Visual FX company = bad service

[Laurie Calvert]

I'm posting this up as a warning to other film makers that may need to have their camera repaired. I went to a company in Brentwood called Visual FX. I had bad service from them many years ago but felt sure they must have changed by now. They have not.

They were painfully slow. My 7-10 day repair took a month in the end. I sent them several emails to which I got no answer asking on progress (I even phoned them to check I had the right email address). When I phoned service was slow. There had been a delay in the repair and they didn't bother to tell me. Also the cost had gone up which I only found out when I phoned them.

I sent them a letter too, over a week ago for them to explain themselves - no reply. Hence I thought it was right to post something here. I gave them a chance to redeem themselves. They didn't bother.

Finally when my wife went to pick up the camera it took 45 minutes! Upon asking for a quick demonstration that the camera loaded in front of her, it took another 5 minutes to get someone who was the slowest camera operator in the world.

I did get two missed calls on my mobile from them but they never bothered to phone me back. In the end I phoned to find out my camera was ready for collection. Of course they demanded payment up front, so that explains why they were not bothered in speed.

It cost £75 just to diagnose the fault, and in total it cost £300 to get the camera loading tapes up again.

Shame as there are not a great many companies that can repair Sony PD 150s but if you can recommend any please post them up here. I would NOT recommend Visual FX in Brentwood. Beware.

Laurie

[tom hardwick]

I hear very good reports about

Clyde Cunninham
DVCam Specialist Service
96 Downs Road
Winchester
Hampshire SO21 3EW
01962-881740

clyde.cunningham@btinternet.com

[tom hardwick]

Laurie - your experience with Visual FX is not uncommon. Always worth googling a company to see what the feedback's like. I did this just now:

http://www.avforums.com/forums/lcd-tele ... ience.html

tom.

[Laurie Calvert]

Good idea to Google. Thing is I'd used them once before and they were ok.