FAQ

Table of Contents

1. Reservations
2. When does my rental period begin and end?
3. Can I extend my rental?
4. Equipment
5. Damage Insurance
6. Shipping
7. Local Pick Up
8. Do you have an affiliate program
9. Other Questions
10. About LensRentals.com

Reservations

We are happy to reserve equipment for you. To reserve a lens, simply indicate this in the Handling section of the checkout page. We will confirm that we have the lens available and send you an email confirming your reservation within 24 hours. Your credit card will not be charged until your order is ready to ship. You’ll receive a second email telling you we have shipped your lens, along with tracking numbers, expected delivery date, and the date you’ll need to ship everything back.

Please plan on getting the lens a day before you absolutely must have it to allow for shipping irregularities. Second Day Air service is exceptionally good; their on-time rate is over 95%. That also means one of every 20 packages will be a day late – especially in winter months when weather may play a role. Let’s plan for the worst and hope for the best. We promise to ship your lens scheduled to arrive the day you tell us you need it. After that it’s out of our control.

Let us be very clear here: If you must have it by the 19th, absolutely must, then please ask for the rental to start on the 18th. WE CANNOT CONTROL THE WEATHER, AIRPORT CLOSINGS, EVEN ACCIDENTS INVOLVING DELIVERY TRUCKS. THESE THINGS HAPPEN. If we ship your lens on time, and to the correct address, but it is delayed a day in shipping we will extend your rental by a day, but we cannot refund the shipping charge.

What is the “two-in-two” guarantee for reservations?

If you place your order for an item we stock at least two weeks ahead of delivery for a rental period of two weeks or more, we will get the item for you even if we have to buy a new one. There are exceptions: Sigma and Tamron telephoto lenses do not get the two in two guarantee— the defect rate is so high that they often have to be exchanged once or twice to get a good copy, which takes longer than two weeks. Additionally, some items are simply out of stock everywhere; if we can’t buy another one, we can’t guarantee availability.

When is my credit card charged?

We place a hold on your card two business days prior to shipping, and complete the billing process (causing money to move) once the equipment is packed in the box on its way out.

When does my rental period begin and end?

Rental begins the evening of delivery (or attempted delivery) for immediate orders. For reservations, the rental period begins on the reservation day, even if the lens arrives early. The rental period ends at 5PM on the last day of rental, and it should be returned for shipping that evening. Example: your lens arrives on Monday afternoon. For a 1 week rental, you return the lens to a staffed UPS drop off location the next Monday before that night’s shipping cut-off, (depending on your location it is 6PM to 8PM). Please note: UPS ships out in the evening. If you wait until the next morning to drop off the package, it will be a full day late.

Can I extend my rental?

As long as we have stock, we’re happy to extend your rental. One note though: When extending a rental much of our overhead (accounting, stock, ordering new and replacement lenses, bookkeeping, etc.) recurs so extensions are charged at 90% of first week rates. If you think you may want to keep the lens for a longer period we recommend ordering it for that time frame so you can take advantage of the lower rate. If you return it early, we will refund you the unused time after the first week.

Damage Insurance

What does the damage insurance cover?

Our damage insurance covers repair of a lens should it be damaged while in your possession. If this happens, you will be responsible only for paying only a deductible ( $100 or 5% of the lens’ sales price, whichever is less). Without damage insurance you are responsible for the entire cost of repairing or replacing a damaged lens. Please note water damage is considered negligence by the insurer and is not covered as damage. If you plan on using the lens near water or in the pouring rain, please realize you are NOT covered by the damage insurance.

What isn’t covered?

This is a damage policy: the lens may be a total write off, but there must be enough remains left to identify it as our lens – the serial number, etc. Loss of the lens by misplacing it or theft is not covered under this policy. You may have coverage for theft or loss with your homeowners policy or by photographer’s insurance.

What’s the best part?

Simplicity and peace of mind. If you aren’t insured and damage a lens, we have to charge you the cost of repair which may be expensive. If you have damage insurance we bill you the deductible if your lens is damaged, and you’ll never hear about it again. To be honest, it gives us some peace of mind too. We’re a customer oriented business. The last thing we want to do is haggle for two months over how much a repair cost, why the customer can’t pay for the lens for 3 weeks, etc.

Why is insurance not offered on some other items?

We can’t get damage coverage on certain purely electronic items such as lighting and on mechanical items such as tripods because they rarely are repairable if damaged, they must be replaced.

Is there coverage outside of the U. S.?

The insurance covers damage wherever it occurs – as long as we have been notified before the trip where the lens will be going and approved it.

Do I need damage insurance?

You may have coverage through your homeowners, travel, or business insurance, especially if you have a separate rider for photography equipment. We suggest you check with your company. If you aren’t covered for damage, you might want to consider renters insurance.

Equipment

Is the equipment in good condition?

All of our equipment, except for certain legacy lenses that are out of production, are bought new and sold after 2 years of rental use. Before and after each rental we check each lens visually, test it for focus and sharpness, and take pictures with it. We guarantee the glass is clear, the lens works normally, the pictures it takes are sharp. These lenses are used regularly so there will probably be some scuff marks on the barrels, etc. There may be a little internal dust in some lenses (the telescoping zooms are especially known to collect it). If there is any effect on image quality the lens goes off for servicing, otherwise it remains in service.

What if I think something is wrong with the equipment when I start using it?

Email us (that’s usually the fastest response) and let us help you check it out first. About 70% of the infrequent “lens has a problem” complaints we get turns out to not be a problem with the lens.

That being said, while we inspect our equipment carefully and test it out before shipping, we can’t check every lens so closely that something like a bit of back-focusing or a slight out of calibration of the lens might not get by us. Very rarely (about 0.5% of items) the electronics on a lens becomes jarred or shaken during shipping and autofocus or image stabilization is dead on arrival. If this happens we will replace the lens immediately within the limitations of our stock. If time constraints prevent us getting a replacement to you (if you’re leaving for vacation for example) we will refund the rental price and shipping costs as soon as you return the lens.

We hate to have to bring this up, but if you use the equipment for its entire rental period, and then call and tell us it had a problem and you’d like a refund, we will check the equipment and happily refund you if there is a problem with it (and send you copies of our test shots if there is not). But after this has happened several times (and in a couple of cases by people who posted large online galleries of their great shots) we have to state the obvious: don’t ask for a refund after you’ve kept the equipment for the entire rental period.

If you ordered the wrong item, don’t know how to use it, or didn’t know the limitations of the equipment, etc. we will work with you to get you something more suitable, but we will not be able to give you a complete refund. We will always, however, issue a refund for unused over the minimum 4 day rental charge if you return it early.

What comes with the equipment?

Equipment comes to you as it came to us from the manufacturer: if the lens comes with a hood when purchased it will come with a hood when you rent it. (Most lenses will have a hood included, but non-L Canon lenses do not include a hood). The largest telephoto lenses are shipped either in their hard case or in a padded soft case at your preference. Cameras come with one battery and a charger.

What comes with your order needs to come back: lens hoods, battery chargers, cases, and tripod rings are expensive and the next renter expects to receive them. If the order comes back without them we’ll have to charge you for a replacement. Lens hoods, for example are $40-$80, tripod rings $140 and up.

What if I damage the lens?

Let us know immediately. Our contract states if the lens is broken you are responsible either for replacing it or paying for repairs (unless you have purchased damage insurance). If it is not repairable, we’ll charge you the cost of a used lens of comparable quality. We do not charge you a new lens price to replace a used lens like most camera store rentals. We also do not charge you rental while the lens is being repaired as long as you let us know about damage before you send the lens back.

What do you consider damage?

Any scratches or scuff marks on the glass, impact damage to the mechanicals (failure to autofocus, inability to zoom or focus), water or moisture damage. Minor scuff marks to the barrel or hood are considered normal use, not damage. If you tell us “it just stopped working” we’ll use the Factory repair center as arbitrators. If they say “water damage” or “impact damage”, you are responsible.

Can I take the lens out of the US?

The terms of the rental are that the equipment not leave the US without notifying us. However, we do allow equipment out of the U. S. as long as you notify us in advance and the location is reasonably safe. The lens must be delivered to and returned from a US address. Remember, though, lenses are targets for theft and you are responsible for loss. Our insurance policy will insure the lens against breakage, BUT NOT THEFT, outside of the US.

Shipping

All packages will require a signature on delivery!!

After extensive comparison testing, we use UPS 2nd day air as our primary shipping option. There are a few exceptions:

• You can request FedEx 2nd day air if you prefer it, but the rate is slightly higher.
• Shipments to PO Boxes and a few outlying rural areas will ship Priority Mail because that is the only option.
• Shipments to Puerto Rico go by Priority Mail. We can ship UPS to Puerto Rico, but because UPS considers it International shipping, the shipping charge is double that shown in the shopping cart.

Someone will need to sign for the lens when it arrives, so you might want to ship to your office if no one is home during the day. Also, for those of you who aren’t familiar with UPS, they work Monday through Friday, there are no standard Saturday or Sunday deliveries. Therefore a second day air shipment leaving on Thursday arrives on Monday. Saturday delivery can be done by special request, but is QUITE expensive. Again, if you choose overnight delivery on Friday, you will receive the equipment on Monday.

What if I don’t want UPS shipping?

If you live in an area where UPS is not convenient, please let us know by leaving a note in the special instructions box and we’ll use Priority Mail. Similarly if you don’t want to use UPS for return, we can let you send the lens back Priority Mail. We are happy to ship using your FedEx account number with a $5 charge for packing materials.

What are shipping costs?

The round trip shipping cost (to you and back to us) is listed on the individual item pages. If your order consists of more than one item in a single larger box the shipping charges are reduced and recalculated automatically when you add items to your cart. With few exceptions (notably very large lenses), it’s possible to save on shipping by ordering several items together.

Very large items require special shipping quotes, simply because the price varies so much depending on your location. The checkout system doesn’t even try to guess a price for those. Call or email us for a quote.

How long until you ship my lens?

We ship within 12 hours for repeat customers. New customers’ orders will take 24 to 48 hours to process and ship. New customer orders shipping to an address other than the credit card billing address may take 72 hours to verify. You can speed the process if you state the name and a listed phone number of the shipping address in the special instructions box, i.e.“I’m shipping to my office, ABC corp, whose phone number is 123-456-7890”.

How long does shipping take?

Standard shipping takes 2 BUSINESS days — if your order is placed by 2 PM CST Monday you should receive it Wednesday. Remember no shipping takes place Saturday or Sunday so an order placed on Thursday will arrive Monday.

Is faster shipping available?

During checkout there is an option for UPS overnight shipping and the additional charge for overnight is displayed for you. In general overnight charges are affordable for most lenses, but gets ugly for very large items or multiple item orders (unless somebody else is paying the bill). You should also check the “Rush processing” box during checkout so the shipment gets priority treatment.

Saturday Delivery is only available by prearrangement and is expensive: If you ask for delivery on Saturday please realize the cost to you will be at least $80 for shipping, and on large lenses can be quite a bit more.

Can you ship to my hotel or resort?

Only if you’re willing to place a deposit for the value of the lens. Hotels have contract language that states anything missing from their baggage room, etc. is not their responsibility. If you know the hotel staff well enough that you’re willing to take the risk (and place the deposit) we’ll do it. Alternatively, we can often arrange for you to pick up the lens at the nearest UPS Store or UPS staffed facility without requiring a deposit.

You can locate the nearest UPS pickup facility here.

Do you ship to Canada?

Yes we do, although we don’t have it automated in the shopping cart yet. We finally received our import certificate and can ship to Canada effective October 1, 2009. Until the costs are automated in the shopping cart please be aware that shipping prices to Canada are higher, at least $70 round trip and going up from there. Please call us for a quote.

How do I return the lens?

We will have a prepaid return-shipping label in the box with your lens. Repack the lens in the box and padding it came in, seal it, put the return label on it, and take it to the nearest UPS store or shipping location. We strongly recommend taking it to a staffed location (there’s a UPS store nearly everywhere) so you get a receipt. That way we don’t have to have a conversation that starts “the lens never came back and was never received by UPS”. If you do not have a receipt, you are responsible for loss of the lens if it doesn’t return.

What if I am late with my return?

We email you a reminder the day before the lens should ship back, and another reminder if it is a day late. Once the lens is more than a day late returning to UPS we will charge you a one week extension. If the late return of your lens causes us to have to ship a lens to a waiting customer by overnight delivery, you will additionally be charged the actual overnight delivery charge we had to pay. If the lens becomes 5 days late without your contacting us we will charge an additional 2 week extension.

If at any time an extension is turned down and you do not contact us, we will have to turn your lens over to collections. Once this is done, we cannot take it back, undo it, stop it or reverse it. Let us be clear: if we turn your account over to collections, at that instant you are in collections for the retail cost of the lens, plus 30% collection charges, plus several hundred dollars of attorney’s fees. At that point, if you send the lens back, you will still owe collection charges and attorney’s fees and we cannot undo it. Its not our debt anymore. Also, this isn’t like an unpaid bill where people will call you annoyingly. Its like an unpaid car note. People will show up with a court order at your home or where you work, and take back the lenses or other items of equivalent value, place liens on your bank accounts and stuff like that.

Can I pick up lenses in person?

You may pick up between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. weekdays if you are in the Memphis, TN area at our office, 894 N. Germantown Parkway, 38018. Click here for a map.

Local renters please note: We are an internet based shipping/warehousing operation. Rental orders must be placed online at least 4 hours prior to expected pick up (making sure to select the local pickup option). We do not accept cash or checks for rentals, the order must be placed with a credit card.

Pick up hours are listed above: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays – if you can’t get here during that time, then please order the lens to be shipped or find a friend who can get it for you.

• We understand traffic is bad sometimes, but if the little hand is past the 5, no one is in the office. Banging on the door doesn’t make anyone appear (well except this one time somebody set of the vibration detector alarms. The police appeared that time.) We’re gone.
• Again, and for emphasis, if you show up to pick up your lens at 5:15, no one will be here and you will not be refunded if you didn’t pick up your lens.
• Please don’t ask to pick up at 9 pm, on Christmas day, Saturday at dawn, Sunday after church, at 4 a.m. as you’re leaving town for the beach, to meet you at Starbucks, drop it at the front desk of your office on our way home, toss it in the window of your car as you drive by, or ask the pizza delivery guy to pick it up on his way to your house. If you do, we’ll start to wonder if you’re bright enough to be entrusted with our equipment.
• We probably should mention, we close at 5 pm, which means if you come later than 5 pm you won’t get your lens. We really don’t understand why this is so hard to get across.

What if I want to rent an item for a day or two?

We do not offer 1 or 2 day rentals. That means we don’t do it. It means if you ask, we’ll tell you no.

But I really only need it for a day!

Okay, I give up. We are happy to now offer 1-day rentals on all items. The price is exactly the same as our 4-day rentals.

Do you have an affiliate program?

No, for several reasons. First and foremost, its gotten these days to where everyone on the internet sells their opinions and recommendations through a multitude of “affiliate programs”, getting kickbacks from every manufacturer and retailer they can. We spend a lot of our time making recommendations to people and we want to be trusted: if we recommend something its because we like it, not because someone’s giving us $0.25 every time we do it. We want it to work the same way in reverse: if someone recommends us, its because they like us, not because we’re giving them $0.25 every time someone clicks on their recommendation.

That being said, we do openly advertise on several review sites that we respect, both to help support their work and because we like being associated with them. If you see our banner on a review site, or a place like resellerratings.com, then we pay a monthly fee for that. We also work with a lot of camera clubs, photography groups, and workshops. In this case we offer their customers a discount (as well as the people running the seminar, workshop, or club) and sometimes donate some lenses for the attendees to use, so hopefully everyone benefits. Finally there are two sites that we do pay a ‘per click’ rate to the-digital-picture.com and Ronmart.com because its the only method they have available for advertisers.

Other Questions

Do you require a deposit?

Not at this time, except on very expensive items. We take some time to verify our customers are who they claim to be. Being photographers we trust photographers. That, and we’ve got relatives in the bounty hunter and repossession business that provide us a good fallback position.

Really, no deposit? Don’t you get robbed blind?

Nope. 99.9% of our customers are absolutely great, tell us if they break stuff, and we work it out. For the other 0.1% we’re more than willing to spend lots of money to make sure they’re prosecuted. We’re very proud that we’ve hired private investigators resulting in arrests and convictions of several people who were pretty sure the police wouldn’t bother. They were right about the police, but didn’t realize we take it personally.

What if I want to rent for more than 60 days?

We offer extended rentals and leases up to 6 months. Please contact us and we’ll be happy to work with you.

Do you ship outside the US?

After almost a year of work and negotiations, we are now able to ship directly to customers in Canada. We will not be able to ship to any other countries, however, the customs regulations are too difficult.

Do you buy used equipment?

Effective January of 2010 we’ve made the decision that we want our renters to get the newest equipment possible, so all of our equipment will be purchased new. We no longer buy used equipment.

Do you sell used equipment?

Yes we do. We rent lenses for about two years (or 20 weeks of rental) and then sell them. We will list all “for sale” items on the front page of the website.

How do you decide what to stock?

We’ve been at this long enough now to learn by trial and error – we stock whatever people demand. In fact, if you want a lens for two weeks and give us two weeks notice, we’ll stock it just for you. 100% of the profit from LensRentals is invested in new stock so we always want suggestions for new items. When we don’t get suggestions, we generally throw darts at the B&H catalogue and order whatever we hit.

What if I want something you don’t carry?

Please email us. If we have two or three requests for an item, we’re likely to add it. Also if you want an item for an extended lease we will almost certainly be able to a accommodate you.

Why don’t you have a page of testimonials like some of those other sites?

We think its pretty useless for you to read our hand-picked emails. (At least we’d hand-pick real ones, unlike one New York rental house that copy-pasted someone elses reviews and claimed them as their own testimonials. Amazing they had 49 testimonials on their second day in business.) Legitimate review sites, like ResellerRatings.com, post everyone’s reviews of a business, good and bad. There you get the real information about a business. Our reviews are very good and we intend to keep them that way.

You’re $4 more expensive than this other place. Will you meet their price?

Nope. We have a different business model, and its more expensive. To be blunt, there’s lots of ways to cut corners in the rental business. We choose not to cut corners, which makes us a bit more expensive. What do we mean by that?

• We are a fairly large, full-time business that keeps technical and customer support staff in the office every weekday and available by email after hours and on weekends. We can’t match prices with somebody who rents a few lenses out of their garage after work. That also means we’ll be here next month and next year (for those of you who don’t know, half a dozen online rental houses closed last year.)
• We provide safety and security that smaller ‘out-of-my-garage’ rental businesses can’t. All of our transactions with you are encrypted, stored on secure and encrypted servers, and our security processes are monitored and certified by outside agencies. But secure and encrypted servers cost more money than keeping your credit card info on an Excel spreadsheet on our home PC.
• We are the only rental site that purchases all items new and has a standing policy that no item is more than 2 years old or rented more than 20 weeks. Other rental houses don’t make any promises like that – in fact when we sell our used lenses as being too old for service, they often get bought by other rental houses.
• We don’t rent other peoples unwanted equipment on consignment. If we rent it, we bought it new, test it before and after every rental, and sell it before it gets to old. We KNOW how good it is and where it is.
• Our model is to have the lens when YOU want it, whether that’s tomorrow or the 17th of September. That means we hold lenses ‘out of service’ waiting to fill an order instead of being rented every possible moment.
• Our business model is not to stock the 15 most commonly rented lenses and keep them rented all the time. We stock over 3,000 copies of 400 different items, and we buy more copies every time we’re out of stock. Keeping the selection you want, in stock and available is a little more expensive, but its what we’d want to see if we were renting.
• This doesn’t mean we’re the right place for everyone. If you want a common lens to try out for a week and delivery isn’t critical you can certainly find it a few dollars cheaper at another rental house. If you’re doing professional work and need to know you can order 5 different items for your shoot and they’re all available, if you want to know the equipment has been tested before it was sent to you, that the transaction is as safe as it can be, that there are people who answer your questions the minute you call all day (or your emails nights and weekends), that replacement equipment is on hand if you have a problem, then we probably are the right place.

Who are you and why are you doing this?

We’re a family-run business of used-to-be semi-pro photographers. Being located in a mid-sized city far from the major camera stores there was nowhere we could rent a top quality lens locally (actually we couldn’t buy a top quality lens locally). We couldn’t find a mail order rental house that met our simple needs: get us the equipment we want, when we want it, in great condition and at a fair price. We figured if no one else was doing that, maybe we should.

We started LensRentals as a “Photographers Co-op” in June of 2006 with about 30 lenses. Since then we’ve stayed true to our word: all of LensRentals income goes into buying more lenses. Actually a lot of other money goes into buying lenses too, and we’ve increased our inventory to over 2,500 lenses, 150 camera bodies, and lots of other items. Along the way we’ve been the first mail order rental house to offer damage insurance, the first to accept reservations for future rentals, the first to rent supertelephoto lenses, the first to rent camera bodies, the first to allow lenses to be taken out of the U. S, the first to offer studio lighting, the first to rent video accessories, and the first to use Fed Ex for primary shipping. We’re still the only rental house that will guarantee to get a lens for you if you give us two weeks notice and order two weeks in advance, and the only rental house to guarantee the lenses you rent are less than 2 years old, and camera bodies less than 18 months old.

By 2007 we could see this idea was going to be bigger than we thought. We spent most of 2007 hiring additional employees and developing the infrastructure needed for further expansion – basically moving from a home-based business to office and warehouse space, and getting the computers, people, and infrastructure to automate our shipping and receiving (Granny was getting tired). We added Nikon, studio lighting equipment, and more Canon equipment to our lineup. We also bought our own servers and improved our computer systems to improve the reliability and speed of our online services. In October 2007 LensRentals was incorporated.

In May of 2008 we made a huge upgrade to our infrastructure a bit of which (a better web page) is obvious. The biggest changes were internal as we become the first online rental house to become completely automated. We found when we reached a certain size humans just weren’t able to accurately determine the reservation process, and as we became too busy errors (which we find completely unacceptable, although sometimes unavoidable) started to occur. Now various programs track our inventory and shipping in real time, determine what can and cannot be rented when, automate all billing, shipping and receiving, etc. No one, to our knowledge has done this before and the programs had to be written from scratch. It took a few months to work the bugs out, but the new system reduces our error rate and make us more efficient and accurate.

Once the infrastructure we needed was in place, we began growing again! We added the Olympus and Sony lines in the summer and fall of 2008. In January of 2009 we began adding a video lineup to our rental services. In February we were able to take over neighboring office space and triple our size without actually moving. We’ve added more technical and customer support staff as well as improved our shipping department. During the summer of 2009 we focused (no pun intended) on increasing the depth (number of copies of each item) as once again demand grew as fast as we could meet it. During the fall of 2009 we added Leica lenses and cameras and expanded our video section dramatically, and in early 2010 added Hasselblad medium format equipment.

Our web page is getting another makeover to further organize the increased inventory even as we speak, and hopefully this will roll out in the late Spring of 2010.

With three major expansions in three years, we’re proud of our growth, but the thing were most proud of is at no time did we ever let our customer service falter. We aren’t perfect. Occasionally we will miss a flaw during our inspection or make a mistake, but we always do everything in our power to make it right. We’re an old-fashioned company in this day of “what’s your marketing budget”. We simply believe that if we provide good value and exceptional customer service we’ll grow just fine as one customer tells another customer about us. It seems to be working – in January of 2007 we filled 64 orders. In July of 2009 we filled 2,100 orders.