RED EPIC customer service recent experience...Europe

[C.H.Haskell]

I just wanted to share my gratitude for RED customer service. It is by far the best I have ever experienced, without a question. I often read post like this but a recent incident made me want to echo.

I was recently working abroad and had a production emergency/incident that required a replacement body asap...being that I was far from home made me feel like I might be out of luck...I was wrong.
Put a phone call to RED and was instructed to visit RED europe, luckily enough I was near Pinewood Studios and a few hours later I was taken care of.

For the record the camera failure was due to a production incident, not on RED.

Its experiences like this that make me grateful to be a red customer, its more then a company/client relationship...its a family, its a team...and one that I am happy to be part of.

Thanks again RED and RED Europe,

Cheers

Clay

 

[Stefan Antonescu]

 

[Jeremy_Sawatzky]

oh you have to tell us what happened

 

[Cüneyt Kaya]

alan and his gang do rock europe.
i definitly owe them one or two favours

 

[Kristin Stewart]

Clay, could you please tell us more about the replacement body ? Was it charged or free ? How long could you keep it ? Because I've been involved with several camera failures on sets, and we had to find Red bodies somewhere else, it was a real pain. In fact, I don't rent Reds from people who don't have replacement bodies anymore just because of that. So if it's a Red policy to help by providing a backup body, it would be nice to know ;-)

 

[Steven-Marc C.]

Kristin, do you own a Red?
Red Europe's customer service is the best I have experienced in any field. I love these guys.
Alan, if you read this, Epic-X #409 has arrived safely, has blown my mind, and is already being put to good use...

 

[Kristin Stewart]

No Steven-Marc, I don't own Red gear, I'm a production manager. I usually manage all the production aspects. And I get the usual feedbacks from directors/producers, which are to me the most important. So, to be clear, is Red Pinewood giving a backup body in case of repair for everyone in every situation ? What is the price ? Of does it depend on the Red owner's relationship with Red ?

 

[Steven-Marc C.]

As a production manager you deal with rental houses, not with the manufacturer directly. It is up to them to have you covered.

 

[Kristin Stewart]

Yes you're right. But in practice, it's far from being the case. I wouldn't do correctly my job if I would believe only rental houses or Red owners. I like to know how good the support behind is. Because a technician could tell you "Well, my backup body is out somewhere, Red can't help, etc..." It's like going to the garage, you can trust the mechanist, for sure ;-)

 

[ericyoung]

No Steven-Marc, I don't own Red gear, I'm a production manager. I usually manage all the production aspects. And I get the usual feedbacks from directors/producers, which are to me the most important. So, to be clear, is Red Pinewood giving a backup body in case of repair for everyone in every situation ? What is the price ? Of does it depend on the Red owner's relationship with Red ?

I can' t see how Red could possibly promise a backup body to everyone in every situation. They would have to have hundreds of bodies just sitting waiting on a shelf worldwide! However it's clear they will try to help if it's an unforeseen emergency and they happen to have a working body available! I imagine you'd also have to prove your ID and insurance. Price would probably depend how long it was needed for and how far it was going shipping wise. Also if they got into backup body rental for free or as a business they are going to seriously annoy some of their largest customers - the rental houses.

 

[C.H.Haskell]

Hey folks, did not mean to make for any confusion, RED simply helped a customer in crisis.
Most cases you would deal with rental house of course but in my case I am a owner operator so
In the event of an emergency I had no one else to turn to. Pinewood people rock indeed, will be shooting there in
January so pints on me.

 

[Kristin Stewart]

Thanks Clay & Eric. Yes, of course, most of the times you try to deal with rental houses. I say try, because for most of them, you can call yourself lucky if they have a back up body in emergency ;-)

I was indeed more thinking about Clay's case, where you rent the gear from an individual who doesn't necessary have the money to own a 2nd body just in case. They're usually cheaper and more open to price discussion. If, in this case, the production can rely of a replacement body from Red Europe, well, it opens some doors ;-)

 

[Paul Harding]

I have also had great service from Red Europe. Keep it up!

 

[Jason Comparetto]

I believe Red could help customers in crisis reliably. It's pretty cool that they would offer this service. Also, It would not be necessary for them to keep 100's of cameras on the shelf. There are only about 8000 of them in the world!!! Even if 2% of them went into crisis, and if there's only two Red locations in the world (there's probably more, I really don't know...) then that's only 40 each that they would need to keep on hand. And realistically, its not like every crisis is going to be resolved by Red, so maybe they keep 10-20 bodies on hand, which would be very easy for Red to do. And just wait for the Stage 3 trade-ins.... oh boy... Red is going to have to store them somewhere... Maybe we'll be all be going to Red for rentals, crisis or not. They're going to have like 1000 bodies just floating around

 

[Kristin Stewart]

Yes Jason, it would be great if they could offer this kind of support, for a kind of insurance yearly fee...

 

[Ketch Rossi]

Nice to hear Clay, even so I am sorry to hear about your incident with your Epic.