Allen's Camera — Attraction in Orem

AVOID AT ALL COSTS. Oh man. I really genuinely hate giving bad reviews. But these guys have inconvenienced me so much the last couple weeks and acted like I was the idiot. No one put themselves in my shoes. I run two photography businesses full time AND I’m a mom. My life is chaos. The issues might have seemed trivial to the employees, but a little empathy goes a long way.

First issue, I took my camera to have my sigma lens calibrated. I recently switched to mirrorless and didn’t know mirrorless bodies don’t need lens calibration (getting the dock & updating firmware on sigma lenses is worth it ive since learned btw). They gave me a pickup time for the next day. I was going to be on a tight schedule needing to drive 3 hours for a shoot. Then less then ONE hour before pickup time I get a call telling me they can’t calibrate my lens. I got a little frustrated telling them it would’ve been nice to know at drop off the day before, & the guy says “yeah the kids we hire aren’t very knowledgeable” So I talk to the guy (only nice employee btw) & he thought I should try a different adapter. Sure, I’ll rent one. Then he tells me I need to order it online but it takes an hour to process because the system has to make sure it’s not being sold to a stolen credit card…. So my tight schedule is now tighter, needing to pickup/drop off kids, needing to go back to Allens for the adapter, etc. I brushed those issues off, it happens, i was just annoyed they waited so long to tell me they couldn’t work with my camera. Whatever.

Fast forward to last week. I reserved 2 lens rentals & a magmod. It’s not my first wedding, I’ve shot on these style of lenses a bunch times. I wanted to try a new brand of telephoto before buying one myself. I go to pick up rentals and the girl gave mette wrong lens first. I told her I had rented the tamron since I want to compare. She thanked me for catching the mistake. (No biggie.) the tamron lens has been used so much that all the writing is rubbed off and you don’t know what switch does what. Didn’t notice until my rental period was over. She didn’t mention anything about it. She gave me the lens in manual mode, which happens, but with no labels on the lens to verify i figured everything was a-ok & ready to go. I didn’t notice it was in manual mode until after uploading wedding images. I realize this makes me look stupid, but Allen’s could’ve saved me a lot of stress by re-labeling the switches or having the girl tell me “hey it’s in manual mode let me show you which button will put it in auto focus in case you want to switch it” because of shooting mirrorless, it all looked fine on the lcd and i was using touch focus on those images. If you were in my shoes you would’ve done the same thing shooting on my camera body in the time crunch i was in & seeing images look generally in focus pop up. When I dropped off the lens I asked if I could get some sort of compensation for the issue, the kid was condescending and said “you didn’t even try messing with the switches?” No. I didn’t. If the text is rubbed off it needs to be fixed or the employees need to be trained in telling photographers what settings it’s on and how to change it if they can’t determine it due to the text being rubbed off… Before drop off I wanted to make sure it wasn’t the lens itself that had an issue and toyed around with the buttons, and Lo and behold all I had to do was switch it to AF but there wasn’t any text or mention of it for me to quickly do so in the middle of a wedding.

I’m done with Allen’s. Its more an empathy and training issue. Nobody ever cares about inconveniencing you & employees aren’t trained on equipment. It’s worth driving north for reputable lens rental companies with staff who know what they’re doing and aren’t going to make you feel like you’re stupid. Also the lenses they have you rent are never cleaned. There will be dust and fingerprints on the main lens and both sides of the UV filter that need to be cleaned before shooting. It’s 2022. Customer service...

I brought back a lens that I rented that did not come with a filter on the lens when I picked it. They asked why there wasn’t a filter on the lens and I told them that they didn’t put one on the lens when I picked it up. After that they were convinced that I still the filter from the lens even though one of their employees didn’t put one on the camera. They didn’t care to believe me even though I have rented from them a dozen of times before with no issues instead went straight to treating me bad and acting like I took it from them and are planning on charging me a with big fee for it. They lost my business because of it. ( response: yes it is, but you guys checked the lens and put it in the bag and had me sign the paper before i got the chance to look over the lens, so i usually take your employees word for it. but when i came in today to return the lens and i told your employe there wasn't a lens filter on the camera that i was given to me your employe was condescending and didn't care to hear what i had to say. this wasn't the first time i've had bad customer service from you guys, i've rented a lens once before and when i came to pick it up you guys told me that you don't even have the lens available to rent and i had to cancel a clients appointment because of it. but i was patient and was understanding about it. but it happened again with a gimbal i rented along with another lens i rented with it. the gimbal wasn't there when i went to pick it up but i was understanding and i waited about 35 minutes for you guys to figure things out but refunded me in the end for messing up and this also made me cancel i shoot i had planned for that night. the past few times your employees have not been the best with customer service. and the rentals you been renting out to me have been really dirty and just seemed like you guys didn't care about what you were giving to your clients. this was also the same with the 16 - 35mm lens i rented and returned today, it was covered in sticky juice and dirt and a bunch of smears on the glass that i had to clean up because it was so gross to use. i've been okay with this stuff usually because i understand things happen, but today when i came in and your employe treated me the way they did and said that they are probably going to charge me for something that you never gave me made me very disappointed and sick...

First time going here and everything was great at first, staff was super nice, the prices were reasonable. I saw the reviews about a super fast turnaround time so I decided to give it a try. I took in some film to get developed Monday morning, I work in video production and in the social media world as an editor so I’m very familiar with how the development/drop box works. As expected when I went in to drop off my film they said they were caught up since it was the start of the new week, I asked the turn around time and the nice guy at the front said “since we are caught up, most likely the end of the day or for sure tomorrow” this is about the amount of time it takes at the other place I go to so I was happy leaving the store! Wednesday comes around and I just decided to give them a call about 2 hours before they closed since thanksgiving is the next day. I called and they looked up my order and said “yep everything’s processed and you’ll get the drop box link today” 3 days to get film developed is not bad so I was still pretty satisfied! We reached the end of the day and no pictures, I was a little disappointed because the next day was thanksgiving and I knew they wouldn’t be open(as they should have the day off) Now comes Friday and I’ve yet to get the pictures. I use drop box often to send photos/videos to my clients. It takes 2 minutes to get everything in there and to send a link. So to know my photos are already processed as of Tuesday night/ Wednesday morning and just sitting there and not getting sent is extremely frustrating as someone who knows how easy it is to work a drop box. I just wish they would have been more truthful in the beginning about the turnaround time.I’ll be sticking to the other...