WARNING. Stay away from Cinegears.

D

derbrocks09

Well-known member
I have never taken an aggressive action toward a company before now. However the experience I've had with Cinegears takes the cake.

I will be posting a more indepth account of my dealings with them in a couple of days. I'm currently working on a low budget feature film so time and sleep are very hard to come by. We wrap in a few days and I will follow up with more details then.

Overview.

I purchased the Cinegears wireless follow focus via the reduser group buy. I was relatively happy with the unit for 6 months. However my unit did drop the signal and freeze up several times a day (while working on features) The problem seemed to get worse over time.

However my larger problem was my motor began to develop slop and play in it. I sent it in for service. Customer service was generally speaking very poor with many of my emails going un answered. They had my unit for approximately a month before shipping it back to me. It should be noted that I was perfectly willing to pay to have the motor repaired. They returned my unit explainin the the dropped connection had been repaired and that the motor had been serviced.

When I received my unit back the motor had not been repaired!

After talking with a technician I was told the the motor could not be returned to its original condition. After complaining that that was not acceptable I was told to return the unit for a refund.

Now I'm being told that I will only be returned 50% of my purchase price.

Worth noting, according to cinegears some play in their motors is acceptable.

I have the extreme motor BTW.

So just a warning to all our fellow dvxusers.

More details to come in a few days.
 
Honestly, this is precisely why I follow the philosophy of Buy Once, Cry Once.

Cinegear's wireless follow focus is the cheapest option in the market. And quite frankly, the cheapest most low-budget option for anything (film related or otherwise) is always going to have inherent weaknesses - affordability comes at a cost of its own.

In my experience, anything less than over-machined, over-built equipment, never lasts long on film sets. And ends up costing you more in the long run, after you give up on it and buy the real thing to replace it. Forking out the cash up front to buy something decent in the first place really seems to be the only way to avoid headaches with gear purchases.

You wouldn't buy yourself the shittiest car on the market to get around if you could avoid it - so why take a similar risk on equipment that you need to use professionally. It just doesn't make sense.

So while I'm sorry to hear that you've been burnt (a 50% refund on a faulty product is unacceptable), whatever happens, take it as a lesson learnt.
 
Yep. Lesson learned Grug.

Btw. I have another thread going over on reduser where cinegears company reps are actually defending their actions. It really is unbelievable.

Here's the link
 
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