"I bought Kodak D76 (B+W film developer) from Mel Pierce online. It arrived and before even opening I could see that it had clearly gone bad - it was dark brown, which you could see right through the envelope. That means someone saw that it was bad and shipped it to me anyway. On top of that, it turns out that lot of developer from Kodak was bad and Mel Pierce is continuing to offload it onto customers. I emailed them, as did Amazon, and then just sent back a message saying the package had been delivered. So quality control issues in their shipping department, quality control issues in their customer service department, selling spoiled developer and now I have to stop what I'm doing, order more, wait for it to arrive and deal with filing an A to Z claim on Amazon to get a refund. "

"I've made two purchases from Mel Pierce Camera: a tripod bought quite a few years ago, and most recently a lens that seems to be almost permanently out of stock at Adorama and B&H. Their website isn't nearly as slick as some of the major online vendors, but they offer competitive pricing, and I've found them to be reliable. When I called customer service to confirm some details of the recent order the response was polite and helpful. I received the order within a few days of placing it, and found that it was very carefully packed, using both bubble wrap and styrofoam peanuts. Contrary to the minor complaint in the only other review currently posted here, I did actually receive an automated email with a tracking number when the order was shipped. "

"This is my second order from Mel Pierce. Some of their prices, especially on consumables are hard to beat. Customer service is responsive to email, haven't tried calling, nor needed to. My main beef is not receiving a tracking number until I wrote them (both orders this happened.) Hopefully they'll fix that, but next time I find what I want at good price, I'll order from them again.

It pays a dividend to keep the reliable vendors going!"