from Harman takes me to a US site from which I can order Ilford product directly from their web store.

 
Interesting - that must mean that Roberts (the US distributor) is now doing similar things. That wasn't always the case.
Us Canadians don't ever seem to get anything like that from Amplis.
 
The email I received from Harman takes me to a US site from which I can order Ilford product directly from their web store.

Just a pity that you had not explained this earlier. This in effect has nothing to do with the Harman offer to which the U.K. based OP refers

It puzzled me completely why Harman in the U.K. had suddenly extended its normal "Bank Holiday " offer plus a Black Friday offer to those outside the U.K. and it has not

The Harman offer and to whom it applies is well summed up by Matt King

pentaxuser
 
MattKing said:
Interesting - that must mean that Roberts (the US distributor) is now doing similar things. That wasn't always the case.
Us Canadians don't ever seem to get anything like that from Amplis.
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I don't know the details of the relationship between ilfordphoto.com and robertscamera.com here in the US, but they list different prices for the same products and Roberts has a free shipping option (on orders over $49) that ilford.com doesn't seem to have. The 10% Black Friday deal available on ilfordphoto.com doesn't seem to be available from robertscamera.com either. So it doesn't seem like they're the same entity. Or, if they are, there's some odd inconsistencies there.
 
Roberts have a retail business which is separate from their distribution arm - in fact they have different names attached to the two businesses.
Here is the link to the distribution entity: https://robertsdistributors.com/
It is that entity that interfaces with Harman, who are the owners of Ilfordphoto.com.
It is slightly similar to Freestyle, who almost certainly does more business as a distributor than as a retailer.
 

Got it, thanks Matt.
 
BobUK said:
If you still cannot find the box, I wonder if your VPN location may be set for another location outside the UK?
The 15% discount is for UK.
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Very strange that it works for you but not for me or @pentaxpete.

The website clearly didn’t recognise where I was, but I wasn’t using a VPN. I suppose it’s possible that the browser is blocking something, but I turned the ad blocker off for the site. I also tried signing in (because I’ve ordered from them before) and not signing in. ‘Location’ is also allowed for this site.
 
DREW WILEY said:
Black Plague Friday is a nice day to be about and about in the hills or along the shoreline with a camera, while the bedeviled mobs are either glued to their computer screens or trampling each other in flu infected retail stores.
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Excellent balance of grumpiness, misanthropy and cynicism. I love this!
 
snusmumriken said:
When I was a bachelor, Christmas Day was my day for this. Not out of humbug, but because the countryside was exclusively mine for a day.
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Yes but we must admit that the 'flu infected' remark gives Drew's scenario a 'George A. Romero/Night of the Living Dead' sort of subtle flavour, that is mostly absent from our old (though still valuable) youthful Christmas day misanthropic recollections.
 
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