MW Classic cameras

[CatanDave]

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Hi, I purchased a lens from this London dealer 3 weeks ago. Money taken online, no subsequent contact, no reply to messages / emails. Anyone has similar experience? Reading review sites there are many, this is surely fraud?

cheers

Dave

[pedaes]

14 minutes ago, CatanDave said:

Reading review sites there are many, 

Why risk it then?  I think they are very disorganised and slow. I once ordered a cheap bit and after some weeks told me they couldn't find it.

[LocalHero1953]

They used to be a valuable source of used kit. I think the owner(s) may now be getting on a bit and unable to track half their stock and whether it exists or not. A few years ago I had to get a credit card refund after an experience like yours, but since then I’ve read of others buying without problems. I don’t think it’s (intentional) fraud, but I would not buy from them now. 

Edited November 6, 2024 by LocalHero1953

[stray cat]

They are thieves. I ordered and paid for a 21mm Super Angulon from them and after a month and numerous emails from me - none from them - I asked my bank to dispute the transaction and got my money back.

Do NOT use this sham company - it is a fraud.

[CatanDave]

Interesting, I also bought a Super-Angulon!

[pippy]

I've used them quite a lot over the years and have had very mixed results when buying stuff from them. Most of the time things have worked out OK but there have been occasions where some of the items (all fairly low-value) I ordered couldn't be found and, ultimately, was given a refund. Delivery times, likewise, have varied between two days and five weeks(!).

On the up-side I've never had any problems with higher-value items (I have bought a few Leica lenses from them) failing to appear. There have been a few times where I've spoken with David Woodford and he has always been fairly helpful in terms of resolving any issues I've had.

IMX by far the best way to deal with them is to check - via a 'phone call - that an item is still in stock and they have it to hand. Only once this has been confirmed will I place an order. 

Things nowadays are better (for anyone who can reach London) in that they now have premises which can be visited - previously they were mail-order only - and details can be found on their home-page;

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Philip.

[pedaes]

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20 minutes ago, pippy said:

MX by far the best way to deal with them is to check - via a 'phone call - that an item is still in stock and they have it to hand. Only once this has been confirmed will I place an order.

Great advice!

[250swb]

I've never seen so many one star Google reviews about a company, and I suspect having to give one star in order to post a review sticks in the craw of many customers. I ordered from them once and after a delay was told the item wasn't available anymore, or was never available, I forget which. If it was old school service I could accept the old school chaos of 'which box did I put that in?' as I'm sure many will have experienced walking into their local camera shop in the days when they sold analogue cameras. But there are newer companies who've embraced a modern approach to selling analogue gear online and it doesn't seem all that difficult to make people happy.

[pippy]

31 minutes ago, Al Brown said:

...They are not intentional fraudsters, just very very confused...

I'm pretty sure this is exactly right. Also there is clearly an issue with 'Sold' items not being removed from their website; sometime for many months after the sale. One fairly hard-to-get-for-a-reasonable-price item I ordered (41mm screw-in filter for an old 50 f1.5 Summarit?) was still listed well over a year since I was informed that it was no longer available...

I might be mistaken but I seem to remember that someone, somewhere wrote that Mahendra Mohdi has not been involved in the company for a number of years. Perhaps, if this is the case, there is some significance to this situation?

I haven't yet been to their shop for a visit but I might see if such a trip might be arranged sometime next week.

Philip.

[stray cat]

https://au.trustpilot.com/review/www.mwclassic.com

[pippy]

18 hours ago, stray cat said:

https://au.trustpilot.com/review/www.mwclassic.com

Thanks for posting the link, Phil, because it would appear - from so many 'reviews' made recently - that things have gone from "Fairly Woeful" to "Outright Disgraceful and Totally Unacceptable". The number of nigh-on court-cases being mentioned is particularly worrying.

Such a shame to have seen this happen as the company does have interesting - and often quite unusual - stock advertised at reasonable prices. If I have enough free-time I may still try to make an appointment to visit 'in person' in the coming week but I'm far less comfortable with what the reality might be if such a visit goes ahead...

Philip.

[earleygallery]

There was a London dealer who would always have a large ad in Amateur Photographer with lots of interesting stuff. 
 

I wanted a 35mm lens and they had a number of options do I decided to visit the shop. 
 

The place was full of the sort of gear that you see in cardboard boxes on the floor at camera fairs with ‘£3 an item’ written on the box. 
 

I enquired about the lenses but none were in stock. I was told one should be coming in next week if I wanted to leave a deposit (I didn’t).

Another dealer told me some time later that they basically wait for someone to say they want X item, take payment and then look for said item at other dealers to buy at trade and sell to the waiting customer! 
 

Some of the reviews make me wonder if they’ve adopted the same model!!

[Anbaric]

1 hour ago, earleygallery said:

There was a London dealer who would always have a large ad in Amateur Photographer with lots of interesting stuff.

In Camden, by any chance?

[stray cat]

3 hours ago, pippy said:

Thanks for posting the link, Phil, because it would appear - from so many 'reviews' made recently - that things have gone from "Fairly Woeful" to "Outright Disgraceful and Totally Unacceptable". The number of nigh-on court-cases being mentioned is particularly worrying.

Such a shame to have seen this happen as the company does have interesting - and often quite unusual - stock advertised at reasonable prices. If I have enough free-time I may still try to make an appointment to visit 'in person' in the coming week but I'm far less comfortable with what the reality might be if such a visit goes ahead...

Philip.

Thank you Philip. If you do have the time to visit in person it will be very interesting to hear your thoughts. Not that I think anything could excuse the abhorrent online service.

Best regards.

[nf3996]

Like others here, I've had mixed result from MW Classic. Items I've ordered have eventually arrived, but only after several e-mails and phone calls chasing up my online orders.

I've found this account, with pictu8res, of a visit to MW Classic in 2015 when the business was based in Islington - https://agno3solution.wordpress.com/2015/04/08/the-mw-classic/. I wonder if the current premises are similar.

Alan

[jrh68uk]

Harrumph. I have just fallen into the MWClassic hole.

I made the mistake of ordering first and looking up site reviews later. Lesson learnt. 

Two weeks ago I ordered two LTM lenses; one Leica and one Nippon Kogaku. Not massively expensive - each one listed with a small defect - but enough. The order stayed in "Processing" status for days, so I started sending emails. No reply. Yesterday and the day before I was trying the land line listed on the website. No answer. 

Then I noticed there's a mobile number, too, so yesterday I tried that. I'm assuming it was David who answered, slightly awkwardly saying he was travelling to the office and to ring back in half an hour. I gave him 40 minutes, then tried again. No answer. I gave another 15 minutes and tried again; this time the call was picked up but there was no answer, just odd noises. Eventually, after my "Hello?"s must have been heard, he spoke up and said he had "answered the 'phone by accident" (!) and that he was "doing something else". 

I said I wanted him to check my order. He seemed a little reluctant but I didn't give him the opportunity to end the call and never answer to me again. So eventually he got to his computer and checked my order. "Oh yes, it's the <two lenses I've ordered>" and confirmed my name. He then said it's on his list for the day and that he'd let me know when he'd completed the order later in the day. No apologies for the delay or anything like that.

Needless to say: no status change since and no communication at all. This is despite the fact that he has added a number of new items to his site, after I'd spoken to him. He does this every week, it seems. So, there's plenty of time to add new items, but seemingly not enough to fulfil orders and keep customers happy so that they buy more of such items.

This morning I have sent a summary of our telephone conversation in an email thread where I've asked for status several times, and have requested an immediate refund of my credit card payment. We'll see what happens (I suspect nothing).

[pedaes]

1 hour ago, jrh68uk said:

This morning I have sent a summary of our telephone conversation in an email thread where I've asked for status several times, and have requested an immediate refund of my credit card payment. We'll see what happens (I suspect nothing).

Well, this thread will indicate to you patience is needed.

If you are serious about a refund, I would go straight to your CC provider. I once had a problem with a model car that was not forthcoming and the CC company refunded the charge within a few days. Some weeks latter I got a letter from a Receiver saying the firm had gone pop and I was a creditor. I didn't reply and neither did they.

[roydonian]

In 2017 I purchased a rangefinder-coupled 200mm Komura LTM lens from this company, but a series of test exposures showed that the plane of sharpness with the lens set to infinity was around 150ft. Objects at infinity were badly blurred. I returned the lens and was given a refund. However I later noticed that the lens had been relisted with the warning that the rangefinder coupling was incorrect – the dealer had either not listened to or had ignored my description of the problem. 

Some time later I purchased a viewfinder my mail order from this company. When it failed to turn up, they explained that they could not find it. A terminal illness in the family and the start of the UK's covid lockdown gave me a whole new set of priorities, and I never got around to insisting on a refund.

I wouldn't do business with this company again.

[jrh68uk]

3 hours ago, pedaes said:

Well, this thread will indicate to you patience is needed.

If you are serious about a refund, I would go straight to your CC provider. I once had a problem with a model car that was not forthcoming and the CC company refunded the charge within a few days. Some weeks latter I got a letter from a Receiver saying the firm had gone pop and I was a creditor. I didn't reply and neither did they.

I'm prepared to be patient, but sadly it's wearing a bit thin. If, on the 'phone, he'd been at all apologetic or even just indicated that he was struggling under workload, or whatever, then I'd be much more prepared to wait a bit longer. Instead, he seemed slightly irritated that I was bothering him about my order. Which I've paid him for. How he is still in business, I've no idea.

I want to give him another chance to either pull his finger out, or refund me. If nothing comes of it next week, I will go to my card issuer.

Incidentally, what happens when the card issuer refunds money for a transaction like this - do they claw the money back from the retailer, or do they refund the buyer and write it off? I'd hate to think the latter.

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Hallo,

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[jrh68uk]

1 hour ago, roydonian said:

I wouldn't do business with this company again.

Neither will I, of course. Last week I visited another camera dealer in person - what a contrast; I've nothing but good stuff to say about them. I mentioned that I'd been having issues with an online order and he immediately said, it's MWClassic, isn't it? These dealers tend to know each other and he said that he liked David, as a person, but that he's absolutely terrible at his business and to avoid at all costs. This wasn't a "don't buy from him, buy from me" statement at all; it was genuine. The fact that the guy is liked (on a personal level), by someone in the same business whose opinion I value, is the only reason I want to give him a few more days to sort this out.