Merkle Camera - please advise

hoot

hoot

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Who has experience buying from this shop?

I was looking for LTM-to-M adapters and someone on RFF (Brett, was it you?) recommended contacting Dennis at Merkle Camera, which I did. After telling him what I needed, he billed me via PayPal. This was on September 21st. I immediately paid the bill.

That was the last I heard of them. The adapters never arrived, and the numerous e-mails I have sent to Merkle Camera, inquiring as to my order (they never even sent me a confirmation) have gone unanswered.

This Wednesday marked the 6-week point, and I decided to telephone the shop. A woman answered the telephone. Dennis wasn't working there that day, but she was very eager to help and promised they would personally contact me the following day.

Of course, they never did.

In several of my e-mails I'd mentioned that I would go public with this if they did not respond. On the phone to the woman, I mentioned what I'd written, and added that I very much wanted to resolve this privately, so as not to damage the store's reputation. She hastily agreed. Apparently, her coworkers did not, since they did not deem it necessary to call back.

There isn't a lot of money involved, but it is a lot to me ($92 for two adapters plus shipping. One of the adapters was for Roman). Apart from hoping to get it back, I want to see if others have had similarly negative experiences, or whether this is a one-time fiasco.
 
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I have bought those same adaptors from Merkle Camera, based on info from various threads here, and recieved them promptly. I would keep trying by phone to clear the problem up. Very sorry to hear of your misfortune.

Bob
 
It's a real store here in Toronto, I've been there and shopped there.

Unfortunately, their main business at this point, is video, not photography, so they really only have just 1 or 2 people in the whole store dealing with photographic equipment, especially 'net sales.

Let me know if there's anything I can do. We can always have the next RFF Toronto meeting at the store 🙂
 
I bought a set of two (2) Marumi M adapters from them this summer. I dealt with them by telephone from the US and paid by credit card. After about 4 weeks I called again and found the same salesperson. They had transposed two digits on the credit card and couldn't get it approved. Then somebody went on vacation etc.

She apologized profusely, shipped the items, waived the postage and handling fees. and I had the adapters 3 days later.

The impression I developed was that they are nice people, honest, but perhaps a little more relaxed than we are in the US.

-Paul
 
I have dealt with them on several occasions but at their store and not online. It is a pretty relaxed place as Paul noted. I found the service to be good but they don't move quickly.
That aside, two months is more than enough time for them to get your adapters shipped.

Peter
 
Ronnie, I have bought several adapters from them and always received them. I think Remy Lang (RML in Holland) and I were the first RFFers to get adapters from Merkle and we spread the word here that the adapters were both good and inexpensive.

My personal experience (and I think Remy's too) has been vey positive. I hope you sort it out.

 
Thanks for your advice, guys.

Telephoning Canada from Austria is rather expensive, and they had promised to call me back and all, so I decided to take advantage of all the horrendous PayPal fees I'd paid over the past years, and used their free complaint service.

It's amazing how quickly something like that gets them to respond. Allegedly they have now sent out a second pair of adapters (gee, this means what, another 6 weeks?) even though I specifically asked for my money back. Oh well.

They also sent me an e-mail claiming they'd responded by e-mail on Wednesday, after I'd telephoned the store. Since I whitelisted both of their e-mail addresses before beginning to do business with them in September, and since I use a very reliable e-mail service (the largest in central Europe), I find it highly unlikely their response got lost on the way. But whatever.

Some of you wrote that they are rather "relaxed", and that seems to hit the nail on the head (if euphemistically). This may sound corny, but somewhere deep down I knew they weren't downright dishonest... just chaotic, I suppose.

Still, I'll be satisfied when they "deliver the goods". Will keep this thread updated.
 
hoot said:
They also sent me an e-mail claiming they'd responded by e-mail on Wednesday, after I'd telephoned the store. Since I whitelisted both of their e-mail addresses before beginning to do business with them in September, and since I use a very reliable e-mail service (the largest in central Europe), I find it highly unlikely their response got lost on the way. But whatever.
Click to expand...

Don't discount the fact that while your email service may be fine, theirs could have the hiccups.
 
For what it's worth, I have found mail into Europe (Nederlands specifically) to be incredibly slow. I did a transaction with Lars Meakin an RFFer in Europe. The mail cycle for the transaction was well over 2 months! I was astounded. Six weeks after posting my letter I was ready to cancel a Canada Post money order sent to Lars. However it showed up at his end after a little over 6 weeks.

Mail may be part of the problem. Strangely mail from the UK arrives faster here in Toronto than mail from the US. Go figure that one out.
 
That's interesting, Jan. 2 months is astounding. I do remember buying from Canadian sellers on the auction site before, though, and the items always arrived at approximately the same speed as they do from the U.S. (2 weeks for "economy" parcels; "priority" ones are faster of course). Perhaps Toronto is a different story. 😀
 
I have had this a couple of times. I agree it is astounding. And I could not get any clear answers why the mail took so long. Now I just go with the flow and when it arrives I think 'well isn't that nice' . I have also used 'priority' mail from the US to Canada and Canada to the US. I save maybe one day! I no longer use priority mail.

Books coming from the US by the lowest postal rate are usually 2-3.5 weeks. I am now philosophical about it. If you fix this I'll vote for you anywhere in the world... LOL.

Anyhow I hope it arrives soon.
 
jan normandale said:
For what it's worth, I have found mail into Europe (Nederlands specifically) to be incredibly slow. I did a transaction with Lars Meakin an RFFer in Europe. The mail cycle for the transaction was well over 2 months! I was astounded. Six weeks after posting my letter I was ready to cancel a Canada Post money order sent to Lars. However it showed up at his end after a little over 6 weeks.

Mail may be part of the problem. Strangely mail from the UK arrives faster here in Toronto than mail from the US. Go figure that one out.
Click to expand...

Sometimes, sometimes not. There's no real rhyme or reason. I've waited two months (! it could have walked!) for a package from Nevada, but my VCII, for instance, was shipped by CameraQuest on October 10th and I had it on the 12th. The Yashica battery adapters, too, took just three days each...
 
Well, Dennis from Merkle Camera finally got back to me after I continued to pursue the matter via PayPal's complaint service. That appears to be the only way to get them to respond.

Since there is still no sign of the adapters, I demanded a refund. However, it seems that Merkle will only refund my payment after I sent back the adapters. I'm not sure how they expect me to send back an item that never arrived. However I examine this issue, I cannot make head nor tail of it. Frankly, I'm surprised that their reputation is worth so little to them.

Merkle has now been informed that there is a post on RFF regarding the situation. Hopefully the exposure (no pun intended) will influence their conduct.
 
This is not good Ronnie. I have been recommending them but if they don't fix this problem to your satisfaction I will certainly reverse my recommendation in future: i.e. stay away from...

 
Okay, I gave them one last chance to reconsider, but Merkle Camera refused to grant me a refund for the adapters I never received.

After numerous warnings, I am hereby ready to contact Canadian police. This behavior from a major online store is, simply put, unbelievable. What happened to customer service? I've never been treated so badly by a professional retailer before; it's quite shocking. Is their reputation really worth so little to them?

Well, there go my 92 US Dollars, at the worst possible time of the year. I simply can't believe it. :bang:
 
Wow Ronnie, sorry to hear that and see that behaviour from the store 😡

Truth is, the USA-EU gap is huge, and even if it's almost never the case, strange things may happen.

Some time ago I bought a DP-11 head for one of my Nikon F2s from Brian, it eventually arrived, even though took more than usual.

The most odd thing is the parcel came with a global priority mail sticker on it, when Brian had sent it air letter post.

Who knows what's boiling in the cauldron ¿?
 
This is terrible!

This is terrible!

And quite telling..........

Isn't it strange that Merkle responded to PayPal's communication immediately, but were deaf and dumb to BOTH your email and telephone calls?

Your only fault, and it's not really a fault, is your patience. Credit card companies generally permit a 60 day window in which you can dispute a charge. I believe PayPal's system is 30 days. Your reward for being so trusting is apparently being cheated.

Can they PROVE your adapters were shipped?

There is absolutely no excuse for their silence after you made more than reasonable, and multiple attempts to contact them.

Keep this thread posted with the final outcome. If it remains unresolved we all should write a note to Merkle advising them of lost business due to this incident.

$92 is a lot of money to lose.
 
This is terrible. You should post this on photo.net too.

What is your paypal address? I'll chip in $10 to help you recover your loss. Maybe the RFF community can help out a little.

Dave
 
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