Best Experience

The Customer Comes First

It seems obvious when we say it this way, but the customer is—you are—really the most important part of our business. We’re here to get you what you need, and want every single customer to think we’re great. To put it another way: we’re not satisfied with consistently excellent service, we want completely excellent service.

We approach it in two directions. The first is to prevent any problems from occurring: not an easy thing, given that the average lens has 9 different glass elements, 3 or 4 circuit boards, electric motors, and half a dozen connections, all of which can go bad. With this in mind, our methods employ multiple redundant checks, similar to the procedures used by hospitals to avoid errors. When problems do develop, we describe our customer service as relentless: we find a solution no matter how much time and effort it takes.

Our singular focus on providing excellent service 100% of the time to everyone has led us to several policy decisions. For example, we don’t do cancellation fees: if we didn’t send you any equipment, why should we get paid? We don’t bill until the order ships: it’s simply inconvenient for you to tie up your credit card until then. We don’t do memberships, either: everyone gets the best service we can provide and an availability guarantee at no extra cost.

Looks like it’s working, too. Our customer satisfaction measured by ResellerRatings is astronomically high.

Along the way, we’ve done something unheard of in our industry: we voluntarily halted growth several times. We found that growing too fast could impact our customer service. So, instead of buying more lenses, we invested money in our infrastructure to be certain we could keep the highest level of customer service even at an increased volume.

Online Rental Industry Leader

We’re always looking for ways to make our process better for you. As such, we’ve pioneered a number of pro-customer practices.

  • We were the first to accept reservations. Sure, everyone does it now, but it was unheard of when we began doing it in 2006.
  • We were the first to offer optional rental insurance, so you don’t have to worry about accidental damage. No hassle with insurance agents, no waiting for checks to clear.
  • We were the first to carry supertelephoto lenses, the first to carry camera bodies, and the first to carry studio lighting gear. You wanted it, and we figured out a way to make it happen.
  • We were the first to allow lenses to be taken outside the US.
  • We were the first to offer no-hassle, reasonably-priced overnight service.
  • We were the first to offer automatic discounts on shipping for multi-item orders.
  • We were the first to rent video equipment.
  • We were the first to provide detailed stock level information, rather than just “in” or “out”.
  • We remain the only company to offer our two-in-two guarantee. Give us two weeks notice for a two-week rental—even if its not in stock—and we’ll make sure you have your lens, even if we have to buy another one to make it happen. Note: We do not offer the two-in-two guarantee for Sigma lenses; the frequency of defective lenses is too high to allow us the certainty that a new lens will function properly.

Best Technology

Frankly, we’re miles ahead of everyone else in the business. We didn’t just marry a shopping cart system to a web template and call ourselves a renting company, we took our years of experience renting camera gear and built exactly what we need from scratch.

  • Our customer-facing tools are better. You can track your packages directly from your account, check your return dates, print duplicate receipts, or cancel a reservation if you change your mind all from your account page.
  • Our internal tools are in a league of their own. For instance, rather than guessing at where all our items are (which gets us in trouble if something unusual happens), we pro-actively check all of our stock in transit to ensure everything is working right. If there’s a problem, we learn about it early— much earlier than when we had humans managing inventory. The result is that our availability projections are spot-on. It’s also the only way to manage, say, 113 copies of a given lens.
  • We noticed a lot of our renters have iPhones, so we built an iPhone version of the site just for them. It’s a lot easier to work with on a small screen, and a lot faster over a cell network too.
  • We noticed some people want to know whenever our stock status changes, so we set up item-specific RSS feeds.
  • We noticed a lot of people use Twitter, so we integrated it into our internal tools as a first-class communications medium, treating it as seriously as email or phone calls. LensRentals on Twitter can even send tracking numbers and return reminders as direct messages.

Highest Standards