jlames
Well-known member
Okee Dokee. The end of the saga. Iust got back from FedEx and I can finally say unequivocally that despite a really screwed up system, when push comes to shove, JVC, Eric Rosenberg and Marion (gosh I wish I knew her last name) are men...and women...of their word. My wife insisted on snapping this picture of the official JVC box containing IDX batteries coming right out of my trunk. So the last word on this issue is as follows.
1) IDX...you did nothing...nothing despite having every opportunity to, at the very least, acknowledge this problem, apologize and try and straighten it out. But you chose to sit on your hands and do nothing as far as I can tell. As far as I can tell, you chose to let a simple producer, me, possibly drown in red ink when you could have, much more easily than JVC who's located 2600 miles from us across this great nation of ours, pick up the ball and help us out when you're a mere 36 miles down the 110 freeway from us in Torrance, CA. Now you can say you didn't know about it but that would be a bold-faced lie. Your employees knew about it...two of them; Michelle and Andrea. But Michelle was out of the office when this thing started (but I e-mailed her with then problem and solicited her help all without response) and Andrea chose to hang up on me and about 17 potential customers and 3 or 4 EVS employees for NO reason at all...TWICE! And you, like JVC, have had complete access to this Board so if you truly didn't know about this problem, your personnel and corporate issues go way deeper than a simple promotion gone horribly wrong. You had a chance to help. You had a chance to shine. You had a chance to evidence that you care about your customers... the people who pay your salaries and keep your doors open... and you did nothing. NOTHING. And for that you have lost my business and probably the vast majority of the people who read this Board. That's conservatively hundreds of thousands of people...aspiring and successful filmmakers alike who need and rightfully demand and deserve not a supplier but a partner like JVC.
2) JVC... I don't know where the problem lies but when one retailer is apparently able to get power supplies out to consumers in a week and others are not, there's a problem somewhere. So I say to you, you have a GREAT camera with absolutely no power. We put your camera up against the Panasonic, the Sony and the Canon and even being a long-time Canon XL user, chose the JVC HD100U for the type of television production we do. Are the others good? Yes. Could we afford ten of any of them? Of course. But after complete testing by some pretty smart guys like Mike Pellegatti, we felt that the HD100 would meet and exceed the demands of our distributors so we went with you. The battery issue was secondary and, in fact, I didn't even know about the power issues and the IDX deal until we had made our decision to go with the HD100. So, with all of that said, please, please devise a way to provide power to the purchasers at the time of purchase. Whether we are a one-man-band with our life savings tied up in a single $5600 camera or a small production company that is making the move to HD through HDV 5 cameras at a time, your product is our life blood. Without you, we don't eat and our kids don't go to school. So thank you. Thank you so much for individually and collectively realizing that there was a problem early on, rolling up your sleeves and fixing it as quickly and as modestly as you did. But there are still people out there with your great camera in hand, a great vision in mind, the will to make a film against staggering odds of success here in Hollywood and no power with which to make any of that happen. Please, help them as you have helped us because in the end, we can make any camera work. It's the people behind the product that create brand loyalty and my loyalty to JVC has been resurrected from the ashes because of one thing and one thing alone; your word was gold. Thanks to you and FedEx, I have the power I need and I can fulfill my commitment to those to whom I have given my word on production dates.
And finally to Jared and all of the people who make up this Board, thank you. Corporate America, in my mind, has become so callous to the needs of the people it is supposed to serve that it arrogantly refuses to extend us even the most basic and common of of courtesies; customer service. They truly believe that there is such a need for the next greatest thing out there, for their product, that they can feed us garbage and we'll not only accept it but thank them for it. To turn the tide it takes unity; a coming together of the people embodied in Howard Beal's unforgettable performance in 1976's "Network" when he said, in one take, the 2nd as I remember it, "I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth; banks are going bust; shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the street, and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it.
We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat. And we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be!
We all know things are bad -- worse than bad -- they're crazy.
It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out any more. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.'
Well, I'm not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot. I don't want you to write to your Congressman, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first, you've got to get mad. You've gotta say, "I'm a human being, goddammit! My life has value!"
So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell, 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!'
So veteran filmmakers and beginners alike, producers, directors, cameramen and women, grips, electricians, craft service people, makeup, hairdressers and all form of this world's truly last bastion of creativity alike...this is my last word on the subject. You matter. This Board matters. What Jared and all who contribute to his Board have done and will continue to do matters. It is our last, best hope for Corporate America to stop the arrogance...to stop the maddness...to sit up and listen to us as we say through this and countless other Boards that we now know they're reading, "IDX et. al....we're mad as hell and we're not going to take this anymore. And to borrow a line from what I humbly consider to be the best film of the decade, "Good night and good luck".
P.S The SDR on the box certifies that JVC tried for a Saturday, Priority overnight delivery but the ice storm was simply too much!Delivery
1) IDX...you did nothing...nothing despite having every opportunity to, at the very least, acknowledge this problem, apologize and try and straighten it out. But you chose to sit on your hands and do nothing as far as I can tell. As far as I can tell, you chose to let a simple producer, me, possibly drown in red ink when you could have, much more easily than JVC who's located 2600 miles from us across this great nation of ours, pick up the ball and help us out when you're a mere 36 miles down the 110 freeway from us in Torrance, CA. Now you can say you didn't know about it but that would be a bold-faced lie. Your employees knew about it...two of them; Michelle and Andrea. But Michelle was out of the office when this thing started (but I e-mailed her with then problem and solicited her help all without response) and Andrea chose to hang up on me and about 17 potential customers and 3 or 4 EVS employees for NO reason at all...TWICE! And you, like JVC, have had complete access to this Board so if you truly didn't know about this problem, your personnel and corporate issues go way deeper than a simple promotion gone horribly wrong. You had a chance to help. You had a chance to shine. You had a chance to evidence that you care about your customers... the people who pay your salaries and keep your doors open... and you did nothing. NOTHING. And for that you have lost my business and probably the vast majority of the people who read this Board. That's conservatively hundreds of thousands of people...aspiring and successful filmmakers alike who need and rightfully demand and deserve not a supplier but a partner like JVC.
2) JVC... I don't know where the problem lies but when one retailer is apparently able to get power supplies out to consumers in a week and others are not, there's a problem somewhere. So I say to you, you have a GREAT camera with absolutely no power. We put your camera up against the Panasonic, the Sony and the Canon and even being a long-time Canon XL user, chose the JVC HD100U for the type of television production we do. Are the others good? Yes. Could we afford ten of any of them? Of course. But after complete testing by some pretty smart guys like Mike Pellegatti, we felt that the HD100 would meet and exceed the demands of our distributors so we went with you. The battery issue was secondary and, in fact, I didn't even know about the power issues and the IDX deal until we had made our decision to go with the HD100. So, with all of that said, please, please devise a way to provide power to the purchasers at the time of purchase. Whether we are a one-man-band with our life savings tied up in a single $5600 camera or a small production company that is making the move to HD through HDV 5 cameras at a time, your product is our life blood. Without you, we don't eat and our kids don't go to school. So thank you. Thank you so much for individually and collectively realizing that there was a problem early on, rolling up your sleeves and fixing it as quickly and as modestly as you did. But there are still people out there with your great camera in hand, a great vision in mind, the will to make a film against staggering odds of success here in Hollywood and no power with which to make any of that happen. Please, help them as you have helped us because in the end, we can make any camera work. It's the people behind the product that create brand loyalty and my loyalty to JVC has been resurrected from the ashes because of one thing and one thing alone; your word was gold. Thanks to you and FedEx, I have the power I need and I can fulfill my commitment to those to whom I have given my word on production dates.
And finally to Jared and all of the people who make up this Board, thank you. Corporate America, in my mind, has become so callous to the needs of the people it is supposed to serve that it arrogantly refuses to extend us even the most basic and common of of courtesies; customer service. They truly believe that there is such a need for the next greatest thing out there, for their product, that they can feed us garbage and we'll not only accept it but thank them for it. To turn the tide it takes unity; a coming together of the people embodied in Howard Beal's unforgettable performance in 1976's "Network" when he said, in one take, the 2nd as I remember it, "I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth; banks are going bust; shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the street, and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it.
We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat. And we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be!
We all know things are bad -- worse than bad -- they're crazy.
It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out any more. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.'
Well, I'm not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot. I don't want you to write to your Congressman, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first, you've got to get mad. You've gotta say, "I'm a human being, goddammit! My life has value!"
So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell, 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!'
So veteran filmmakers and beginners alike, producers, directors, cameramen and women, grips, electricians, craft service people, makeup, hairdressers and all form of this world's truly last bastion of creativity alike...this is my last word on the subject. You matter. This Board matters. What Jared and all who contribute to his Board have done and will continue to do matters. It is our last, best hope for Corporate America to stop the arrogance...to stop the maddness...to sit up and listen to us as we say through this and countless other Boards that we now know they're reading, "IDX et. al....we're mad as hell and we're not going to take this anymore. And to borrow a line from what I humbly consider to be the best film of the decade, "Good night and good luck".
P.S The SDR on the box certifies that JVC tried for a Saturday, Priority overnight delivery but the ice storm was simply too much!Delivery
