Confessions of a Ritz Camera Salesperson
Posted on March 18, 2008
The Consumerist has an interesting post, which details 10 Confessions of a Ritz Camera Salesperson. The most alarming “confession” was the practice of selling demo cameras as new:
Demo Cameras- We sell them to you and you don’t even know it. Everyone’s grubby hands have probably been on your camera. It’s probably been dropped at some point, not to mention the boxes we get shipments in from UPS look like they’ve been kicked all the way from the home office to our store. We sell demo cameras at no discount, we just clean them up and put them in a box. Then we are told to lie to you and tell you it’s brand new.
I really hope this is not a company practice; however, it is disturbing regardless of how widespread it is. What kind of experiences have you had with Ritz? Any other salespersons or representives from Ritz care to chime in on this one?
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4 Responses to “Confessions of a Ritz Camera Salesperson”
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I used to work at Ritz. This sounds a lot like nothing more than a disgruntled employee. Most of these are just plain wrong. The commentary on Prices, the Image Rewards Card (The Digital Xtra package), Prints, and Scanning are the only sections that are right. The others are all half-truths, or just plain wrong.
I worked at ritz for a little over 2 years and I rose up to the position of key lab technician (underpaid mechanic) and I have to say that this sounds exactly like Ritz. It’s a shady operation that does its best to gouge you like a big box store while maintaining very small selection of actual product in the store.
I’m not going to get into the specifics of the management, but lets just say that the higher up you go the lower the competence.
One small note that he got wrong is that your printer shouldn’t smell like fish unless you DON’T CLEAN it every 2 weeks like you are required.
I’m not going to even get into how the ritz website would constantly undercut our prices in store and we would be chastized for not being able to compete with no tax on your purchase.
I went into Ritz a while back, I need some ISO-100 film. While I was there I decided to look to see if they had an inexpensive pocket slave-flash. While I was browsing the display case, I heard the sales man trying to sell this young couple (who quiet obviously from there question barely knew which was the business end of the camera), a Canon 5D with some nice L-Glass, and I believe a speedlite flash. I think the lens was the EF 24-105mm IS USM. Anyway, the guy is telling this couple its a good starter camera to learn on…. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I hope to someday get my skills to a level where I could justify the expense of that rig. After a few minutes, the couple decides they need to go think about it. So I go ask the guy about a slave flash, while he is looking around for one, fishing, I ask him about the 30D in the case. “Oh yeah” he says, “I have a 20D at home, its more camera than I ever been able to use….” Unbelievable! What a schmuck! Trying to unload a 5D on a couple of kids who didn’t know any better. Kind of left a dirty taste in my mouth about that chain.
Ritz - the used car salesman of photography. Caveat Emptor!