Butterfly Photo is a new company

[BurntByButterfly]

Hi. The original Butterfly Photo went out of business and a new company bought the URL in August, 2008. This is according to Lauren in CS at x254, on May 15, 2009. The current company has no affiliation with the old company, and has no obligation to honor any extended warranty claims left over from the old company.

I purchased a camera and 3-year extended warranty in 11/2006 and filed a repair claim with RepairTech (the repair company Butterfly used for warranty work) in 10/2008. After months of runaround, a change from RepairTech to RepairClaim, unreturned calls and emails, it seems like there is little that can be done for us previous buyers - our warranties are useless.

Lauren said that their new company has a different repair company, and she will send me information on obtaining repair service through them. She said the repair costs are discounted, but might not be free. When she said that, I figured it was the same old runaround.

Overall, since the new Butterfly Photo will not honor obligations of the old Butterfly Photo, I would not trust them to buy anything from them. If a new owner purchases the name of an old company and the supposed good will that comes with that name, then they should also honor the previous commitments of that company. Kurt.

(The above text originally appeared in a Review [not this forum] that resulted in a 1-star rating for Butterfly Photo. It has been removed as a Review, and now appears in the Forum instead - see below.)

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Update 5/15/09: Lauren (Lauren@butterflyphoto.com) sent me an email listing the Butterfly company address as:

OUTLOOK ACQUISITION CORP.
1764 New Durham Road
South Plainfield , NJ 07080

- which is the same as the old company address.

The email states that Outlook Acquisition Corp. purchased the URL "butterflyphoto.com" but "did not assume any legal responsibility for any defective products or for any extended warranty contracts sold by the prior owners of the URL". It goes on to say that their new warranty company is Consumer Priority Service (CPS), who will provide a free estimate, and reduced repair rates. Provide details and contact information to wkogan@cpscentral.com.

I sent a message to wkogan@cpscentral.com asking him/her to confirm their affiliation with Butterfly and asked what information do they need from me to get my camera repaired.

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Update 5/15/09: I received a call from Steve Clendenny in Butterfly CS today trying to find a way to make everyone happy. He asked me to reconsider my review, keeping in mind that the new management is trying to improve the reputation they inherited. He asked me to send the camera directly to him in order to expedite service, and said he'd give me a battery for the camera as a token of goodwill. Between Lauren's email and Steve's phone call, that's more service than I received with the old Butterfly the entire 6 months I tried to get the camera repaired. I gave a higher CS rating based upon today's activity, and will update again when my camera comes back. The revised rating raised the Review from 1-star to 3-stars.

I also received a reply back from CPS (wkogan@cpscentral.com), the new repair service. They said that they only provide free estimates, and asked for my contact information, copy of invoice and description of the problem. I sent them a reply providing that information. Kurt.

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Update 5/19/09: On May 16, 2009, Lara from ResellerRatings (lara@resellerratings.com) sent me a message indicating my Review violated rules of the site: my original purchase occurred more than 1 year ago; and, I had included correspondence from the vendor (the email Lauren sent me) verbatim in the review. I wrote her back saying that how the "new" Butterfly handles customers with open issues is still relevant to future customers, who are the beneficiaries of the information listed on ResellerRatings. Although my purchase took place 11/06, the extended warranty was still in effect, and Review reflected current activity with Butterfly.

If I'm considering buying from Butterfly, the information I've listed in this thread is exactly the kind of information I want to know - how will I be treated by Butterfly Photo? She replied back recommending that I place my comments in the Forum. I assume the Review I posted will be removed from the Review section, and rather than lose the information altogether, I've copied it to this Forum. I think it's a shame because far fewer potential Butterfly customers will find it here. Kurt.

[Admin RR]

Thanks for posting your opinions.

Our policies are designed to maximize review quality. You want to be able to rely on our site to make purchasing decisions, correct? You don't want to use our site for entertainment purposes only, I suspect. Therefore, you should realize that our policies, while sometimes appearing weird or unfair, maximize the quality and reliability of our reviews.

99 times out of 100, you don't want someone writing a review of a store based on a transaction from more than a year ago. Stores change, policies change, times change. If someone made a purchase from a store in April 2008, but they're just now getting around to writing a review, people are going to think that their review (good or bad) reflects how that store is doing business today. In reality, that review reflects how the store did business over a year ago. We have enough people coming to ResellerRatings to write reviews relating to transactions made within the past year without resorting to accepting old out-of-date reviews.

Now in this case I do agree that your opinion is relevant because this is an issue of the merchant allegedly not honoring a long-term warranty. However, what we definitely cannot do is start making judgment calls, subjective decisions, about which reviews to allow and which to not. That is a very slippery slope. We enforce our policies across the board: for good or bad reviews, for all stores advertisers or not, and in this way we remain as a neutral and unbiased resource. Our policy is: no reviews relating to transactions older than one year. You really don't want us to start deciding which reviews are fair, or siding with merchants when they ask us to remove a review because they think the customer is unreasonble, or deciding when to enforce our policies and when not to.

In this case, we asked you to post their opinion to our forums because our forums are pretty much "anything goes", but reviews are subject to our policies (Terms and Conditions - ResellerRatings.com). People know that opinions posted to forums aren't always reliable but could be helpful, whereas they rely on our reviews to be reliable, timely, and written by actual customers. Our forums are not tucked away -- they are very much front and center in Google. Here's an example search for another retailer called Exotic Phone. A ResellerRatings forum discussion is the 3rd result:
Exotic phone - Google Search

And here's ETC computer, 5th result:
etc computer - Google Search

I have to ask though: isn't your complaint here directed at the warranty company and not the retailer?
RepairTech - repairtechinc.com - Reviews, Ratings and Prices at ResellerRatings

You should post your review to RepairTech's reviews page instead. We have modified our policy to allow >1 year old reviews for warranty companies.