Yup. And does anyone else here remember the Lindenblatt KL2, their house-brand SLR that the owner apparently named after himself?Originally Posted by vinny
Yup. And does anyone else here remember the Lindenblatt KL2, their house-brand SLR that the owner apparently named after himself?
I've had dealings with them in the past-NEVER trust them !
This thread should be deleted or locked unless the products in the link can be verified. Links to scam sites should not be posted.
They've been (in)famous for so long that they've become an American institution. They should be added to the National Register of Historic Places any day now.
When they had a storefront, they did have some genuine deals on overstock of long discontinued equipment (as well as stacks of off-off-off-brand 35mm lenses), but I would only buy from them if I were there in the shop, could see the actual item, and paid cash at the time of the transaction. I remember buying a brand new battery pack for my Canon New F-1 motor drive there sometime in the early 1990s. Could be that all that stuff has ended up in a warehouse in Brooklyn somewhere.
There were a couple of NYC outfits infamous for breaking apart standardized sets, to make it appear they had the best price. If you nibbled the bait, you might get something like a naked camera body instead of a functional system with viewfinder etc, such as legit dealers meant by the same model no. If something appears too good to be true, usually that is the case. I sell machinery, and it astounds me how many people fall for counterfeit gear that promptly fails. When they ask where to find part, I tell them it's the same place they bought their ten dollar Rolex - some parking lot behind Safeway, or at the flea market. Then there is a fence for stolen gear so brazen that he had his own website, complete with pictures of a fictitious store. But if you request to purchase something, he does you a "favor" by delivering to you in person at some dark street corner. Changes his cell phone # every few days, just like a drug dealer. Good idea. Every once in awhile one of these guys inadvertently tries selling to the same person who got robbed in the first place. It can end badly.
Drew - it seems like you live in a bad part of "town" by the sounds of this and other previous posts... perhaps its time to move?
As for retail sharks, Drew talks about down right criminals, counterfitters etc., these are "legitimate" retailers, who "sell" their "goods" like any other store. They offer deals that are too good to be true, and they are. Though in the photo world this is common practice. Just see "C&A marketing", which by all accounts is a legitimate company, who now also owns whats left of calumet, ritz and wolf camera, however their origin is "pricegrabber.com" and most of their business still comes from similar bad business practices, bait and switch, split the kit, remove the charger type things, and they are thriving and growing.
Bad part of town??? This is one of the wealthiest spots in America. Every single city around here has certain terrible neighborhoods with high crime rates, including SF, Oakland, where I live - but also very good neighborhoods. I work in Berkeley, a university and R&D town that is also the world epicenter of biotech
and pharmaceutical mfg, and with more restaurants per capita than any other city in America. Head down the road a bit and you enter a war zone in Oakland,
with pimps, daily drug and gang wars, nightly riots and looting, flea markets stocked with stolen and counterfeit goods. Sure, this is the kind of stuff that makes
the nightly news and gives a city a bad reputation. But around 60% of that same city is quite wealthy and doesn't match the stereotype at all. Same where I live.
Even national news talks about how wretched a city it is, based upon certain neighborhoods on the "bad side of the tracks" (literally across the tracks in this case). But where I happen to live, we can walk around at night without fear. And here where I work is right across the street from one of the most opulent
shopping centers in northern Cal. It's very safe during the day, but very dangerous at night, because nobody is around then, including police. And right down the
street is a thriving photo store that continues to sell a good selection of film and darkroom supplies, in addition to digital stuff. I know a thing or two about how
to run a successful distribution business. And honesty is a way better strategy than bait and switch.
Indeed SF is not all bad. I was jokingly referring to your past posts about the bad element and areas...
Our warehouse is in Jamaica Plain MA, and i just read last week that JP is second in the nation only to SF in being the most competitive Real Estate market in the US, with more then 60% all cash sales, and at least 4 offers on each property, and prices sky rocketing as big bucks folks move. I think its called gentrification. On the second week of Jan 2015, a penthouse recently built literally across the street from our warehouse sold for 1.2 Million, which is about 15% over asking, and sold within 2 days of listing. That same week, two cars were broken into and another had tires slashed right outside my front door. Our street is the first street on the other side of the tracks, literally, as the Southeast corridor trains run in a big gutter right over the fence here. So, this area too has strange mix of super gentrification taking place, and crazy no mans land with crime and violence. All this under the watchful eye of our neighborhood police station, which shares a back wall with my building...
Perhaps the increasing amount of mega million dollar homes will change this sooner then later, though its worth noting that the end of our street, is large area of projects and sec8 housing, where there are usually 1-2 shootings per week, which no longer make the news, and i doubt those are going to be torn down or improved in any way by the city or inhabitants, new or old.
RE Switch and bait - they made quick money, fast, and that is appealing to many, much more so then putting in the hard work associated with actual real customer service, business managment etc.,
Oh gosh... political time bomb, esp since my own nephew beat the entire SF political hierarchy in a one round knockout over the Ellis Act controversy. Once again he's Darth Vader to one half of the city, a hero to the other. But they've appealed, so we'll see if the Supreme Court lets the order stand or if there will be an even bigger showdown in a year or so. In the case of SF it's a fresh wave of Silicon Valley money behind the "gentrification" of SF, booting out older businesses and rental properties to make way for expensive new condos, etc. Same thing going on here, across the Bay, except that certain critical industrial suppliers, like the one I work for, are zoned exempt. But all the "art" colonies around us have been leveled and have big condo developments going up. Fine with me. Most of those artiste joints were fire traps smoking joints most of the time. The long-established restaurants around here are also zone protected, though their view of the Bay has been blocked in one instance. With respect to SF itself, most outsiders are familiar with the tourist areas, which are generally pretty
safe if you use common sense. There are some purse snatchers downtown. But the biggest hazard are the insane driver, municipal buses, even bicycle riders,
which can be downright aggressive there. There gallery scene is naturally drifting into lower-rent areas, some of which are tougher neighborhoods, like the
Mission district. I think in every big city you have to be conscious of which neighborhoods are generally safe, and which are not. If you see gang graffiti all around, all pit bulls running loose, and steel bars over everyone's windows, and the cashier at the gas station behind two-inch thick plexiglas, well...
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