Warning to film/photo(ers): Barrow Lenses

Warning to film/photo(ers): Barrow Lenses(charliecurran.com)

2 points by charliecurran 14 years ago | 3 comments

I've had an incredibly infuriating experience with Borrow Lenses, the largest mail-based camera lens rental company in the U.S. and I hope none of you have to go through what I have in creating your projects.

anigbrowl 14 years ago |

I'm afraid the lens rental company comes out of this looking a bit better than you do. Having spent many years in indie film, I understand your position well, and am familiar with the steep cost of gear rental. On the other hand, a request for 7.5% of the item price as a reward is somewhat excessive - that's more than the insurance premium. You had a legal duty to return it, and the reward offer was at their discretion. The account manager should not have given you to understand that it was a done deal, but you would have been better off clarifying the terms of your agreement at the time, and - more importantly - not counting your chickens. On a slim film budget, this is an understandable temptation, but one you must learn to resist or delegate to a producer. Honestly, I think you'd be better off waiting for a response to your complaint letter than going public with it.

chc 14 years ago | |

> On the other hand, a request for 7.5% of the item price as a reward is somewhat excessive - that's more than the insurance premium. You had a legal duty to return it, and the reward offer was at their discretion.

All of this seems to be responding to the complaint that Borrow Lenses' offered reward was insufficient, but I don't see any such complaint in the post. To my eye, it looks more like his complaints are a) that they misled him and in so doing caused him financial injury, b) that they falsely accused him of lying, and c) to add insult to injury, they spitefully refuse to do business with him after he took umbrage at their false accusations, despite the fact that he has dealt fairly with them and he is the only one who was injured in the whole affair. Points B and C really seem to be the crux of the matter — that is, it's not that they reneged on the promise, but how they treated him after they reneged — and it does sound like very unprofessional behavior from this company.

Also, he did not actually request $600 from them, but two free rentals. Unless this company is operating at a loss, the cost to them should be substantially less than $600.

> you would have been better off clarifying the terms of your agreement at the time

Upon being told "That sounds fair — we will give you two rentals free when we get the lenses back," what kind of clarification would a reasonable person seek? Based on Charlie's story, this doesn't sound like a misunderstanding, but one party simply going back on its word. (It could be that the exchange was actually less specific than it sounds in the post, but I think we're just dealing with how the situation comes across there, right?)

charliecurran 14 years ago |

Thanks for the insight anigbrowl, I'm a 21 year old film student, so I'm definitely still learning all of this. I didn't truly expect a 7.5% reward returning the gear, I returned it to do the right thing. It was a far shot, but with a three thousand dollar budget for the project when he offered me compensation and asked what I hoped for, I thought why not, $600 isn't a huge amount to ask. After all it's rental of two lesnes and a microphone for three days. They might not even have orders for them the weekend I requested...

I still truly believe that being called a liar and hung up on trying to explain my position was an unnecessary line to cross when dealing with someone who had been consistently renting from them withut issue and had returned their lost gear notifying them within 24 hours of receiving it. But then again, that may just be me. :/