J. David Pincus
New member
Sun Sniper Strap Failed Me Miserably, as Did the Company's (Sun Bounce) Management . . .
Long story short, while in Cape Town, South Africa in October 2011, on my second outing with the Sun Sniper camera strap, the metal hook/carabine attached to the strap, which locks via a screw-on mechanism (and connects to the ring linked to the bottom of the camera), loosened and opened inexplicably, and without warning -- dropping my Nikon 300s and Tamron 18-270mm lens to the concrete, lens first. The lens was instantly kaput, the alignment off, the auto-focus disabled, and exposures all over the map; in a word, the lens was no longer reliable.
Whether my experience was an anomaly or commonplace I don't know, and won't speculate on. But in this instance, for whatever reason(s), the strap did not perform as advertised or expected -- and its failure cost me considerably, on several levels.
This happened the day before a friend and I were to begin a 4-day photo safari in northern South Africa -- bummer timing.
After the safari, I tried the strap several additional times, with extreme caution, to "test" it before taking the next step. Used it with my Nikon 10-24mm lens on the 300s, considerably lighter than the 18-270mm, taking extra care to tighten the strap's hook/screw connection. Each time, the connection loosened -- in under 30 minutes -- and eventually would have opened. My unavoidable conclusion: the strap (the hook, specifically) was defective.
Hoping for a little understanding and help remedying my damaged lens (relying on the company's performance warranty), I wrote an extensive email to Sun-Bounce (headquartered in Germany) management describing my disappointing experience. That led to a series of increasingly frustrating email exchanges with Ulrich Goetze, a Sun-Bounce executive, which included his request that I return the strap (at my expense) and connecting pieces to the company for their "testing" of the strap; weeks later, he reported to me that the strap passed their tests (whatever they were), which he seemed to expect me to accept carte blanche, though he repeatedly ignored answering my questions re: methodology so I could determine if apples were being compared to apples. We had reached an impasse. Since I couldn't prove my claim empirically, Ulrich and Sun-Bounce chose to dismiss me and my claim with its form of "idiot treatment," which became its skewed rationale for doing nothing to try to right the wrong done to my lens.
In my final email to the company, when I knew it wasn't going to budge and all hope of fairness had been lost, I shared the following words with Ulrich and colleagues . . .
". . . far worse than my disappointment with your product and the result of these 'circular' email exchanges with you is being treated so callously and unempathetically -- while claiming your 'customer care is probably one of the best in the industry.' Do you think I made up this claim in order to snooker you into paying for a free repair or new lens? Do you think I would choose to go through this unappetizing process of 'I claim, you claim,' and jump through all the administrative hoops you asked me to, if I wasn't truly outraged, disappointed and believed in the rightness of my position? I have to wonder if you ever truly attempted to look through the lens from my perspective. I don't know what I expected when I chose to contact you (I know what I hoped), but whatever that was, I didn't get it or anything close to it."
So, to all photographers considering purchasing the Sun Sniper Pro strap, my recommendation to you is this: beware.
J. David Pincus (Fayetteville, Arkansas)
Long story short, while in Cape Town, South Africa in October 2011, on my second outing with the Sun Sniper camera strap, the metal hook/carabine attached to the strap, which locks via a screw-on mechanism (and connects to the ring linked to the bottom of the camera), loosened and opened inexplicably, and without warning -- dropping my Nikon 300s and Tamron 18-270mm lens to the concrete, lens first. The lens was instantly kaput, the alignment off, the auto-focus disabled, and exposures all over the map; in a word, the lens was no longer reliable.
Whether my experience was an anomaly or commonplace I don't know, and won't speculate on. But in this instance, for whatever reason(s), the strap did not perform as advertised or expected -- and its failure cost me considerably, on several levels.
This happened the day before a friend and I were to begin a 4-day photo safari in northern South Africa -- bummer timing.
After the safari, I tried the strap several additional times, with extreme caution, to "test" it before taking the next step. Used it with my Nikon 10-24mm lens on the 300s, considerably lighter than the 18-270mm, taking extra care to tighten the strap's hook/screw connection. Each time, the connection loosened -- in under 30 minutes -- and eventually would have opened. My unavoidable conclusion: the strap (the hook, specifically) was defective.
Hoping for a little understanding and help remedying my damaged lens (relying on the company's performance warranty), I wrote an extensive email to Sun-Bounce (headquartered in Germany) management describing my disappointing experience. That led to a series of increasingly frustrating email exchanges with Ulrich Goetze, a Sun-Bounce executive, which included his request that I return the strap (at my expense) and connecting pieces to the company for their "testing" of the strap; weeks later, he reported to me that the strap passed their tests (whatever they were), which he seemed to expect me to accept carte blanche, though he repeatedly ignored answering my questions re: methodology so I could determine if apples were being compared to apples. We had reached an impasse. Since I couldn't prove my claim empirically, Ulrich and Sun-Bounce chose to dismiss me and my claim with its form of "idiot treatment," which became its skewed rationale for doing nothing to try to right the wrong done to my lens.
In my final email to the company, when I knew it wasn't going to budge and all hope of fairness had been lost, I shared the following words with Ulrich and colleagues . . .
". . . far worse than my disappointment with your product and the result of these 'circular' email exchanges with you is being treated so callously and unempathetically -- while claiming your 'customer care is probably one of the best in the industry.' Do you think I made up this claim in order to snooker you into paying for a free repair or new lens? Do you think I would choose to go through this unappetizing process of 'I claim, you claim,' and jump through all the administrative hoops you asked me to, if I wasn't truly outraged, disappointed and believed in the rightness of my position? I have to wonder if you ever truly attempted to look through the lens from my perspective. I don't know what I expected when I chose to contact you (I know what I hoped), but whatever that was, I didn't get it or anything close to it."
So, to all photographers considering purchasing the Sun Sniper Pro strap, my recommendation to you is this: beware.
J. David Pincus (Fayetteville, Arkansas)